Where Is the Support in the Left Media for the #DNCFraudLawsuit? Say It Ain't So - Both Thomas Frank and TYT Panel Shirk From Standing With DNC Collusion and Fraud Issues. Where Are Our Allies?

With the #DNCFraudLawsuit Gaining Momentum, Where Are The Left Journalists Covering Electoral Fraud/Voter Suppression/DNC Collusion of The Rigged the Dem Primary?/Loads of Evidence of Documented Foul Play, Here's Just Some From New York and Chicago/If Elections Are the Foundation of Democracy, Then Where Are We As A Country When They're Proven To Be Corrupted?

As the political waters become murkier and murkier, in most every direction at the moment, it becomes more and more incumbent on us to be ever vigilant citizen watchdogs and journalists. We must watch closely those who we we're inclined to think of as allies.

While the Neoliberal scum work their lapdog minions in the MSM, desperately clinging to the hope that the public will continue to be led by the leash through a ceaseless, confusing and desperate beach full of washed-up red herring narratives of Russia/Putin/BernieBros/Faux Feminism/the Resistance™, it's more important than ever that the true history of what happened during the Primary doesn't go down the Memory Hole. It'll be up to us to expose untruths/propaganda, as well as share developing real news about anything that would advance the cause of C99.

Frankly, my main position now is the rupturing of the two party system. I think the #DNCFraudLawsuit can help achieve that. The other component, which I'd prefer to get into another time, is the creation of a 3rd party around the gravitas Bernie Sanders currently has among our countrymen as the only adult in the room. As far as I can see now these are the two best hopes we have to help achieve the dismantling of the two party system.

It could be a long, hard road, especially when one realizes that what could be taken for granted as support may not in fact be there.

So I went looking to see where some of our allies stood. And like most things, it started off innocuous enough. Was taking my daily look at the YouTube subscription list, and this video headline caught my eye: "Thomas Frank: Why Bernie Sanders Would Have Won - The Nation."

Again, a pretty standard quote from Frank:

"You want to know the biggest lesson I learned touring Trumpland?
People hated Hillary Clinton. To a degree that even I, with my cynicism, did not understand.
I did not hate Hillary Clinton. I voted for her, and I agreed with Obama that she was very qualified. She deserved to be president. I didn’t think she’d be a great president, but I thought she’d be OK—certainly better than Donald Trump. I knew how to hate Donald Trump. That’s easy. He boasts about groping women. He says these evil things about Mexicans, and mocks the handicapped. It’s unbelievable the stuff this guy did and said. Hating him was easy.
What I did not understand was the degree to which people really hated Hillary Clinton. And that’s ultimately what this election was about: Which one do you hate more?"

There's potentially lots to unpack there, but that's not what I'm getting it. I think it's a fair assessment by him.

What really grabbed my attention about this video clip, which contains the interview, were two things:

The curious and distracting video production, which ultimately had the effect (probably intended) of reminding one of how incredibly unique and successful Bernie's historic campaign was. The video clips covered a lot of ground, including the incredible, supporter-organized, massive Bernie march in NYC (and others all over the country) prior to the Democratic Primary. To my knowledge, that has never happened before. Unprecedented, and should have been the portent to a overwhelming electoral victory for Bernie. It wasn't; he was cheated. The #DNCFraudLawsuit is an attempt to unpack some of that now, but will be contingent on the media, especially on the Left, giving this the kind of serious coverage it deserves. Seems my answer lie in the rest of the video.

There was this bombshell. Thomas Frank said,

"I'm not one of these people that thinks that she won the the nomination by cheating. Her side did cheat, there's no doubt about that. The Democratic National Committee did cheat. But she also won fair and square."

Wait...what?! What kind of insane doublespeak is this? Did you, Thomas Frank, just say that?

So, you didn't think she won by cheating, but then say, "Her side did cheat, there's no doubt about that." How do you square that? By digging deeper into and holding firmer onto the kind of Groupthink that infects even clear-eyed historians such as Frank, who after all is still part of the DC intelligentsia.

"The Democratic National Committee did cheat. But she also won fair and square."

To hear Frank, who completely gets it and has become somewhat of a kind of folk hero to me at this point in his career (for penning in "Listen Liberal," the blow by blow history of the Democratic Party's departure from Party of the People to Party of the Top 10%, and with that providing the clearest indictment yet, and presciently providing the backdrop for the current moment, to understand precisely why such a Democratic party celebrity candidate could, in fact lose, to the worst candidate of all-time, who on election day had a 60% disapproval poll) make such a surreal, contradictory statement, one that belies his whole fundamental understanding of what the Democrats are capable and of which he made the case for in his latest book, is just so disorienting, disappointing and disconcerting.

The question for me, to Frank is, how are you willing to disregard verifiable collusion by the DNC through the Wikileaks documents, which in all likelihood resulted in the widespread cheating to keep Bernie from the nomination?

One can not be hold diametrically opposed statements at once, as truth. One is the truth and one is not. This absolutely intellectually dishonest remark reminded me of the kind of garbage that passes for debate a TOP, and reminded me of a specific incident there.

During one of the primary debate open threads, I made a comment about one of Hillary's typically vapid, saccharine, pandering sweet nothing, Hallmark empty platitudes of which she is infamous. I basically said it is impossible for a politician to be for the rich and the poor at the same time. Some flunky Neoliberal lawyer named dhonig, who ran faster than almost anyone else to run interference as a Protectorate of the Financial Elites, sought to make an example of me to his Hills cheerleader squad by writing an essay around said comment. Of course, his super lame, pathetic attempt to defend the rich and their manifest transgressions against humanity was laughable and so emblematic of the kind servile malarkey those with some coin address the seriousness of economic/income inequality. He argued that rich people "want clean air too" - sniffle, sniffle - like to pet their dogs, etc, etc. Nevertheless, the disconnected, well-to-do, out-of-touch Neoliberal painted himself into a corner, where he was roundly tarred and feathered by the Progressives still there at the time.

Still stewing from Frank's insider's denial of fraud, and sensing by extension there may be something going with others of our "progressive" MSM, I went back to the TYT video I watched the night before about the DNC lawsuit. John Iadarola, who was a huge Bernie supporter, does a little roundtable on the #DNCFraudLawsuit (which we should be following on Twitter). In it the former staunch Bernie supporter unconvincingly says the lawsuit is "shortsighted" and "a bad idea." The whole exchange was a reminder of the curious omission on the part of the TYT Network to take the charge of DNC collusion with Clinton, with the kind of seriousness it certainly warrants. Again, I can't believe what I'm seeing from this "progressive" network. To top it off, Hillary suck-up Michael Shure offers this inanity, as if it closes the case: "Class action lawsuits are usually brought by opportunistic lawyers, and it's probably a lawyer fighting against an opportunistic lawyer." Respectfully, what the fuck - you clown?

The irony is TYT expects to run Justice Democrats against this establishment fraud. As a commenter said, "How do you condone this behavior AND the Justice Democrats at the same time? If you're gonna primary established Dems...ah f-ing forget it."

Do check out the comments section. It is raging with outrage at TYT for not supporting this. It's weird, YouTube comments section have always been the worst of the worst cesspools. But lately progressive videos have attracted some really good discussion forums.

Folks, this is our progressive media?

These are our progressive journalists?

Frankly, Thomas Frank should know better. Given the litany of Tammany Hall, Daley in Chicago, LBJ's rigged congressional seat (see the PBS "American Experience" doc, in which they might have forgotten to edit that out!), etc. For God's sake, in the 2008 NY Primary, Obama didn't get one vote in a precinct in which the local politicians were Hillary supporters (a recount was hastily ordered, to cover up the blatant vote rigging) . Fact is, the entire 2016 Democratic Primary was rife with evidence of electoral foul play and outright cheating, beginning with the Iowa Caucus, which, according to the Des Moines Register who endorsed Clinton, was deemed a "debacle."

Good thing for Tim Black. I then pulled up his really good interview with Jared Beck, who is bringing the DNC fraud case to court. Black offered a wide open platform for him to discuss the case. "BREAKDOWN: DNC Fraud Lawsuit with Attorney, Advocate: Jared Beck"

Beck is going up against a Goliath, a big dumb one perhaps, but nonetheless it's an uphill battle against an entrenched behemoth, with a lot of money to burn. But things seem to be proceeding in a way that there's hope for a discovery period and a trial. And if that happens, then the floodgates open. Of course, that would be contingent on a fully-functioning, dissenting Left media. Another aspect of the primary that comes into play here is the disorienting way we saw RW media cover some of the things Progressives were not seeing in the "supposed" LW media.

And here it's obvious, that there's a disconcerting lack of support from those we've come to think of as allies. That's a really bad thing. Because near the end of the interview, Black asked him if he was scared, given all that has happened. (I copied the transcript from YouTube and edited the best I could, removed some of the "you know" pauses for clarity)

The truth is, yes.

I know that people following this case you from the very beginning, you know, they've seen the video of our process server, a gentleman by the name of Sean Lucas, who served the lawsuit on the DNC when it was first filed. And he died under very mysterious circumstances, very sudden circumstances. You know, you can see the video of him serving the lawsuit on our on our youtube channel to this day, and there's many, many views. But he was found on his bathroom floor with a mix of three different drugs in his body. The death has been ruled an accident by the the DC Court coroner. But to my knowledge, no real investigation has been done into what exactly happened. He was a young man who by all accounts I've heard he wasn't a drug user, he was very healthy.

So whenever something like that happens it creates concern. And then you put that together with the death of Seth Rich, who, you know, many people believe that he was in fact the leaker that leaked the documents to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks documents, of course. He was found indeed while....he was killed in a supposed, you know, supposedly in a botched robbery. Except they didn't take his wallet and they didn't take his watch or....and he was walking home at like 3:00 in the morning and, you know, we have no information as to what happened there you know.

I'm not jumping to conclusions about what happened to those two those young men, but I think whenever you have a suspicious deaths or unexpected deaths...in a situation like that, it raises concerns. And so, you know, you can't let that stop you. I think the issues that we're talking about are you know too important to really let something like that slow you down. I know that lots and lots of people, many, many people across the country, are making enormous sacrifices and putting their lives at risk every day. I mean just look at the people at Standing Rock, okay, you know. At the end of the day I think it's an easy decision to press forward with this.

But I think we're living in very very unusual times. I think there is a lot of very heated discourse out there a lot of uncertainty as to where our political system is headed. I think I'd be a fool to say that you know these are these are normal times and you know, it's business as usual. I guess that's a long answer to your question, Tim.

But by the end of Tim Black's interview I felt inspired to join what Beck called attention to as "citizen journalism" and join the ranks with my small contribution today.

Part and parcel to the #DNCFraudLawsuit is the rampant voter suppression and electoral fraud throughout the primary, which is on full display in the following video evidence of the New York Board of Elections debacle.

I went back into my emails and found this Change.org petition from a year ago attempting to get the AG and Comptroller, both who expressed publicly grave concerns about the NY primary, to hand count 10% of the ballots. And again the comments section yield some nuggets of information I had previously been unaware of, which was the same for the following clips. It's heartening when you realize there are plenty of folks like us who are very pissed off and willing to take the time to express themselves thusly and share information.

One after another in this video, come regular folks, up to take the stand to be on record about what they saw. Their testimony appeared to me to be credible.

After an impassioned poll worker in Chelsea eloquently and gives her credentials as a bonafide New Yorker who has benefitted from the fine social programs including Stuyvesant HS and Cooper Union Hall as a student and as an adult an Affordable Living apartment, a City University math professor followed quite calmly and said this:

Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Claire McAllister. I'm here as a concerned voter.

My polling place was in the Bronx. I didn't have any issues myself. But I am a CUNY professor and a number of my students did. So I'm partly here to speak on behalf of them. I will second a lot of the statements that were already brought up and I don't need to waste time repeating them.

But as a mathematician I feel like it's my duty to call attention to the numbers.

The exit polls were showing in the Democratic primary a four point spread between Clinton and Sanders. 45 minutes after the polls closed, the same media reported that Clinton had won the state by 17 points. As the polls were designed to catch election fraud, and they're designed to make sure there's a maximum of about four percent error in either direction. So either, even giving the polls the maximum leeway of inaccuracy, you would expect Clinton to have won by no more than about eight points.

A 17-point lead is statistically virtually impossible.

This raises the question of election fraud, and necessitates a full and independent investigation, by a party with no stake in new york city or state politics, or the outcome of the election, in general.

And another,

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Erica ----. I'm a resident of Brooklyn. I'm here speaking from my own experience as an individual.

I am a human rights and anti-corruption lawyer I've been practicing in that area for the last 11 years Amnesty International and the Open Society Foundations. I'm now working independently. I'm also a certified fraud examiner.

On the day of the election I used the opportunity of my free time to volunteer to monitor polling sites and identified myself as a lawyer, so that people could ask questions if they have it.

Not only was my day a barrage, from 7am to 9pm, of questions about every single aspect of this voting process, it was also a barrage of questions about criminal law family law, every, you know, immigration law.

There is so much confusion as to who had the right to do what I feel from a from a human rights perspective that the right of self-determination has been absolutely violated for most people in the city. Because it's not just as some others have already mentioned. It's not just the affidavit ballots that you have. It's all the ones that you don't have, and it's the impact of the lack of communication than the lack of clarity for the rest of the public.

I think it's also the impact of the media that resulted in the media around the so-called, "result," of the primary, which is not really the results because the votes have not been counted yet. I will be making the same, you know, request of state agencies involved, that actually what you've presented is not enough. It's not enough

And another,

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sandra Ramirez. I'm a Marine Corps veteran and I went to war in 2007. I live in Bed-Stu, Brooklyn.

I came here today to talk about voter incident reporting that I took when I was volunteering at the Working Families Party. I even seen numerous calls, not even numerous calls, one after another phone calls of people who couldn't get to vote, were being turned away at the gates, who were being denied that the opportunity to fill out an affidavit. But today when I see a board like this, sitting back and pathetically laughing at people, laughing at the general public, denying a motion to adjourn that the certification of the primary, when clearly there's a problem here to serve the people.

We the people demand a result resolution to the problem of over a hundred thousand voters were just deregistered. Scott Stringer and De Blasio came out conceding the fact that they were behind because you know we just never got around to it. Well, just get around to doing a revote... I am a Democrat. I registered on time okay, so I got to vote. But my brothers and sisters did not. I saw senior citizens who made arrangements to get to their polling location turned around they've been active Democrats active Republicans it had nothing to do with their party...they were denied the right to vote.

It undermines democracy. I didn't go to war with my friends, some of whom, many of whom did come back just to get this thrown away. I and my brothers and sisters are entitled the right to vote....We deserve that respect...For you guys to just deny a motion to adjourn certification, without having heard anybody's voices first? Yeah...that is unpalatable.

Here's a scene of a military veteran exploding with anger about the voter suppression he witnessed.

The absolute capricious and rude way the imperious Elections Board dealt with this is on full display in the video. An hour-plus worth of impassioned personal testimony documenting widespread voter fraud during the NY, is here.

It was the same in Chicago, maybe worse there, if you can believe that.

If you don't believe this could happen, that the auditors cover up election fraud, then you need to see this Redacted Tonight segment about the Chicago Board of Elections:

Testimony from the poll workers there, included these two revelations:

"Essentially, in the audit they were erasing votes that the electronic voting machine paper record indicated had been cast."

and,

"The hand tally showed that Bernie Sanders had happened to get 223 votes and that Hillary Clinton had gotten 46 less. The hand tally showed that.

But to meet the official recommended results, they had to literally erase Bernie Sanders votes, and add Hillary Clinton's votes. Yes, approximately 70 times about 500 active machines in the field - and there's more that we have documented here. That's a lot of votes."

To which Lee described what Chris Hedges refers to as "the banality of evil", a term Hannah Arendt coined:

This is how corporate tyranny works. It's anonymous and it's bland and its a bore. It
looks like a dopey guy in an ugly tie going "hmm...that's interesting, that we
totally rigged these elections, that is, that is something i'll look into one day with. Now if you'll excuse me I have a very boring wife who also dresses only in beige and we need to go watch VHS tapes of The Price is Right together."

A year ago on Redacted Tonight, Lee Camp had elections expert Richard Charnin on. Watch the beginning if you want to be reminded of how vicious and determined the HRC attack dogs in the MSM were to squash to smithereens any and all mention of election fraud. As Lee says, "I mean it only makes sense that ninety percent of the time, Google's algorithm can accurately predict which articles you want to read out of billions of articles on the internet. Yet we have just not cracked the code on exit polling mathematics."

I was too disgusted to look at any of the other primaries. If this much malfeasance and fraud went on in just these two, and the primaries themselves started off with the infamous summation by the Des Moines Register, who like every paper in the country endorsed HRC, that the caucus was a "debacle," there is enough of a trail to warrant a serious investigation into voter suppression and election fraud in the 2106 Democratic Primary.

The writing's on the wall, according to even some establishment Dems, such as Robert Reich, who supported Bernie during the primary but Hillary in the GE. ""Democratic Party Will Be Irrelevant To Our Future"

In summary, if Thomas Frank and TYT, perceived allies in the fight for progressive platforms and exposing the fraudulent Democratic Part for abandoning its base, can maintain such contradictory and spineless positions in the face of so much evidence, then who are our allies?

Clean and fair elections are the bedrock of democracy. If they have been proven not only very vulnerable,but in all probability subject to the will of the party insiders as well vested business interests who conspire with them to get the results they seek, then we have a serious case to make to the American people for the dismantling of the Two-Party system, of why, at the very least, a third party is imperative. There is no accountability when neither party has any interest in fixing this.

Once you jump into the whirling vortex that is the world of Elections, and find out such things as the relationship between the existing party and its locally run board of elections, whose positions are appointed by the party in power (all but ensuring that the Primary results will be what they want), and that most are computerized touchscreens subject to easy manipulation with no accountability and/or literally the results wind up in a little black box inscrutable from the public, it becomes completely evident that they are by and large a charade (check out testimony from woman in NY about appearing as an observer of a 5% recount in NY, which sounds like Third World banana republic, beginning at 18min). That's proven, because the "US Ranks Dead Last in Electoral Integrity."

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The Democratic National Committee did cheat. But she also won fair and square."

He's saying that they did cheat, but they didn't have to. They cheated out of spite. They cheated because they were cheating bastards and that's why they cheated. Yes I know it's redundant, but that seems to be the only way to get it through peoples' skulls. Go thou, and spread this likewise.

The fact that the DNC's cheating was supposedly unnecessary makes it worse. It shows that they are totally unworthy of trust.

I don't know if Frank doesn't know that's what he said or if he just hopes the Democrats don't find out that's what he said. Either way, it behooves us to spread this interpretation.

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They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore

@Johnny Q one cannot summarily conclude that the cheating had no effect. In IA, where the numbers were shifting constantly and the party declared hillary the winner well before the counting was done, that announcement pre-empted any discussion about the real results and what a loss for clinton in IA could trigger. They were not going to let her lose IA again no matter what they had to do. Their refusal to conduct an audit and/or investigation gives credence to this view. The collusion with the media to add in superdelegate votes with each primary also subverted sanders's momentum. The fraud in NV was even more naked. Sorry, there is no way for frank to rationally conclude that none of these events had any effect on the outcome.

More to the point though, it is dishonest of him to assert she won fair and square when her campaign was colluding with the DNC in these actions.

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Wink's picture

@orestes
Had Bernie won Iowa he likely wins the Dem nomination. HRC and Team Hillary knew this and did whatever they could to win by a handful of votes. Until Bernie won a state - his own - he was totally ignored by the media. Bernie went seven, eight months with barely a mention by the media, while Hilary bathed in their attention. This was as planned by the DNC, Team Hillary. The DNC may not have meddled much in the Primary, but what meddling they did cost Bernie the nomination, won it for Hillary.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Mark from Queens's picture

hope that this #DNCFraudLawsuit could be the catalyst, or at least one of the forces, to help rupture the duopoly.

Apologies for the length. As I watched some of these Board of Elections videos, with lots of footage of average folks who were drawn to participate in democracy only to seethe with outrage at the voter suppression they'd witnessed, I became more and more incensed, and couldn't help myself.

And besides, admittedly, I'm still fucking pissed right off that Bernie's nomination was flat-out stolen from him, by a nasty cabal of slimy, colluding, fear-mongering Neoliberal insiders thinking they were entitled to the Presidency, proven by the Wikileaks dump (which everyone here knew even without).

Their corruption and criminality must be exposed, now more than ever, especially as their corporate lapdog flunkies in the MSM continue to do their bidding by fire-hosing a relentless torrent of red herrings at the public, flooding the discourse to avoid talking about any of what actually happened.

The #DNCFraudLawsuit, I think, is a potentially potent blow to the bow of the political machinery that run our elections.

It must be said, repeatedly, their hubris, ineffective policies, horrible candidacy -and yes, most of all, the stealing of the nomination from Bernie because it was Her Turn, gave us Drumpf.

I hope this goes to trial. The two-party system is in the best possible position it's been, maybe ever, to be swept up and out, into the dustbin of history.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

JekyllnHyde's picture

@Mark from Queens

... this is what actually happened. A whole lot of people believe it, too.

And besides, admittedly, I'm still fucking pissed right off that Bernie's nomination was flat-out stolen from him, by a nasty cabal of slimy, colluding, fear-mongering Neoliberal insiders.

480

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Pricknick's picture

It will take me days to adequately study your post. A quick browse it is not.
Again, well done!

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

snoopydawg's picture

Thanks for writing this.
The primary election was corrupted from the beginning when even before Hillary announced that she was running for president, both the DNC and her campaign had talked to the delegates and the super delegates who told them they would be behind her all the way. (during this time she was giving paid speeches which should have also disqualified her because of election laws).
There were so many discrepancies all during the primary and each one had been well documented.
The number of people who had their party affiliation changed and kicked off the voting rolls was unprecedented. No where in history was there that much trouble with people being able to vote.

The Nevada caucus was a perfect example to see how rigged it was. They were supposed to start at 10:00 am but they started it at 9:30 am and many of the Bernie delegates were still sighing in.
There was an audible vote and it was obvious that the No votes outnumbered the Yes votes but the person running it went with the Yes votes anyway.

Bill Clinton went to four voting places in Michigan and he went inside at least one and was telling people to vote for Hillary.
At all four places his secret service vehicles and the members made it very difficult for people to find a parking spot and vote during their time they had to vote.

As you noted the exit votes didn't match up with the vote totals in way too many places for it to be a fluke.

This website has covered the lawsuit and this author has written two out of three articles on the lawsuit and he makes a great point about how blatantly false the primary election was.

In the matter of the DNC fraud lawsuit, the absolute worst outcome for the Democratic Party would be to win their argument for dismissal. And yet, if it isn’t dismissed Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC will still be in a world of hurt.
Even if the DNC wins the legal matter and the judge grants dismissal, they will have “won” by breaking Democracy. This is because the DNC has employed a scorched-earth approach in presenting their arguments for dismissal which goes: Regardless of the Party’s public face, they retain the right to choose candidates in secret, thereby screwing their constituents out of any meaningful representation in the democratic process. And that, they argue, is just the way politics rolls—you’re a moron if you don’t it see it.

Imagine they win this argument. Who in their right mind is going to run in a Democratic Presidential Primary with this cat out of the bag? We know that the DNC picks one winner before the whole charade begins. Imagine you’re the lucky corporate candidate who gets their nod behind closed doors; who’s to say that you’re the only person who gets that nod? Without a brand that is believably “fair and impartial,” the DNC not only loses their standing with voters—they lose it with candidates.

https://thefloridasqueeze.com/2017/05/01/dnc-lawsuit-youre-morons-to-bel...

The second part of the article.
https://thefloridasqueeze.com/2017/05/04/dnc-lawsuit-dnc-wont-answer-cou...

Hillary's supporters on DK just love to remind us that Bernie lost the primary to Hillary. Well of course he did if so many people were unable to vote for him. Duh! That isn't rocket science to figure out why he lost. But of course they will never admit that truth gem.

In a diary there yesterday about Kos saying that the number of people who will be affected if the republicans are able to pass their shitty legislation are Suckers just because they voted for Donald. I'm sure you can imagine how many people agree with him.
There were a few comments that wrote that the people on the left are supposed to be more compassionate to those types of people who then got shitpiled on. Yeah the young kids who didn't vote deserve to die because of what the republicans are doing.
And quite a few reminded them that Bernie lost the primary. Gee, I wonder how many people who had been kicked out of the Democratic Party weren't able to vote in the general election? Hopefully they lived in the states that she lost.

And then there's what happened to the Bernie delegates during the convention, but that's a whole other essay.
USA, USA, USA, USA! More wars. Yeah! Dip shits every one of them that shouted that.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Mark from Queens's picture

@snoopydawg

Didn't even touch on the many personal encounters, just going about my day in the aftermath of the NY primary, I had with folks, seemingly everywhere, who had forthcoming stories of voter disenfranchisement, being given provisional ballots (which rarely get counted), having party affiliation changed, knocked off the voter rolls as "inactive."

I will go to my deathbed never believing Bernie lost NY.

Like I've said many times before to illustrate the huge disparity of support here: on the same exact day Bernie was speaking to a jubilant, diverse crowd of 30,000 people at a park in the S. Bronx on just a few days notice, HRC was at a tightly-controlled event at a college 25 miles North to maybe 500 students, 50 of whom stood up and chanted, "If she wins, we lose," and marched out in protest.

That juxtaposition should remind any fair-minded observer that there is no way a candidate, eliciting the kind of euphoric, passionate support that Bernie engendered, all over the country consistently, loses to a stilted, lackluster candidate, no matter how much establishment support she had, because she was ultimately deemed by the public to be unlikable, untrustworthy and not believable - and not worth showing up for, at rallies nor to vote.

Seen this piece?

At Medium.com, by Spencer Gundert (4/28/16), "Hillary Clinton and Electoral Fraud:
Why we need an investigation into electoral fraud favoring Hillary Clinton"

How Voter Suppression Proves Electoral Fraud

“We really are the only advanced democracy on Earth that systematically and purposely makes it really hard for people to vote…We sort of just assume, yeah, that’s I guess how it is. There’s no other country on Earth that does that.” — President Barack Obama, April 2016

According to the Electoral Integrity Project, America’s elections rank dead last out of every “long-established democracy.” Problems include “the quality of the electoral laws, voter registration, the process of drawing district boundaries, as well as the regulation of campaign finance.”

This all links directly to rampant voter suppression in this year’s Democratic primaries. I researched countless anecdotes of it for nearly three months, and after every primary, this was what I found:

I could not find any instances of voter suppression disadvantaging Hillary Clinton. Yet, it unquestionably affected Bernie Sanders.

For better understanding, here’s a look at the facts behind voter suppression:

Fact 1: Polling places were closed in Arizona, New York, Rhode Island, and other voting locations. Fewer polling places leads to longer lines, and thus, voters get discouraged from voting when they otherwise would. This consistent, unusual closure hints at electoral fraud, since Bernie Sanders’s base (younger voters) tends to vote later in the day because they have school, jobs, and generally more responsibilities. Clinton’s base consists of elderly voters (65 and older), who are often retired, vote in by mail significantly more, and have more time throughout the day to vote; therefore, they don’t have to endure long lines as frequently.

One example is in Arizona, where some voters waited up to five and a half hours to vote. One voter professed that after waiting all that time, he couldn’t vote because his Democratic registration was changed. Furthermore, the media called the primary for Hillary Clinton with less than 1% of the votes reported, disregarding the extremely long lines of people still trying to vote.

Fact 2: At least three states are under lawsuit and audits for voter suppression—Arizona, New York, and Illinois. Lawyers and election officials of these states have tried to impede or block all of them. If electoral fraud didn’t actually take place, then why block the audits and lawsuits?

Because it did. In Chicago, an auditing group testified that the results of hand-counted votes from voting machines were changed to match the machines’ false electronic counts. In one instance, 21 Sanders votes were erased and 49 Clinton votes were added, which one auditor noted is then multiplied by “about 500 active machines in the field” — indisputably election fraud. As for Arizona, hacker group Anonymous demonstrated how easy it is to hack and manipulate the voter database, as verified by a Reddit commenter, who said:

“Speaking as a database guy, one could hypothetically pull a list of names from the voter file that had indicated they were ‘strongly in support’ of Bernie Sanders, and write a script to update only their party affiliation. This might be the work of about an hour.”

In addition, a hacker would only have to search in a voter database for Independents who had recently changed their affiliation to Democratic, or young Democratic voters under the ages of 30 or 45, because the overwhelming majority of both groups favor Sanders.

Fact 3: Dishonesty from election officials has largely affected Bernie Sanders. For instance, voter signatures were forged to change Democratic registrations to Republican. Moreover, 126,000 voters were purged from Democratic registration lists in Brooklyn, with one commenter noting, “Is it just a coincidence that the area with the highest numbers of purged voters happens to be an area with high numbers of young, white, educated, liberals [Bernie’s base of supporters]?”

Another commenter stated:
“I’ve had reports from at least a dozen friends, family members, and friends of friends in other areas who have been switched. All Bernie supporters: I have yet to hear of this happening to a Clinton supporter.”

To verify this, I researched for months, poring over every comment of the threads I cited above and many more, news articles, forums, audits and lawsuit reports, and so forth. I did not read of any significant number of Clinton supporters having their registrations switched, while voter registration changes immensely affected Bernie Sanders.

This is undeniably voter suppression.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

snoopydawg's picture

@Mark from Queens
they stole the primary from both Bernie and his supporters.
It's good to hear that they are taking states to court over this issue and it's too bad that it isn't going to change anything about the election. Trump is still going to be president, but hopefully it will stop the voting fraud.
I don't understand how anyone in their right mind can believe that Hillary won the primary fair and square. All they need to remember is how many people went to Bernie's speeches. I don't believe that they would go to them and then decide not to show up to vote. But that's what Her supporters think.
I used to wonder why the democrats didn't get more voting machines so that people didn't have to wait in lines all day, but now I get it. They don't want people to be able to vote. It sounds silly but what other reason could there be for that not to happen for decades?
We saw what the democrats did when they were the majority party. How many times did we hear that they didn't have the votes?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Alligator Ed's picture

of Thomas Frank. But there others, besides the Cenkosaurus, who sold out. Like Thom Hartmann whom I will never be able to rely upon fully.

There was this bombshell. Thomas Frank said,

"I'm not one of these people that thinks that she won the the nomination by cheating. Her side did cheat, there's no doubt about that. The Democratic National Committee did cheat. But she also won fair and square."
Wait...what?! What kind of insane doublespeak is this? Did you, Thomas Frank, just say that?

I won't comment on the election fraud which you have so well exposed here--and one might also refer to the Sane Progressive for her fine work on the subject. My concern here is the gradual disintegration of a true Progressive media. First the Cenkosaurus and his wage-slaves like Jordan Chariton for whom I used to have respect. Thom Hartmann followed suit. Robert Reich became a Hillary ass-kisser. Even Bernie Sanders for endorsing the Mad Bomber.

Now waging on the inter tubes is a deplorable war between those whom I consider true Progressives and the sell-outs. Screw the labels. The war is between the the co-opted co-conspirators or useful idiots like Reich, Frank, Hartmann, Cenk, etc versus those who call things honestly. Amongst those are Mike Figuredo, H.A. Goodman, Tim Black, Sane Progressive and others.

It behooves us, as a Progressive movement, to support the truth-tellers, even when the truth can be inconvenient, as opposed to the Bots, Shills, and Trolls. Thank you for enlarging this discussion.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Alligator Ed
consider themselves progressives? That is what I find so flabbergasting! There are so many people on DK who considered themselves centrists. I joined it in 2005 when it actually was a progressive website and everyone was upset about what the Bush administration was doing.
Then Barack was elected and he not only continued to do what they had done but he went even further and for some reason they were okay with it. I call that pretzelized thinking.
The site used to be against the wars, yet except for most of the people who probably supported Bernie, so many of the members didn't have a problem with what he was doing.
Joe wrote a diary on the case for impeaching both George and Barack and there were so many people who disagreed with him. It's just mind boggling how they could rationalize their thought processes.
And Hillary was telling everyone that she wanted to increase the military in Syria yet they didn't care about that.
Now anyone who has "leftist" values should get on board and stop thinking that way.
F'cking incredible that they think this way

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

MsGrin's picture

@Alligator Ed Jordan does ok here along with Jimmy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tgGcolqU54

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

MichelleB's picture

I'm thinking of contacting my deep red state Attorney General with my complaint; my enemy's enemy is my friend? I donated to Bernie's campaign and voted for him in the primary, I have been damaged by the DNC (or as I now call them, the DBC - dirty bitches' club) fraud. Perhaps I should also call my senator's office and complain? Maybe we all should? Why not?

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MichelleB

Big Al's picture

And is Bernie on board? I admit to being completely in the dark on this as I don't give a shit about the democratic party and everyone knows it's all rigged. As for Franks, anyone who voted for Clinton doesn't "get it".

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@Big Al

And is Bernie on board?

Nope, and if he does "get on board" it will be yet another weathervane swing, so what's the point? I think his gravatas left the building a long time ago. He is very consistent in his opinions, even when they do a 180. "That's the system." Bernie Sanders: On Supporting A Third-Party He has been there, done that, too late now.

Search the phrase "bernie sanders on third party politics" and pick from the varietal smorgasbord of evidence on display. Bernie is Outreach Director for the DNC. People are wasting time talking about him and third party in same sentence. He is a lesser-evil voter, a politician.

As the Clintons make their "comeback", there will be more and more subtle shifting of opinions, people will be unified or else. Can't say how many times I've observed the process in California, it is how the system works. Here, it is called "democracy", not "corruption". Was Gov. Brown wrong to make side deals to push through the gas tax hike? No, that's democracy

“There’s illegal corruption, which is incredibly difficult to prove,” says Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes in politics and is president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. “Then there’s personal corruption that happens every day.”

Having watched garden-variety political corruption for decades, it’s pretty clear to me that the primary test is this: If you like what the Legislature did, it resulted from competence. If not, the legislative process was corrupt.

“What one person would say is corruption, another would say is compromise,” Levinson notes.
...

He said she said, blah blah blah. The current state of electoral politics is in collapse, so my energy is elsewhere. Constant struggle for basic survival, shelter and food is what the system has created. Politics ain't doing shit for millions of us. Still waiting for Godot, but good talk. Thanks.

Peace

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@eyo n/t

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Mark, thank you for this great essay and for all the resources you've brought together for us to study!

Thank you for emphasizing the instantaneous MSM reporting of election results before the votes have even been transported to the county offices for counting. It's like the intelligence community knowing who committed a chemical weapons attack minutes after it happened. The only person who could know who did it that fast is the person who did it. Anyone who knows the election result before the votes have been counted knows the election is rigged and is essentially saying that the American people have to accept that fact.

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Creosote.'s picture

@Linda Wood
in advance, as all aspects of presidential elections are now inaccessibly under the administration of the Department of Homeland Security. Sane Progressive absolutely spells it out: "Obama Signs Ministry of Truth Into Law Two Days Before Christmas" here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8K29tGuUpk

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But before I start I'll "defend" Mr. Frank. He could honestly believe that, all cheating aside, more people actually voted for bernie. Of course, that is a statistical impossibility, but someone could honestly believe it.
Now then, about not stealing an election. The 2000 strategy - where I believe that Bush (actually Cathleen Harris) falsified the Florida vote totals, was that she did so not by rigging the Dade county totals (remember that that clearly looked unbelievable) but by stealing smaller numbers of votes in a broad number of precincts where W won legitimately. If the actual vote was him 200, you 50, it stands out if you declare that you won 150 - 100. But if the actual vote was you 250, him 75 no one will raise a red flag if you say you won 300 - 45, and if you do it in 50 counties the result is the same.
Hillary could not do that, and didn't even try. Hillary lost so many counties (for example NY, which looked like a red state with a couple of blue spots) that an incremental approach would not have worked. Instead she commissioned polls with ridiculous methodology (over representing Democrats and older Democrats) first to make it look like her "victory" over Bernie was legitimate, and then to make it appear that defeating Trump was inevitable. Her big mistake was that she then believed her own lie. She campaigned in Arizona to humiliate Trump. She thought that she could run up the popular vote, forgetting that she wasn't even going to beat him.

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On to Biden since 1973

mimi's picture

essay, Mark. Off to read it during the Sunday. Btw, my 75 year old not using the internet German sister said, she doesn't like Hillary. When I asked her why, she said she doesn't know, but she just can't stand her and wouldn't trust her.

And so it goes ... simple gut's farts make the world go round.

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Centaurea's picture

Cenk Uygur of TYT is one of the main people behind Justice Democrats. Isn't Justice Democrats essentially a DemEnter effort? Their objective is to take over the Dem party from the inside, fielding candidates who would primary incumbent Dem politicians. "Primary" means the JD candidates would run as Dems against Dems, under the auspices of the DNC and the various state Dem organizations.

From what I've seen so far, the DNC fraud lawsuit has the potential to destroy the Dem party. Not to take it over, as Cenk and the Justice Democrats are working toward, but take it down.

From what I've seen so far, not only could the lawsuit potentially destroy the Dem party in terms of reputation and effectiveness, but given the potential size of the monetary award to the plaintiffs, the lawsuit could very well bankrupt the DNC.

That being the case, I can see why TYT and Justice Democrats would not be happy about the DNC fraud lawsuit. Cenk is not a neutral observer here. He has an interest in making sure the Dem party continues in existence as a functioning political organization. Unfortunately, this could compromise his performance as a journalist.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

@Centaurea He and TYT tipped their hand after the primary was declared over and they went all in for Clinton. People try to justify or excuse it, but you can't spend the year run up to the election telling everyone how awful Clinton is and then flip in the last few months and insist we should vote for her anyway. That TYT wants to ignore this lawsuit doesn't surprise me.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@Dr. John Carpenter that as soon as we endorse her record by voting for her, we will push like hell to turn her into someone she is not. The idiocy would be stunning if it weren't so cynically dishonest.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@orestes
that we naively thought had a chance of being pressured to do the right thing.

Nope.

Nope.

And Nope.

Eight years of rope-a-dope, with the dopes being us.

SOME day we will learn that What You See Is What You Get, and you can't change it by wishing or wanting or push - maybe by pull, but that takes gigatons of Money.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@orestes And, to the best of my knowledge, Cenk hasn't changed that way of thinking. Jimmy Dore has recently mentioned on his show that Cenk believes it's most important to elect Democrats at all cost, even when they are Rebuplicans in all but name. And Dore is someone who is on TYT regularly! I'd love to accept the Justice Democrats at face value, but with Cenk driving that train, knowing his attitude and seeing the battles TYT is picking or ignoring, I can't help but feel the Justice Dems are just going to lead to more sheep dogging.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@Dr. John Carpenter as much as I would one run by Markos. Which is, not at all. My sense has always been that they're only looking out for their own interests, which dovetails with their conservative republican pasts.

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@Dr. John Carpenter @Dr. John Carpenter

Indeed, TYT lost all credibility and a number of viewers during the election, to later switch back and do some apparently good interviews - but, it seems, with propaganda mixed in for the progressives they hope to attract.

The best liars use that mix of truth and BS, and I bring a salt-shaker to every TYT video I watch. Some may (edit: like it or not) have to mouth some degree of unbelievable-to-the-better-informed propaganda to be permitted to continue reaching the public, and this could be the case here, now that the internet is being taken over and censored by The Psychopaths That Be, but in any event, I know that I, like many others, do need that sodium and iodine as an anodyne for the propaganda mill.

We're dealing with a massive and global propaganda machine unlike any previously possible, and I hope that everyone keeps that in mind. Most here likely will, of course, although casual 'drive-by' readers might not yet realize the situation we're facing.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

MsGrin's picture

One for the history books in the best sense.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

I haven't had a chance to watch all of the videos yet so I don't know if this was mentioned, but a couple of students from Stanford university wrote a paper correlating the exit poll discrepancies to the types of voting machines used.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6mLpCEIGEYGSlRsV0IxV1ByXzQ/view
The corruption runs so deep I fear it can never be rooted out.

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I once said to my father, when I was a boy, 'Dad we need a third political party.' He said to me, 'I'll settle for a second.' Ralph Nader

Lookout's picture

have a rational conversation about the lawsuit (20 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tgGcolqU54

I played a session with an old buddy Friday night. He started in on Bernie is the reason we have president Trump. I couldn't believe my ears. People, even educated people, are so terribly misinformed!

Nice piece and good research!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout I've only heard these kinds of lines from comfy class folks, those with no experience with the working class and/or poor. Unable to understand anything beyond their comfy bubble, they look for a scapegoat instead of enlightenment. The latter would require too much effort.

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orlbucfan's picture

Signed,
A long time Floridian. The Dumbshine State perfected voter fraud decades ago.

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

i Also put a lot of links in the essay and among the comment section on Facebook as well.Thnx to all.

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is the reason for Frank's statement, as well as TYT's asinine discussion. And places like TOP's purpose is to foster that cowardice by repeating lies constantly so they develop a patina (to the unengaged) of truth. At TOP these days, they don't even bother to back up their dishonest memes. If you challenge to do, they scurry away like cockroaches when the light is turned on.

The hysteria over trump voters during the campaign is the perfect warning lesson to cowards like frank and gasbag cenk. They're frightened of being alienated as a quack for saying something that is forbidden by the false national media consensus. It's like the russian! hacking lie. I have still been provided no evidence of any activities undertaken by Russia. Yet, it is accepted as a factual truth that it was their fault (see, eg, hillary's latest excuse-making). They're afraid to say the emperor has no clothes on because they're afraid of the consequences.

I had that experience during the election. My view (which I never shied from stating) was that clinton had no chance to win unless the election were rigged for her. People treated me like the town fool, with smugness and condescension.

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Way back in the day I worked elections inside and outside polling places in a city totally controlled by a democratic party machine. I was a foot soldier for a particular group and saw events at a ground level on election day, and was not involved with picking number of polling places, voter databases, etc.

I believe Bernie was cheated out of the nomination for the very fact that the group democrats most often cheat are other democrats. By not calling attention to cheating and making it prominent, Cenk is pretty much ensuring that Justice Democrats will be wiped out against any incumbent in a primary.

Witness not the cheating of Bernie, but the cheating of Bill Halter against Blanche Lincoln in AK senate primary. I read where the AK party moved around polling places and times. And Halter was supported by TOP and unions. After this, Obama and his press secretary scolded people for attempting to primary Lincoln.

The money that depended on the defeat of Sanders was enormous. Just imagine the financial impact if Bernie appointed a tough DOJ and financial regulators (and others like at EPA.) There was a lot financial incentives to cheat him.

This essay made me realize why democrats looking at the Tea Party as an example of successful insurgentency is misguided. The Tea Party appears to me were not cheated in the primaries. Witness they knocked off some high profile incumbents. I wonder if the the republican establishment has decided to start cheating during the primaries after Trump. Republicans are much better at rigging general elections, and they are much better at it than democrats.

When all the allegations started about Russian hacking, the democrats soon pointed out that the actual voting machines were not hacked by Putin. I think they realized they did not want the machines looked at too closely nor taken over by the feds. Still about 50% of democrats think Putin hacked directly into the machines.

I saw shenanigans at the street level. But I am amazed how many different ways and techniques there are to rig an election. For example, in my home town, polling places never changed location unless a building was torn down. Or database magic directed at certain groups. Or caging...

And you know, it is in the interests of both party establishments to keep the corrupt systems.

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@MrWebster
This part of what you say is so obvious and yet not stated by the mainstream press:

And you know, it is in the interests of both party establishments to keep the corrupt systems.

Have the Democrats been screaming about the Electoral College since November 9? Immediately after the election there was a lot of effort on the part of Clinton voters to call attention to the Electoral College. But the Party did nothing to change it, and the issue has been replaced by Putin.

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@Linda Wood Democrats always look for something to blame to divert attention from their corruption.

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