(Ezra Klein says Sanders benefitted from The Clinton Creature’s cheating); Was the Democratic primary rigged?
Was the Democratic primary rigged?
Democrats made a big mistake in the 2016 primary.
Updated by Ezra Klein@ezraklein Nov 14, 2017, 9:10am ESTI have spent much of the past week trying to untangle this story, interviewing people on all sides of the primary and in a variety of positions at the DNC. The core facts are straightforward: As Barack Obama’s presidency drew to a close, the DNC was deep in debt. In return for a bailout, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz gave Hillary Clinton’s campaign more potential control over its operations and hiring decisions than was either ethical or wise. But those operations were mostly irrelevant to the primary and couldn’t have been used to rig the process even if anyone had wanted to use them that way; the primary schedule, debate schedule, and rules were set well in advance of these agreements. “I found nothing to say they were gaming the primary system,” Brazile told me. And while that contradicts the more sensational language she used in her book, it fits the facts she laid out both in her original piece and since.
But there’s a larger context that is more important than what happened at the DNC and is getting lost in the back and forth over joint fundraising agreements and staffing power. The Democratic Party — which is a different and more complex entity than the Democratic National Committee, and which includes elected officials and funders and activists and interest groups who are not expected to be neutral in primaries — really did favor Hillary Clinton from early in the campaign, and really did shape the race in consequential
The irony is that Sanders was a prime beneficiary of this bias, not a victim of it. The losers were potential candidates like Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Warren, or Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper — and, thus, Democratic primary voters, who ended up with few choices in 2016. To the extent Democratic primary voters feel like they were denied a broad range of candidates in 2016, and that party officials tried to clear the field to coronate Clinton, well, they’re right.
Democratic elites, defined broadly, shaped the primary before voters ever got a chance to weigh in, and the way they tried to shape it was by uniting behind Clinton early in the hopes of avoiding a bruising, raucous race. The question — which is important going forward, not just for relitigating 2016 — is whether that was the right decision. I don’t think it was.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16640082/donna-brazil...
What the hell is this? The new line of the day? Are they gonna throw more bullshit at us until they find something they think will work?
I used to have some respect for Klein. And ‘used to’ is the operative term here. Those days have passed away along with my illusions and delusions regarding the American political system.
Comments
The American Political System
Runs like a finely tuned, well oiled, precision machined Swiss watch:
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Jesus Tapdancing Christ.
Um, how about the actual candidates, Ezra? You know, like Martin O'Malley?
The fact that anyone can read this shit with a straight face ...
These people have some serious ethical problems. and only
one person got any ‘benefit’ from the rigging of the primary, and that was the Clinton Creature.
And as for O’Malley, i’ve been wondering why he’s been so quiet about all this. He should be outraged that he was cheated. Oddly enough, it seems both he and Sanders are okay with it.
EDIT: deleted a ‘P’ that snuck in somehow.
This subject line was fine when I posted the story, when I edited something in the body of the text all of a sudden it was too long. That has happened to me before.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Klein Struck Me as a Corporate Tool From the First Moment I
read him.
Embarrassing how ignorant people like him can come across... "What? There's MONEY? In POLITICS? ... Say it ain't so..."
Either that or they're downplaying the reality. "Of course there's money in polictics... it's comletely mormal."
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
A bruising raucous race.
They were trying to avoid one? Well, the ONLY reason to do that during the primary was once again, to ensure no real lefty voices got a chance to even be heard. And all those candidates who were "denied" to the American people - why the hell didn't one of THEM say something? Well, we all know why that is. Their anointed was to be nominated at all costs and every single one of those names AGREED with that. It would only have been more "bruising and raucous" if they'd let real voices into their tent. They never had that intent and it shows. Sanders did shock them, what with no money and all and they were forced to cover him eventually, that pesky social media thing and all those damned "kids" forced them to. They think they can shut that door now, but it is too late. They're just throwing out whatever might stick now. It does show their desperation, so there is that.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
There is nothing quite so woesome as dimwittery disguised
as analysis.
If I may, here is the schematic of the "logic" employed:
A. The DNC, early on and its highest levels, eagerly worked to ensure Hillary's coronation, by bullying or bribing all of the bigwigs into the HRC camp, thus making it clear to potential competitors that they had no chance.
B. This meant that Sanders was the only serious contender in the race
C. Therefore, by eliminating other contenders, the DNC's malfeasance helped Sanders's candidacy.
It's tempting to roll out clever analogies to reveal the ineptitude of that argument ... something like, "That's like saying that the guy given a bicycle in a motorcycle race benefited because the race organizers gave all the gasoline to one rider."
Less metaphorically, let me make plain the arithmetic: In a winner-takes-all election requiring 50%+ of the votes (delegates, in this context), nothing benefits candidate B if it increases the overall likelihood that candidate A, rather than candidate B, will reach 50%. Candidate B doesn't "benefit" from getting 30% instead of 3%. Ultimately, Candidate B only benefits from things that improve the odds of reaching 50%.
None of this matters though, because the real flaw in this stupid person's stupid argument is this: Bernie only ran because there were no other serious candidates. To say that his candidacy "benefited" is to forget that his candidacy was a desperation response to the rigged primary -- that his candidacy did not exist until the fix was in. That he was willing to join the battle, when the Democratic Aristocracy cowered and whimpered and capitulated, implies not that there was a "benefit" to his campaign, but only that the DNC's manipulation of the process amounted to de facto sedition of the institutions of this supposed Democratic Republic.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
In return for a bailout, DNC
True ...
Holy smokin' leaps, Batman.
But then, he has to leap like that, since no rational reading of the facts actually supports that.
I just watched Jimmy Dore's video of Donna Brazille
I'll link it here...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM19DRGCCAQ]
They're like "what happened?". One day Brazille was saying the race was rigged and the next day was saying "I never said it was rigged, I said there was a cancer".
I'm guessing she received a sternly worded letter from the Clinton lawyers. If she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life tied up in court, she better not imply that that ABILITY to rig an election doesn't mean they RIGGED the election.
That's what Klein is saying here. Sure, it LOOKS bad, but there is NO WAY the fine, upstanding Clinton campaign would EVER engage in any sordid RIGGING of ELECTIONS. She beat the dirty socialist fair and square because people really WANT neoliberalism.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone