The Elephant In the Room of the NY Primaries. Deja Vu of the 2016 Primary DNC Collusion To Cheat Bernie.

Submitted by Mark from Queens on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 10:09am

How could it be, when on a night in which the number of voters in the NY Primary almost TRIPLED, and in such a vitriolic climate of severe anti-establishment anger, that this isn't completely beneficial to the insurgent candidate? Well, we know how it can be, don't we? The Party controls these elections, I believe, the infamous Board of Elections. Thus making them accountable to - no one.

It just smells really rotten around here. Again.

Though it wasn't all bad news last night. Just the Big Ones. I really liked both Zepyhr Teachout, with her staunch ant-corruption platform at the top of her priorities, and Jumanee Williams, our best city council member, activist and frequent Occupy Wall St protester. Nixon as the Anybody But Cuomo candidate would seem to have had more than leg up on Teachout's stunning 35% showing in the last gubernatorial election with no name recognition whatsoever. Her Democratic Socialist platforms were resonating big-time. Cuomo's odious handy work of creating a Republican bulwark to keep his Wall St and Real Estate donors happy, known as the IDC, was demolished last night. And DSA candidate Julia Salazar trounced a long-time insider incumbent ala Ocasio.

Yeah, so last night I got sucked in again. And watched the TYT Live coverage where they had Jimmy Dore with Cenk and John. As a lifelong big-time football fan who is boycotting the NFL because #ImWithKap I'm convinced it it is because I still crave some kind of sports rush - and get it while watching the results election night results coming in.

As it was I wound up staying up way too late, disgusted by yet another brazen and with that same eerie feeling after Bernie was brazenly cheated in NY. So I'm a little bleary eyed and foggy-headed now this morning trying to write this up, but sufficiently raging still about this next infernal episode. That whole week preceding the 2016 NY Primary was amazing to behold. It felt akin to the joy, hope and camaraderie that Obama conjured up in 2008. He was drawing these incredibly huge and diverse crowds everywhere, including at a park in the South Bronx which I wrote up for TOP. On that very same day, as a gauge of what was happening on the ground, $hills could only manage 500 in a small college auditorium, 50 of whom staged a protest by standing up and chanting "If she wins, we lose" and walked out. There's no fucking way THAT candidate wins. Sorry, folks. The NY exit polls, which are hardly ever off but were wildly off the whole way through 2016 until they stopped commissioning them to cover up their collusion, had Bernie within the margin of victory. But right away the results cam back showing $hills with a double-digit lead that he never closed. Doesn't add up.

All politics are dirty perhaps, but NY may still be a special brand. Tammany Hall flourished here for years in infamy, before the dual pens of both Thomas Nast and Mark Twain assisted in exposing the vulnerability of their forthright corruption. Today they seem to just flaunt it, like, "what are you gunna do 'bout it?", in your best goomba voice.

Just some quick sketch observations of my day around town as a prodigal DemExit-er trying to get the pulse of the locale:

Earlier in day asked 3 people who they had/ were voting for. Older white female told me Cuomo for governor, Zephyr for Attorney General. I said, huh? Cuomo because “experience.” Bet I know who she voted for in 2016 primary. A 30's-ish couple both indicated favorably to my imploring to not vote for Cuomo, to vote for Zephyr and Jumanee also. Thumbs up from both.

Then I encountered two canvassers just outside the polling location facing one another so that a narrow path opened to let voters through to go into the school to vote.. One for Latisha James and the other for Jose Peralta. I said give me a break, he’s totally corrupt, and Zephyr is the best candidate for AG. The James woman thought Zephyr wasn’t a lawyer. I said she was a professor of constitutional law, and wrote a book on political corruption. Peralta guy didn’t disagree with me about his candidate (I'd later confirm he was paying folks for this, just as Crowley had done and I'm sure Cuomo had); he just said they all are. Interesting. I agreed. But added it’s because of endless money in politics. I said until we change that the whole thing is so corruptible. And that Bernie change that forever by not taking corporate money. All three of us agreed and looked at each other, realizing that Bernie was the only authentic candidate we'd ever seen. The Peralta guy said he would have really thrown a wrench in the elections if he had won.

After it was called against the three candidates I was hoping to see win I left the apartment in disgust and walked up my street. Just before midnight and some blocks up the street I couldn't believe it when I ran into a guy wearing a black “Team Peralta” t-shirt (one of the ringleaders of Cuomo's disgraced IDC). Asked him why? He just smiled. He looked Bengali to me and it was clear that he probably had no clue what he was doing/had done, probably just kept smiling and handed out literature. He couldn't find any words, just kept smiling. I ask how much he got paid? Told me it was $13 an hour and then returned to smiling again as I walked off.

Earlier I had seen a clever sandwich board by the Peralta people up my block. Had the voter sheet enlarged so that you got to see ikist what it looked like when you went into the booth. But his name was circled in red and jumped up off the page. Clever psychological bastards.
On the TYT chat thread someone said Cuomo did same. I've seen my loathsome former city council member/Neoliberal goon Vallon emply the same tactics. It's like they all do the same thing: "hey joey, go down to da projects and hand out some of this cash and these free T-shirts to the Moolies to campaign for us (because no one else will AND it’ll look like the minorities support us, ain’t that right?).

Here's some tweets that express the tenor of this all:

This is what happens when you have an entrenched party owned by Big Money: they'll do anything to upturn a progressive insurgency, by any means possible. Konst is on the DNC board of elections, or whatever that thing is called.

She was getting 20k likes. And lost? What was Cuomo getting? Not naive enough to think this is what wins. But it does account for a barometer of some sort.

My peeps in Bklyn (ran into recently fellow Occupy acquaintance who owns a used bookstore and one of the main local organizers from Queens DSA for the Ocasio campaign who both canvassed for Salazar)

Cuomo outspent Nixon 20-1.

I guess hoping in vain to get some sweet comeuppance in the form of Neoliberal sleazballs getting trounced is contingent on fair elections. Again, I'm not sure we've got that here. If anyone doubts the plausibility of the primary elections being stolen I refer you to the 2006 HBO film "Hacking Democracy" and this segment on the Jimmy Dore Show recently:

I'm sure all the while today the feckless mainstream media will have gotten all their talking points handed down and will be repeating whatever cute little phrases they'll have concocted up for them for such occasions as to immediately sow just the slightest but sufficient enough doubt in the viewer to accept that all had been on the up and up and that we live in the Greatest Democracy In The World™ and the challengers never really had a chance and weren't any good anyway. The whole thing disgusts me so intensely.

It's way past time that the Democratic Party, riding on fumes now for decades as the People's Party, be henceforth forevermore known as the Party of Voter Suppression and Electoral Fraud. It's not just the domain of Republicans. The Duopoly now owns this mantle together. Because beholden to the same donors, they are one and the same: they've tag-teamed to reduce our Democracy to noithing more than an Auction House to the Highest Bidder.

Between relentless propaganda of celebrity gossip and manufactured controversy pumped out by the MSM, and endless corporate money elections drenching elections and then used to buy them the pen that literally writes the legislation (and when all else fails, as Stalin said, it's who counts the votes all that matters), one can only conclude that our electoral system remains hopeless.

Tags: 
NY Primary
Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

Submitted by Mark from Queens on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 10:13am
Mark from Queens's picture

That's all I got, folks. Sheer disgust.

I gotta get back to parenting now. Sorry for the hit and run.

Am I deluded in thinking that this election has quite probably been stolen - once again?

What the fuck is it gonna take for people to start pondering revolution, in whatever way they deem best?

Greetings all.

up
0 users have voted.
—

"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

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 10:55am
Amanda Matthews's picture

@Mark from Queens
(and haven’t for years) that NY politics can ever be cleaned up. Just like Illinois (particularly Chicago). And I don’t hold out much hope for California either (after deciding not to finish counting the 2016 primary votes).

The Dims have a stranglehold on those states and they’ve proven that they don’t even care that the cheating is obvious.

up
0 users have voted.
—

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

Submitted by ggersh on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 12:12pm
ggersh's picture

@Mark from Queens she lost to Cuomo by the same as Teachout did?
Remember DHS controls elections and most likely
doesn't give a shit what cuomo did/does

Am I deluded in thinking that this election has quite probably been stolen - once again?

up
0 users have voted.
—

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 7:06pm
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Mark from Queens Sorry, Mark. And while NY politics may be corrupt, this isn't a local or regional problem, so it's not really on you all.

up
0 users have voted.
—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by TB mare on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 10:39am

That tool ran to take upstate Dem votes from Zephyr so establishment Tish James would win. It worked. I hate that guy with a white hot passion.

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by Mark from Queens on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 12:02pm
Mark from Queens's picture

@TB mare
Strategic dirty collusion.

up
0 users have voted.
—

"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

Submitted by dkmich on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 2:59pm

@Mark from Queens @Mark from Queens @Mark from Queens

So after 2016, Nomiki didn't even have a clue to check her voter registration? My god, do progressives need to get hit with a 2 x 4?

up
0 users have voted.
—

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Submitted by Linda Wood on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 10:41am

say it so well:

It's way past time that the Democratic Party, riding on fumes now for decades as the People's Party, be henceforth forevermore known as the Party of Voter Suppression and Electoral Fraud. It's not just the domain of Republicans. The Duopoly now owns this mantle together. Because beholden to the same donors, they are one and the same: they've tag-teamed to reduce our Democracy to noithing more than an Auction House to the Highest Bidder.

In California, we're moving toward all Mail-in voting, gradually. Presumably this is supposed to be in the interest of saving money. I know there are good people who believe in Mail-in voting and believe it makes it easier to vote. But I think it makes it easier to misrepresent the result!

If I put my vote into the hands of the US Postal Service, do I really know what happens to it? For that matter, I don't really know what happens to it when I put it into the ballot box at a polling place. But keeping it as removed as possible from actual people actually counting the votes, it seems to me we're trusting beyond all reasonableness a system that is absurd. Over decades of seeing the disappearance of people's voter registration suddenly on the day of voting, and seeing polling places being changed or closed at the last minute on election day, AND SEEING IN THE DNC EMAILS THAT THEY ARRANGED FOR THE CLOSING OF POLLING PLACES WITH STATE OFFICIALS, I can't help but feel the result has been determined and that the election is a farce made to look plausible to the public.

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by Mark from Queens on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 12:04pm
Mark from Queens's picture

@Linda Wood

up
0 users have voted.
—

"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

Submitted by The Voice In th... on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 4:25pm

@Linda Wood
of the United States Postal service it will be delivered with 99.99% confidence (some mail does get lost or destroyed, no system is perfect).
BUT what happens AFTER it is delivered and counted behind closed doors is a different story. At least in the precinct system (at least here in IL) precinct totals are given to poll watchers before delivering them to the county. Not saying corruption doesn't happen, because it does, but it involves a lot more people with a lot more chances to get caught than the mail system. As for internet voting ... HA HA HA HA HA...

up
0 users have voted.
—

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Submitted by dance you monster on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 11:50am
dance you monster's picture

It's interesting that an electorate that removed the IDC folks (Democratic representatives who caucus with the Republicans in Albany) in NYC also was the electorate that gave Cuomo such an edge. Makes you say Hmmmmmm.

Okay, you know I have some familiarity with NY politics (used to live there, as did family members), and the Machine in NY is not altogether different than the Machine in Philly, where I am now. In our Congressional primary a while back a young, Our Revolution-backed candidate running on a Medicare for All platform had a modest but noticeable lead in the early counting of the votes. I had to wander away from the coverage and came back a couple of hours later to see an unknown, inexperienced Clintonista-type from a wealthy neighborhood -- who headed a non-profit before this and ran on a platform of "I care about kids" -- had won the race with two-thirds of the votes. Both candidates were women, so that was not at issue in a race with #MeToo energy. Mind you, this is in a locale where there was an ostensibly pro-union (male) candidate running, who might have drawn the union vote that the Machine historically specialized in motivating, but he lost big-time, like he wasn't even there. Nope, the safely pro-Status Quo suburban matron, who wants us to say more nice things about kids, won, with an outrageous percentage that made sure she won. That elicited a Hmmmmmm, too.

We, in the states where the Machine has long experience in skewing the outcomes, are screwed.

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by Mark from Queens on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 12:20pm
Mark from Queens's picture

omnipresent that it's rendered the mass of the citizens here breathing it in immune to its stench.

But not this guy. His righteous contempt keeps playing over in my head today:

And there's more (from 2016):

Did you see the imperious, condescending chuckleheads who make up our BOE?

Lee Camp did some great work on this, which was completely blacked out in the MSM:

up
0 users have voted.
—

"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

Submitted by Steven D on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 1:28pm
Steven D's picture

that she needs to run as an independent or on the WFP line.

up
0 users have voted.
—

"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Submitted by dkmich on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 3:17pm

@Steven D

Hope she does.

up
0 users have voted.
—

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Submitted by mhagle on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 4:06pm
mhagle's picture

Can they all run as independents? At this stage of the game?

Texas is such a different animal. I would say that the majority of progressive voices won their primaries in Texas. They are not perfectly progressive, but enough. The Beto campaign is all about "get out the vote." They are working really hard.

For the past almost 20 years here, fundamentalist religions are the only ones who have "gotten out the vote." Will that shift now to everyone else?

We have the corrupt democrats here too, but they have mostly been "do-nothing" democrats.

up
0 users have voted.
—

Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Submitted by EyeRound on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 6:36pm
EyeRound's picture

The 2 parties are the same; NY AG race shows that pretty clearly.

Look at how James won over Teachout. Only in extremely downstate districts. James won absolutely nothing north or west of Westchester County. Where I live, in a very conservative upstate county dominated by the repubs, Teachout won the primary with a majority (not plurality). Cuomo won gov here (people didn't think Nixon was familiar enough with regional issues), but Teachout won AG.

But Teachout lost decisively to James in the total vote. Whaaaaa. . .?

The James win as AG was finagled by Trump.

Teachout was gonna go after Trump if she won AG. The NY AG has purview over beaucoup de Trump businesses, tax records, etc. and has the power to bring him down. Teachout ran as the one who was going to do that, and Trump was "watching the NY AG race more closely than any other race."

So the Dem elections downstate are open to Trump influence, right? The repub pres determines the dem primary. The two parties are the same machine.

It's not dem vs. repub, people, it's rich vs poor. That's where the political lines are drawn.

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by dfarrah on Sat, 09/15/2018 - 10:42am

@EyeRound Really?

Give me a break. The IRS does continuing audits of large businesses. I suppose one could argue that the IRS, the one that was going after conservative non-profits under Obama, was in the tank for Trump.

And what makes you think that Trump would report illegal activity in his tax reports?

By now, Mueller has probably traced every single transaction Trump has been involved with and likely has all financial records of Trump going back years and years.

up
0 users have voted.
—

dfarrah

Submitted by MrWebster on Fri, 09/14/2018 - 11:59pm

Began reading a common story from the the election--voter not on registration polls. One woman demanded to see the rolls and found her name immediately.

As someone who has worked primaries in a democratic machine town, the various factions within the machine cheated as much as they could. Outside candidates like in NY have absolutely no opportunity do it. Given that Trump won the gop primary, looks like gop runs honest primaries as the status quo was against him. But the gop waits until the general election to pull its bullshit, which is much more sophisticated than the democrats.

But there is also this problem from Michael Tracey. Say what?

tracey.PNG

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by lotlizard on Sat, 09/15/2018 - 2:50am
lotlizard's picture

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/reports-of-widespread-voter-supp...

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by MrWebster on Sat, 09/15/2018 - 2:45pm

@lotlizard How did the people maintaining the voter rolls know which people to purge or change party affliation? Easy enough in the age of social media, open databases, and hacking.

Do what Facebook does to sell ads--find out who might buy what. Using various avaiable APIs (application programming interfacrs) scan Facebook user databases, Twitter accounts, Open Secret (this one as it shows every donation over $200), etc to determne how a person would be most likily to vote in NY.

Give that list over to the (insider) voter regristration database people, and then purge them or change their party affliation.

And not a Russian in sight.

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by Deja on Sat, 09/15/2018 - 6:05pm
Deja's picture

@MrWebster
In Texas, they either scan your driver license or the bar code on your voter registration card. Then they "look you up", print out 2 stickers with your name and another bar code on them, adhere one to the book next to your name, and give the other to the person beside them who does something with it (don't recall what); and then, they give you a code you have to tap into the nasty screen that every booger-picking, no hand-washing, gross person before you has touched. Then you're allowed to vote.

How we all vote resides in databases.

Oh, and Tx doesn't require registration with any party, but they require you "declare" a party in primaries.

Nothing is anonymous, anymore.

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Sat, 09/15/2018 - 10:27am

Of Cuomo the month before to unrig the election.

up
0 users have voted.
Submitted by The Aspie Corner on Sat, 09/15/2018 - 10:32am
The Aspie Corner's picture

Debbie Whatshername Shill will make sure of that. It wouldn't be the first time she's helped Repigs, either. We have nothing to vote for in 'Murica's Wang.

up
0 users have voted.
—

Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.