Jonathan Chait Reminds US Dems Will Rig the Primaries to Stop Bernie

Chait is a #Centrist hack, but at least he speaks the truth about the Democrats.

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Link:

... In the Nevada primary, the Las Vegas Sun endorsement is a plea not to support Sanders, and the powerful Culinary Workers Union is denouncing his Medicare for All plan. Democrats from vulnerable districts are making increasingly public pleas to the same effect. “One House Democrat said colleagues from swing districts are scared by the prospects of a Sanders nomination, while another said moderates are increasingly concerned that a Sanders candidacy would devastate their prospects for winning the White House and retaining the House,” reports the Associated Press. All these efforts could easily fail, but they are probably not completely ineffectual.

Of course that's not all they Dem elites are doing. The DNC allowed (encouraged) Mike Bloomberg, a Billionaire worth upwards of $55 Billion, former Republican and racist Mayor of NYC, to buy his way onto the debate stage before New Hampshire, over other candidates, and seem to be viewing him as their fallback option, should Biden, Buttegieg and Klobachar fail (a likely prospect). Bloomberg has been pouring millions of dollars (chump change for him) into key Super Tuesday states, as detailed in Wally's post here at caucus99percent. At the very least he'll steal enough delegates from the others, including Sanders, to make a brokered convention a very real possibility.

And then we've seen the a constant barrage of anti-Bernie attack from all the major media outlets, but especially from from CNN and MSNBC, both of whom either actively colluded with Warren or promoted Buttegieg. In addition, MSNBC "anchors" have been going all out in airing outrageous slanders against Sanders and his supporters as either Communists who want to execute them in Central Park (Chris Matthews) or by comparing them to Nazis (Chuck Todd, despite Sanders Jewish heritage, and his loss of family members in the Holocaust.

Indeed, Chuck Todd will be a moderator of the next debate before the crucial Nevada and South Carolina primaries, despite the fact he consistently criticizes Sanders, and misleads his audience regarding Sanders' victories in Iowa (where the results favoring Sanders were understated thanks to DNC election interference) and New Hampshire.

Chuck Todd said Wednesday that he doesn't "understand how Bernie Sanders is considered a front-runner" in the 2020 Democratic presidential race after the Independent Vermont senator's performance in the New Hampshire primary.

"I don't understand how Bernie is considered a front-runner," an animated Todd said on "Meet the Press Daily" on MSNBC. "This is a guy that, more people showed up to the polls, highest turnout ever, and his percentage went down, not up. His total number went down, not up."

New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary ended with Sanders winning by 1.3 percentage points over former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and 5.9 points over Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who finished a strong third in a boost her campaign.

Sanders won by 22 percentage points in New Hampshire against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, but he was facing nine more opponents in the Granite State on Tuesday.

If any other candidate had won the popular vote in these two states, they would be anointed the front-runner, shenanigans or not in delegate counts. This anti-Bernie media bias has been apparent since the summer of 2019, but the attacks have been ramped up to warp 10 lately by all of the anchors, hosts, personalities, pundits or whatever you want to call them (certainly not journalists) as it became obvious from polling that Sanders platform was more attractive to voters, and his candidacy was surpassing the former polling leader, Biden.

As we know from the DNC lawyers' response to the DNC class action lawsuit by the Becks, the Democratic Party claims it has no duty to abide by their own charter and rules requiring fairness and non-interference in deciding who get to be their party's nominee.

Shortly into the hearing, DNC attorneys claim Article V, Section 4 of the DNC Charter—stipulating that the DNC chair and their staff must ensure neutrality in the Democratic presidential primaries—is “a discretionary rule that it didn’t need to adopt to begin with.” Based on this assumption, DNC attorneys assert that the court cannot interpret, claim, or rule on anything associated with whether the DNC remains neutral in their presidential primaries.

Indeed, in preparation for a deadlock on the first ballot at the convention, the DNC's president, Tom Perez, stacked the rules committee and super delegates with centrists and corporate lobbyists.

Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July.

Many of Perez’s nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.

Just as it did in 2016, the DNC appears determined to sabotage a Sanders nomination, foisting a collection of neoliberal and imperialist hacks onto the convention committee to hold back a popular rebellion against the policies of endless war and corporate free trade they have personally presided over.

The Dems have even had early discussions at changing the rules at the convention to allow superdelegates to vote on the first ballot.

“There’s talk about somehow trying to change this rule at this convention — just casual conversation, and I have participated in it some,” said Don Fowler, a former DNC chairman from South Carolina who opposed the DNC’s decision in 2018 to strip superdelegates of much of their power in the presidential nominating process. [...]

One DNC member who has advocated for the change in discussions with other members described the effort this week as an “uphill battle.”

But the member, who declined to be identified, said the convention body is the “ultimate authority of the party, so the convention body can do anything they want to.”

So, no wonder things are playing out all according to the DNC's plan to ensure Bernie never gets the nomination. The Washington Post reported Obama will do whatever he has to do to stop a Sanders' nomination, even if Bernie leads in the delegate count come the convention. Apparently, that includes allowing Bloomberg to use video of Obama in his campaign ads without objection. This despite Bloomberg's frequent contributions to Republican campaigns for Congress. The times Bloomberg has spent money on behalf of Centrist Dems were in races where gun control was an issue. Though even there he's favored the Republican in a critical race:

One race stood out during this period: Pennsylvania’s Senate race between Republican incumbent Pat Toomey and Democrat Katie McGinty. It was an extremely close race, and one, as the New York Times notes, that seemed key to Democrats’ strategy for retaking the Senate. Toomey, the Republican incumbent, had led an unsuccessful effort to expand background checks for guns, and it may have been this effort that won over Bloomberg. In the end, Bloomberg showered Toomey with $11.7 million, one of the largest contributions in the most expensive Senate race ever at the time. Toomey won by less than 2 percentage points, and Republicans held onto their Senate majority by two seats.

We can expect the same dirty tricks in California on Super Tuesday, that showed up in 2016, where, among other skullduggery, independents were forced to vote on provisional ballots which were never counted, and in the Nevada caucuses thanks to Harry Reid's control over the Nevada Democratic party apparatus. Let's hope Sanders' team is better prepared this time around.

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Comments

Shahryar's picture

he got more votes in Iowa, he got more votes in New Hampshire? How does that make him the front runner? When there were 2 people in the race instead of 7 he got more votes! I don't understand how 7 is more than 2. Numbers confuse me!

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@Shahryar The will of the voters is insignificant.

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to include superdelegates. This is the CNN page I watched for Iowa and then NH results. Iowa and NH only showed pledged delegates, no mention of superdelegates at all. But look at the Nevada page. There’s already a place to count superdelegates.C6472A6D-1343-49E3-B5F2-432E8758780B.jpeg

https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/state/nevada

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ludwig ii's picture

The institutional figureheads like Perez and their media mouthpieces on MSNBC are impotent and incompetent. They are as out of touch as the neocons desperately trying to stop Trump were. If Iowa is any indication, their efforts to cheat Sanders will be as successful as pretend president Juan Guiado's coup d'etat.

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Wally's picture

I think Bernie's team knows what's up and is doing what it can against Bloomberg's billions.

It's like David vs. Goliath. The epic battle comes Super Tuesday, March 3rd.

Hopefully, David wins.

And if I see one more Bloomberg ad, I'll . . . .

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14 users have voted.

(I know that most of us don't)

This is what you are missing.

https://morningconsult.com/2020/02/13/sanders-cements-front-runner-statu...

29% of Democratic primary voters back Sen. Bernie Sanders, up 4 points since before the N.H. primary.

17% say Joe Biden has the best chance of beating President Trump in 2020, down 12 points from before Tuesday’s result.

Following his narrow victory in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary — his second successive strong showing in the party’s first nominating contests — Sen. Bernie Sanders opened up a double-digit lead over former Vice President Joe Biden and entrenched himself as the best-positioned candidate heading into next week’s Nevada caucuses.

However there is no shortage of coverage regarding the Bernie bros being mean to the culinary union.

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Centaurea's picture

Bernie has said that as POTUS, he will use his DoJ to break up the huge telecom-media conglomerates. He has specifically mentioned Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. He has also said that he will break up Amazon.

Is there any doubt that those companies will do whatever they can to defeat Bernie?

Remember who owns MSNBC: Comcast.

Remember who owns CNN: AT&T.

Of course, as we know, gazillionaire Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, also owns the Washington Post.

And then there's Candidate Bloomberg, who operates his own media outlet.

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