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Who else could have forced the DNC to rig the primaries? It's very clear from the collusion between CNN and the Hillary campaign that state level actors were in
by fleitz 10y ago
Who else could have forced the DNC to rig the primaries? It's very clear from the collusion between CNN and the Hillary campaign that state level actors were involved.
- lern_too_spel 10y agoPlease don't spread fake news about primary rigging, even if tongue-in-cheek. Stick to discussing the article.
- 464192002d7fe1c 10y agoHow is primary rigging fake news? Its very obvious from reading the wiki leaks emails that the DNC was brazenly biased towards Hillary and against Sanders.
- praxulus 10y agoBecause there's absolutely no evidence that it was rigged? Just because the DNC preferred the lifelong Democrat to the lifelong independent (who could have guessed that?) doesn't mean they couldn't still have operated a fair primary.
- travmatt 10y agoBut your facts and reasoning regretfully interrupts the circle jerk of the Bernie bros who are convinced their democratic socialist was on the brink of revolutionizing the American political system and finally delivering us to a Denmarkian utopia. Never mind the fact that Sanders was treated much more gently by the Clinton campaign than Obama was in '08, the only salient fact is that minority voters should have yielded their preference for a man who has spent 30+ years in Washington and yet has largely failed to build any power base.
- epmaybe 10y agoI'm confused by the last sentence. Are you suggesting that more minority voters went for Sanders over Clinton in the primaries? I had thought the exact opposite.
- travmatt 10y agoIt's sarcasm... the paranoid Sanders voters screaming that the election was rigged often 'forget' (find unacceptable/truly are clueless) that minority voters are the 800lb gorilla of the Democratic Party. In 08 they wanted Obama, and that's who it got. In 16 they wanted hrc and that's who it got. They throw around Clinton's pop vote win as if it showed our system is broken, all while genuinely believing she beat Sanders by cheating, conveniently ignoring the fact that she beat him by a larger margin.
- epmaybe 10y agoI have no doubt that Hillary Clinton would have won the primary regardless of the DNC "meddling" in the primary, but I do feel that they would have a more unified DNC had there not been news of the DNC backing HRC before the primaries had even finished.
- lern_too_spel 10y agoWhat "meddling" did the DNC do in the primary? How were they were backing her before the primaries finished?
- epmaybe 10y agoI was referring to the emails that showed clear favoritism for Clinton over Sanders. I put meddling in quotations because it wasn't necessarily actual instances, but rather the way the DNC treated one of their candidates that left a sour taste in many Sanders supporters mouths. That led to a lot of acquaintances of mine that supported Sanders to continue bashing Clinton after the primaries were already over, when it would have been really helpful for the Democratic party to have been unified throughout all of that.
- Natsu 10y agoThe emails show that Sanders was more or less a token opponent kept on a leash and kept in line. Remember also how they cut Sanders out of the DNC voting data. There were no big name Democrats running against Hillary. They also sucked all the money from the state level campaigns into Hillary's campaign, hurting the entire party when they lost after spending so much money trying to force Hillary through. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22224 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22224 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11056 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11056 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5477 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5477 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10669#efmAO0APKAPMATG https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10669#efmAO0APK... https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5688 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5688 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/9999%20 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/9999%20 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5423 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5423 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/44131 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/44131
- lern_too_spel 10y agoWhat specifically did the DNC do to keep Sanders on a leash? My memory of the primaries is far different, with Sanders suing the DNC over access to NGP VAN (which the DNC had cut off until the Sanders campaign showed they had deleted their copies of Clinton's data), loudly complaining about the DNC following the existing rules at the Nevada Convention (http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff-weaver/allegations-fraud-and-misconduct-nevada-democratic/ http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...), and generally loudly making unfounded allegations of rigging. Sanders was clearly unleashed, if not unhinged (though the cranky old progressive personality is what I like about him, in much the same way that libertarians are drawn to cranky old Ron Paul). > They also sucked all the money from the state level campaigns into Hillary's campaign. You're misreading the Politico article about the Hillary Victory Fund. In that article, the DNC said it was using the initial money to set up common infrastructure for the state parties to use. The money that was supposed to go to the state parties did eventually go to the state parties as you can see here: https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/summary.php?id=C00586537 https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/summary.php?id=C00586537. To refresh your memory, the first [FEC maximum contribution amount] donated by an individual to the Hillary Victory Fund would go to her primary campaign, the next [max amount] would go to her general election campaign, the next [max amount] would go to the DNC, and the rest would be distributed among the state parties. Also, I'm curious: whom would you consider a big name Democrat worthy of challenging Clinton not as a token opponent?
- oh_sigh 10y ago"Rigging", at least as I read it, doesn't imply cheating - it can just imply that the system is unbalanced or all candidates are not on a level playing field. For example, if I had to compete against someone in a drawing competition, and one of the judges was the parent of my competitor, and that judge has gone out of his way to train and groom his child for years for this competition, I may lament that the contest is rigged, even if the judge doesn't stuff the ballot box.
- grzm 10y agoRigging implies fraud, deception, or dishonesty, not just unbalanced. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigged https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigged See sense 3 1. to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means <rig an election> 2. to fix in advance for a desired result <rig the contest> Editted to add second part of sense 3.
- oh_sigh 10y agoWhy did you skip the second part of sense 3, which is "to fix in advance for a desired result"?
- grzm 10y agoI don't see that it adds anything to contradict the idea that rigging is only something "unbalanced" and not connoting deceit. "Fix in advance" is an example of fraud. I have no issue with including it in my comment, and have updated it to do so. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise, though if you're implying that the example of extra, specialized training you provided above is an example of "fix in advance", I disagree. To "fix in advance" would mean that the outcome is predetermined, such as by bribes. This sense of fix is here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fix https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fix 7b. to influence the actions, outcome, or effect of by improper or illegal methods <the race had been fixed> If you have some other meaning implied by your comment, please explain. I find I'm a terrible mind reader.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
- lern_too_spel 10y agoBiased? Yes, the DNC would obviously prefer a Democrat to an independent. Rigged? There was no evidence of any rigging outside of fake news.
- marxmarv 10y agoImaginary friends don't have legitimate interests.
- jessaustin 10y agoHere you're using a common everyday definition of the verb "rig". Observe that this definition excludes e.g. publicizing a political candidate's banal episodes of tawdriness to the scrutiny of voters, so it's not the definition in wide use in USA news media over the last month or so.
- lern_too_spel 10y agoI'm using rig in a broad sense. The DNC didn't publicize banal episodes of tawdriness to the scrutiny of voters. If you're talking about the NGP VAN data access, that hit the news on 12/17/2015 when Michael Briggs (Sanders's communications aide) talked about it to BuzzFeed, and the story blew up on 12/18 when the Sanders campaign filed a lawsuit against the DNC over temporarily shutting down their access to the system until they could show that they had deleted any copies they might have had of the Clinton campaign's data.
- jessaustin 10y agoThat's the point. Rigging an election consists of stuffing ballot boxes or intimidating voters or something like that. Phishing John Podesta is the sort of thing that used to be called "opposition research" (assuming arguendo that the phishing party actually cared who won).
- lern_too_spel 10y agoI'm sorry, but I don't see what phishing Podesta has to do with fleitz's claim that the DNC rigged the primaries.