In one of my very first articles on this site over a year ago, I assessed Bernie Sanders’ campaign and his chances of winning. I said that the populist fervor and frustration in America against the political and economic establishment, represented by the Clinton family and the Bush family, gave “unelectable” Bernie Sanders a real chance of winning. For a while, it seemed like America was going in a new path towards equality and prosperity; Bernie won seven states in a row, won Michigan by two points when he was predicted to lose by more than thirty, and is heading into the Democratic National Convention with over 1900 delegates. It is overwhelmingly likely, however, that Bernie Sanders will not be the nominee but, the thing is, when I made my prediction, I thought it was going to be a fair fight. Unfortunately, I was nowhere near right.
A few days ago, the Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned her post in the aftermath of over 20,000 emails showing she rigged the primary election in favor of Hillary Clinton. She colluded with media outlets like MSNBC and CBS to push a pro-Hillary narrative, before they even knew if Joe Biden or Al Gore were going to enter the race. Suddenly, all the theories that were seen by moderate Democrats as weird conspiracies were proven to be 100 per cent true. Sit tight, this is going to be a wild ride.
The emails show a money laundering scheme focused on Clinton’s Super PAC and the Hillary Victory Fund. What they essentially did was have politicians and other establishment figures donate to the DNC, who would redirect the money to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Clinton campaign. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised though; Debbie Wasserman Schultz ran Hillary’s 2008 campaign against Barack Obama, so it makes total sense that she would want her BFF to win. The thing is, she was supposed to, and constantly assured the country that she was neutral in the primary.
As if money laundering wasn’t enough, Wasserman Schultz did everything she could to make sure Bernie won certain states by collaborating with the media. I won’t even mention how thin skinned and entitled she is, or that she emailed Chuck Todd of MSNBC with the subject line “Chuck, this needs to stop” when Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski said on air that she should resign. The problem for me is that, leading up to the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries, Wasserman Schultz asked reporters to question Sanders’ faith and paint him as an atheist. You didn’t misread that; the DNC literally tried to atheist-shame Bernie, the first Jewish candidate to win a state. Apparently, an atheist can never win an election and, if that’s true, I should honestly just give up my aspirations for a career in politics right now. The so-called “progressive” Democratic Party should stand up for principles, not identity politics. We were supposed to be better than this.
Now, here’s the most infuriating thing for me. According to the DNC emails, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her minions planted moles in the Sanders campaign in order to destroy it from the inside. This happened particularly in North Carolina, where Clinton and DNC operatives infiltrated Sanders’ Get Out the Vote (GOTV) campaign, fired volunteers, took over Bernie events, ignored endorsements from NAACP members, and silenced opposition in order to ensure Bernie would lose. It’s unbelievable how cartoonishly evil these guys are; they’re one step away from filling the North Sea with sharks with laser beams attached to their heads and invite Sanders to go scuba diving.
Obviously, we all know the less subtle dirty moves the DNC played. After all, who wouldn’t watch a presidential debate the Saturday night before Christmas, or on the day of the NFL playoffs, or on the weekend of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere? Paying Hillary supporters a million bucks to answer online criticisms from Bernie supporters makes total sense, right? For that matter, so does having superdelegates, 80 per cent of whom pledged their support to Clinton before a single vote was cast. Oh, and purging hundreds of thousands of voters in Brooklyn, not counting two million votes in California, closing two-thirds of Rhode Island polling stations early, especially in districts more likely to go to Sanders, helped too. And how could we forget that the Associated Press called the Democratic primary for Hillary before California, which had 475 delegates up for grabs, even voted?
The funny thing is Clinton had all the resources she needed to win fair and square; she had the experience, the name recognition, the support, and the debate skills. She probably could’ve won even if she didn’t play dirty politics, but we’ll never know. The DNC has become so corrupt and arrogant that they felt the need to pull the largest case of voter disenfranchisement and election rigging in recent memory. They’re pulling the dirty tricks Republicans play, and in their own party no less. Then again, this shows just how powerful Bernie’s message was. Here’s a guy who had all the cards stacked against him from day one; he had the media calling him a crazy socialist, CNN literally airing 30 minutes of Trump’s empty podium instead of his speech, the most powerful political machine in the country trying everything they could to keep him from winning, and, to top it all off, the idea of the first woman president. Even with all that, Bernie still won 46 per cent of all pledged delegates and almost did the impossible: he became a legitimate threat to the person everyone was told from day one was inevitable. What this shows is that there is a yearning for rapid change to overcome the restraining forces of the establishment. The DNC tried hard, but they couldn’t erase Bernie Sanders’ message from the minds and hearts of Americans who want to combat economic inequality, racism, climate change, money in politics and all the other issues that have made them Bern up; and I think that we can all agree that ideas are much more powerful than the DNC will ever, ever be.
