How The Primary Is Being Rigged Against Bernie (Again)
It is no secret that in 2016, the DNC, the Clinton Campaign, and many mainstream media outlets worked together to undermine Bernie Sanders’ run to be the Democratic party’s nominee. Democrats from Elizabeth Warren to Tulsi Gabbard have stated that there was an undemocratic thumb placed on the scale intended to tip the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Now that we’re approaching 2020, we’re seeing some of the same tricks, and some new ones.
In 2015, when Clinton touted a 45 to 1 superdelegate advantage over Sanders, it created the impression that she was more electable and an overall better candidate than him. To amend this, superdelegates will be excluded from the first round of voting in 2020, but if no candidate gets more than 50% of delegates, superdelegates will be included in the next round.
Here’s the problem: There will almost certainly be no consensus in the first round of voting. Joe Biden has name recognition and warm memories from the Obama era. Elizabeth Warren has progressive optics and a ‘plan for everything.’ Now, we also have Mike Bloomberg, who has enough capital to spend 35 million dollars on political ads and become the first result on Google when you search for anything related to climate change. The nomination is not owed to Bernie Sanders, but at the time of the superdelegate rule change. there was speculation that it just meant a new plan to rig the primary against him would be necessary and that the flooding of the primary with samey centrist candidates could be designed to ensure his failure.
There is an entire subreddit dedicated to documenting the phenomenon of Bernie Blindness. It describes its self as “documenting the intentional media blackout on Bernie, distortion of Bernie’s support by ‘liberal’ MSM news outlets and their manufacturing of support for his opponents.” Its top post right now is an article about how ABC, as of September 12, spent a total of 23 minutes discussing Sanders in 2019. Additionally, Katie Halper wrote a piece for FAIR that documents MSNBC’s surprising pattern of misrepresenting his polling numbers in a negative way.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign used its connections to the mainstream media to undermine Bernie Sanders. Clinton is not running in 2020, but it is hard to imagine that she wouldn’t use those same media connections to ensure a friend of hers gets the nomination, or at the very least, ensure an enemy of hers doesn’t. Even without the Clinton machine’s influence, many major media outlets depend on the same advertising dollars that line the pockets of candidates like Biden, Harris, and Buttigieg. Obama reportedly stated he would intervene if Sanders’ campaign started to pick up too much steam. We simply cannot expect fair coverage from the establishment media, but many don’t realize this and only have the time to watch CNN for 30 minutes when deciding who to vote for.
Bernie Sanders is a popular candidate, but he is a dangerous candidate. He wants to provide healthcare to every American, which is dangerous for the private health industry. He wants a green new deal, which is dangerous for the fossil fuel industry. He wants to end the privatized prison racket, which is dangerous for prison profiteers. This is why his campaign thrives. People are sick of candidates that don’t represent them, candidates that claim to want change but never bring it, and candidates that coast by on likability with no substance. It might be foolish to think that Bernie can overcome a political machine designed to undermine leftists, but the grassroots movement behind him has demonstrated its power, and the fight is not over until it’s over.
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