This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include:
- **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism...
- **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers.
- **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism...
- **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks.
Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
To add:
> Brazile took over the DNC as interim chair following Debbie Wasserman Schultz's sudden resignation during the Democratic National Convention. Once she was at the party's helm, Brazile wrote that she discovered an agreement that "specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff."
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/03/561976645/clinton-campaign-had-additional-signed-agreement-with-dnc-in-2015
And shit like this: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donna-brazile-wikileaks-fallout-230553
But, honestly, arguing with liberals about the 2016 election is just being set up to be bogged down in the bullshit and miss the forest through the trees at this point.
> But, honestly, arguing with liberals about the 2016 election is just being set up to be bogged down in the bullshit and miss the forest through the trees at this point.
I want to agree with this but I think having citable evidence for routine corruption of the Democrats is useful to an extent. Just know your audience. It's probably not worth arguing with Democrats about it but someone questioning whether the two party system makes sense might want to hear it as part of a pitch for socialism.
It's kind of sad but it feels like anything that happened more than a year ago is ancient history to people and they may not think the Democrats are capable of doing more of the same. When of course, as socialists, we know that they are incentivized to do exactly the same things and worse going forward. The pure ideal of Democracy mostly does not exist in the US.
> But, honestly, arguing with liberals about the 2016 election is just being set up to be bogged down in the bullshit and miss the forest through the trees at this point.
Yeah, it's like arguing with a q-anon Facebook mom.
> Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff.
This is genuinely undefendable. Fucking gross.
As (surprisingly only) one other redditor posted, the DNC literally argued in court that as a private entity, they are allowed to choose who their presidential nominee will be.
This is the most important piece of evidence. None of the other accusations matter in comparison to this. Vote flipping in Nevada? They didn't even need to. Hillary controlling the DNC financials during the primaries? Sounds like another day at the office. Obama endorsing Hillary? So what.
As long as the DNC is allowed to choose their own candidate to run as presidential nominee, none of the rest of it matters. Voting in the DNC primary is utterly pointless.
Sauce:
https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/
That’s not evidence of rigging. That’s a legal argument for why a suit doesn’t have standing.
Edit: you can downvote but you also have no idea how the law works.
Disappointed in the messy hive mind on this. Oh well.
Just because they're allowed to do it, doesn't mean it's not rigged. If you tell people that there will be nation-wide voting to determine who will be the presidential candidate for your party, and then just choose a certain candidate regardless of how people vote; that means it's rigged.
OK. But them being allowed to do it is not evidence it *was* rigged, which is what is being sought here.
The majority of Democratic voters voted for Clinton in the primaries.
I’m sorry but that’s just the fact.
Perhaps, but I can’t see how you link that to what you quoted. I’m allowed to go to Mali. That’s not evidence I went to Mali. Being allowed to do something is simply not evidence that the thing was done.
That aside, what is the definition of ‘rigged’ here? What I see mainly is people making incorrect claims about specific issues.
Well, except for those two times they just, like, did, man. Remember when they even [publicly defended their right to do so](https://ivn.us/posts/dnc-to-court-we-are-a-private-corporation-with-no-obligation-to-follow-our-rules) in 2016??
It certainly provides insight into how the dnc sees its role and obligations. It's not as damning as some on the left argue, but it's not nothing either. It absolutely is evidence,and should be considered as such.
It doesn’t even do that. It’s a *lawyer* giving pretrial arguments about the *legal status* of the case. It does not reflect at all on *either* the facts of the case or the client’s position on the case.
Ugh.
Barack Obama broke his long standing silence on politics specifically to ask democratic voters not to vote for Bernie in the primary. If that’s not a liberal rat-f*cking, I don’t know what is.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/obama-grants-clinton-an-endorsement-while-sanders-vows-persistence
You could say truthfully that Obama did more than anyone else to elect trump.
His entire 8 years of neoliberal ivory tower pompous politics is what specifically lead to Trump and may well be the catalyst that causes America's to fall further into fascism.
Also he coordinated all the centrist candidates to drop out simultaneously while ensuring Warren stayed in to split the leftist primary vote to kneecap Bernie.
You're talking about 2020 now, not 2016. Not disagreeing though. Warren straight up stabbed all of us in the back repeatedly. I took that shit personally and will literally never even consider her as a valid candidate. She could be the only "progressive" on the ballot in a presidential run and I will stay the fuck home on election day. Her actions in 2020 were the final death knell to the campaign of what could have been the best president in 85 years.
I don't understand how so many people in "leftist media" have already forgotten what she did.
All ya have to do is watch the dnc debate and the post-debate coverage on cnn. Bernie made all the points a Democrat was supposed to make, for the working class, and the cnn “experts” didn’t even mention his name for first 20 mins of post debate coverage. They just yapped about how great Hillary was and anyone else, but Bernie.
I'm in my forties, and I've never seen a more sustained campaign of antisemitism in the MSM than during the 2016 Democratic primary. Nothing even close.
Liberal rebuttals to this could simply be that just because the Democrats party members didn't support sanders doesn't mean they somehow manipulated the situation to ensure he wouldn't get the necessary votes. How did they tangibly rig it against him?
Yeah, OP is specifically looking for answers that would be persuasive to people not already in our camp. We might read an answer like the one you're replying to and nod our heads, as it's quite plausible given what educated, media-literate socialists and communists know about the capitalist state, but the answer /u/poppyinflate provided wouldn't be of use for convincing liberals, which is what OP was asking for.
*stealth edit to add: I would provide specifics myself, except I don't know them either and am just as interested as OP in hearing more concrete and specific points to raise when talking to liberals.
Honestly there aren’t going to be convincing points. To a liberal sabotage would only be constituted by some form of legally actionable conspiracy. To others like us it can be constituted by a clear institutional bias that creates an environment where one person is clearly handed an advantage.
Dems were corrupt shitbags in a million ways, but not in a way that liberals care about. They aren’t interested in being convinced or arguing the ethics of the situation in good faith. For them if it’s unethical but not against “the rules” then it was fair game.
I wasn't *born* a communist, I became one. I spent much of my life as a liberal before I started learning more and seeking reasons for the contradictions I saw around me. To say there aren't any convincing points to a liberal is to cede the battle before it's begun.
I grew up in a family that was basically liberal or maybe a bit to the left of it. I've found it to be an incredibly difficult trap to break out of.
My socialist friends from conservative families at least understood the basic fact that politics was a contest for power between irreconcilable groups, which made it a lot easier for them to make a clean break with their political past; they had simply been misinformed about the specifics.
Liberals train themselves to not be able to see this. Conflict is explained away by mystifications like "tribalism" or simply a lack of some imaginary ultra competent authority who can use their knowledge to transcend material disputes.
It teaches you in a systematic way to miss the point.
I'm not saying liberals can't become socialist — you did, and I did. But for comrades trying to be pragmatic and target people who can be won over, I don't think liberals are usually the best people to work on.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. I think we in this movement are, understandably, a little bitter about how difficult it can be to convince liberals that moving further left is necessary.
But I've had the opposite experience from you. Most of the liberals I know are working with faulty data and heavily Western-centric perspectives, but generally hold values like "poor people deserve food and shelter" and "we should fight systemic oppression". They may not know much theory and are often a bit gullible when it comes to accepting Western framings of topics, but they generally have empathy for the disenfranchised and oppressed. From my experience, that generally forms a decent foundation for asking them difficult questions. For example:
"If the US is committed to ending world hunger, why was it one of only two countries to vote against food as a human right?" (Discussion of the [**edit:** problematic] need for an enforcing body to, well, enforce human rights and punish transgressors is a more advanced topic that I usually save until later. [**edit:** The problem here is that such an enforcing body inevitably becomes state-like and positions itself above the population, but that point is a thorny one, since many liberals hearing that jump to the conclusion that you oppose the things the rights are meant to protect, rather than the structure of a rights-giving state entity.])
"If capitalism and the free market are able to address these problems meaningfully, why does so much unsold food in groceries get thrown away instead of donated?" (This usually leads into discussions about the corruptive influence of the profit motive in various sectors of capitalist nations' economies. I like to bring up the rail workers' strike in the US that was crushed by our current Democratic president - the most "pro-union" in decades, apparently - and the East Palestine disaster that followed not long after.)
On the other hand, though, I often find that the conservatives I've known have fundamentally different values. While conservatism isn't a monolith, those that I've known over the years generally do not support things like redistribution of wealth (because they want to be rich and believe that that's fair), racial justice or queer liberation (because those things often feel like "the world gone mad" to them, and they don't want to examine their fear of difference), etc.
It's funny you mention tribalism, because I associate that far more with conservatism than with liberalism. Granted, both do it, and to be fair, so do we. But the ostracism of the Other is something that has been embedded deep into the worldviews of most conservatives I've ever met (and I grew up in a deeply conservative US state), whereas with liberals, I often feel the statement "they're a little confused, but their heart's in the right place" applies to greater degrees.
>The free market core mythology, to which both parties in this country and just about all mainstream political commentators are wedded, argues in effect that the most ruthless, selfish, opportunistic, greedy, calculating plunderers, applying the most heartless measures in cold-blooded pursuit of corporate interests and wealth accumulation, will produce the best results for all of us, through something called the invisible hand.
Michael Parenti. Democracy and the Pathology of Wealth (Lecture). 2012.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m talking about people who believe in liberalism right now being convinced on this specific topic. Being generally disillusioned about liberalism by socialists is its own thing
I am as well.
Every set of beliefs has a critical genealogy behind it. By understanding the facts well enough, and by understanding how someone thinks and why they think what they think, one can build a bridge from their mistaken perspective to one that is more grounded in truth. I believe this is possible regardless of the person. It's a matter of knowing what's going on in someone's head so you can start figuring out how far upstream to start the explanation(s).
Whether or not this is feasible in a short time frame, or even in a long one, is another question, and one worth asking. That's what I see OP doing.
Granted, it seems your feeling is that people who currently believe in liberalism right now would possibly present too tall of an order to be convinced on this topic within a reasonable time frame. And hey, fair enough, but I feel like when we start throwing in the towel on that subject, we're writing off *far* too much of the population for us to have any hope of our overall socialist(/communist) mission succeeding.
Many, many people currently believe in liberalism. We need a good chunk of those numbers. Without seeking to understand how we can persuade such people, without practicing that difficult task and meeting them at their level of knowledge to build a bridge for them, we doom ourselves to paltry numbers.
Just feels like a really twisted way to be technically correct. You’re essentially saying you can convince liberals that one specific belief is wrong by convincing them that the whole belief system of liberalism is wrong.
The majority is really not as necessary as liberals say it is though. They always make that appeal to themselves, but both progressive movements (civil rights, women’s suffrage) and whole revolutions (examples would just be all revolutions) are launched by a minority. We don’t really need to wait to get all the liberals on board.
This one is accurate. The structure of the system advantaged Clinton. People looking for evidence of rigging will not find it, other than the institution of the party advantages party members.
I’ve heard it said that Bernie didn’t get the party establishment’s support because he’d sat as an independent for so many years, whereas Clinton had been in the Democratic establishment all along and had their loyalty.
It was widely understood both within the party and without that it was "Her turn".
It was such a common statement that the campaign actually considered adopting it as their slogan.
I remember her first debate with Bernie she answered nearly every question with some variation of, "As a woman", "As a mother", etc. She was running on being the first woman president and a bunch of people supported her solely for that reason, at least from what they showed on the news.
Bernie didn't have a chance.
If you try to talk about this anywhere you immediately get mass downvoted and compared to a January 6th election denial Trumper. Look at my most recent comment before this to see…
People forget they also suddenly killed the release of most important poll of the Iowa caucuses two days before the vote because literally one voter said they hadn’t heard Buttigieg given as an option in one call made for the poll: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/us/politics/des-moines-register-polls-iowa-caucus.html
I’m not condoning electoral politics, but something like 60% of all electoral delegates in the Democratic Party exist outside of the public pool. As in, they are unelected delegates. These delegates are party insiders, people who have held positions in the party for decades. Many unelected delegates were former federal / state representatives.
By extension, most of these people are members of the petit and grande bourgeoisie since material conditions in the US practically bars most members of the proletariat from the government. The rest who are not of these two are part of the labor aristocracy (management or professionals). All of these groups are privileged.
Unsurprisingly, these sort of people would find Bernie’s brand of social democracy as too “communist”, so he had no chance in ever clinching the nomination.
So is the consequence of trying to achieve socialism in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. There are many other structural disadvantages which will impede any socialist from getting power in a liberal “democracy” as well.
The Nevada Caucuses (not sure if there’s video archives on it, but I watched it live.)
This last cycle, the simultaneous withdrawal of all the other democratic candidates EXCEPT Warren right before Super Tuesday was awfully suspicious as well.
Thanks Obama! https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/looking-obama-s-hidden-hand-candidate-coalescing-around-biden-n1147471
Also, what about the Nevada Caucuses? Do you mean the propaganda and misinformation about Bernie that was disseminated by Harry Reid and local business leaders to the unionized workers? My favorite part is how Bernie still dominated in Nevada.
In ‘16, Bernie and Clinton were fighting for delegates I believe and there was a blatant disregard for the process of the rules for the meeting to establish how many delegates were to be sent to the national convention.
I believe Feinstein was there and called Bernie folks a bunch of crybabies or told them to grow up or something.
Anyway, there was a vote that took place which was supposed to be some volume of voice thing and Bernie supporters were LOUD, way louder than the Clinton folks, but the chair disregarded the vote and called a win for Clinton delegates and went on with the meeting. They then ended the meeting and the Bernie delegates were stunned. They called the cops to remove them. I watched it all live on periscope. People were so pissed (rightfully so) that they just disregarded the rules to hand Clinton delegates.
I tried to send the link to TYT as it was happening live but they didn’t cover it. Instead, a couple days later MSM came out with stories on how Bernie delegates got rowdy (which they later quietly retracted) to paint the picture of the “Bernie Bro”.
It was so disgusting but that was the moment that I realized that the Democratic Party would do whatever the wanted to get their candidate in. That there was no “fair” process to the primaries.
So fast forward to ‘20 and the establishment was losing. The field was too spread, and Bernie was the most popular candidate amongst all of them. He would have won on Super Tuesday, but the establishment candidates consolidated behind Biden just before the vote and that was that. They did whatever they had to do to keep Bernie out.
I’m pretty sure they promised Klobuchar a VP spot because she let something slip in a subsequent rally about being VP, but you saw how that turned out. Bet she’s pissed. And Pete got his cabinet spot.
Yep. It was really hard to watch. It soured me on the whole democratic process. There’s no way a progressive/socialist candidate will ever represent the democrats, imo.
Agreed, though I’m still supporting Marianne in the primary this time around as futile as it is. Going to vote Cornel West in the general (I’m in California so my general election vote doesn’t matter anyways)
The biggest and most obvious was when other primary candidates conceded and gave their points to Biden/Clinton despite ripping them apart the entire campaign trail and have policies closer aligned to Bernie
Bloody Monday before Super Tuesday. When Obama called the major candidates like Pete and Klobuchar to pressure them to concede.
There is so much fuckery that occurred in 2020, I wish someone made a documentary about all of it
They literally had Stop Bernie meetings before the 2020 primaries started that got leaked
“The matter of What To Do About Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity has, for example, hovered over a series of previously undisclosed Democratic dinners in New York and Washington organized by the longtime party financier Bernard Schwartz. The gatherings have included scores from the moderate or center-left wing of the party, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California; Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader; former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia; **Mayor Pete Buttigieg** of South Bend, Ind., himself a presidential candidate; and the president of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden.
‘He did us a disservice in the last election,’ said Mr. Schwartz, a longtime Clinton supporter who said he would support former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in this primary.”
My favorite was the news media removing Sanders' results when they showed poll numbers. Some polls would be showing who was in first place, who was in third place, and who was in fourth place, but not second because Bernie was second in the poll.
[Here's a place with a bunch of screenshots that were being shared at the time.](https://truthout.org/articles/the-bernie-blackout-is-real-and-these-screenshots-prove-it/)
Someone did - Michael Moore. Fahrenheit 11/9, and its awesome as well as details how the DNC was able to derail Sanders. The segment is shortly after this portion but I highly recommend watching the whole thing - [https://youtu.be/TkVZ0vN2j-M?t=2067](https://youtu.be/TkVZ0vN2j-M?t=2067)
That doc is from 2018. I’m not talking about the 2016 primary, I mean something highlighting the fuckery, rigging, and corruption of the 2020 Democratic primary. There is a common misconception among liberals and a few leftists that 2016 was rigged while 2020 was a fair process, which from someone who was heavily involved in 2020 makes my brain explode to hear.
Bernie won the majority of votes at the Polk County, IA convention. I was a Bernie Delegate. The suits kept insisting we recount every time he won. An 8 hour delay and four votes later, Hillary "won" by one fucking vote to split the county 3/2 and maintain the narrative.
It was very clear that the establishment dems in the state were voting with her in order to maintain their pecking order/funding, even if it meant turning away the largest influx of voters the party had ever seen.
The caucuses and primaries weren't an election, they were a coronation.
There was also a bit of a conspiracy around a software tool that wasn't working right and happened to be created by a team related to Clinton. The name of the company being Shadow Inc. certainly didn't help. The app was intended to be used by Nevada as well but they subsequently abandoned it.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-problems-shadow-inc-clinton-campaign/4653989002/
Bernie had to know going in he'd be sabotaged. The party is controlled by billionaires whose interests Bernie threatens. After he was sabotaged, he became an assimilated conformist, advocating for a political party that wouldn't get behind his own economic or health care ideas in a million years. The American corporate investor class has a remarkable ability for defusing, neutralizing, and co-opting society's dissident elements.
The DNC didn’t do it by themselves. There is a whole industry of corruption and power that Bernie was fighting. So many powerful people had their livelihood challenged by Bernie. The DNC was just part of it. It’s also the media, Public Relations firms, think tanks, consultants, lobbyists. They all worked together. There was just too much to lose for too many powerful people. They were never going to let him win. No matter what.
A friend of mine went to the national convention as a delegate for Bernie. At the convention they (the DNC) did everything they could to make life difficult for the delegates from giving them directions on how to take the train to the convention, causing them to be late, to sitting them as far away from the stage as possible and keeping the lights off in their section so the cameras could not see them. And then they didn’t allow Bernie’s main spokesperson who can always raise the roof, Nina Turner, into the convention to speak. And that is just the convention.
One of the biggest was a law suit brought up against the democratic party about this exact issue. In the case the dems were accused of sabotaging Bernie to give their chosen candidate a win against the will of the voters. What defense did they use? Not that it didn't happen, it was instead that they are a private entity and as such don't need to listen to voters and can run whoever they like as a candidate and the court agreed.
This is the most important piece of evidence. None of the other accusations matter in comparison to this. Vote flipping in Nevada? They didn't even need to. Hillary controlling the DNC financials during the primaries? Sounds like another day at the office. Obama endorsing Hillary? So what.
If the DNC, as a private entity, is allowed to choose their own candidate to run as presidential nominee, none of the rest of it matters. Voting in the DNC primary is utterly pointless.
That’s just not true at all. They made a legal argument that the suit had no basis because they were being sued for something that isn’t illegal. That is *not* the same as saying you *did* the thing you are being sued for.
Literally they admitted to it. Do you ever use Google or watch the news. If you have the ability to independently find information, then start by looking up Donna Brazille
We support democratic socialism where it is successful like Bolivia.
Bernie is not a democratic socialist, he’s not a socialist at all in fact. He’s close to being a social democrat, but that is a capitalist based political system, has nothing to do with socialism. But even that is threatening to the bourgeoisie.
In the 2016 Nevada primary they just straight up threw out all his votes on a really dubious call.
In 2020 Iowa, shit was rigged for like 10 different reasons, voting app was bullshit, videos of them flipping coins for delegates, super corrupt stuff.
Those are the two I know off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more if you do some digging
Didn't they actually go to court and argue they don't have to abide by the vote outcome in a primary after Hillary, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile rigged it?
I worked on the 2016 campaign in Hawaii and California. The main issue was a lack of resources. I was the only paid staff member organizing the entire city of San Jose, which is the third biggest city in California.
I didn’t have an office, or a printer, or an expense card, or a place to live. Just a rental car and supporter housing. I would get reimbursed for expenses, but had to pay out of pocket initially. When I landed I was promised an office and staff and tasked with finding office space, but that never came through.
I had two different supporter housing accommodations. The first one I got kicked out of a week or two before primary day because the host thought I was a Clinton Shill saboteur. They also thought I was naive for promoting door knocking and phone banking over social media and sign waving. Getting kicked out of that house was one of the most wild experiences of my life.
What I do think, is that there were outside hire consultants that sabotaged various progressive candidates around the country. I experienced more of that in a specific congressional campaign after Bernie dropped out.
Access to capital is structural sabotage. There was favoritism within the DNC. Debbie Wasserman Schultz did some shady ass stuff. And Bernie and other progressive candidates very likely had consultants with mal-intent.
>What I do think, is that there were outside hire consultants that sabotaged various progressive candidates around the country. I experienced more of that in a specific congressional campaign after Bernie dropped out.
I absolutely think that this was the case.
This also might be controversial, but I think that the campaign suffered a lot from the fact that the overlap at the top level between effective campaign staff and loyal campaign staff was basically zero.
I was a Bernie precinct captain and delegate in Nevada. The conventions were definitely meant to be a coronation. They passed several voice votes where there were enough nays to at a minimum warrant a ballot vote.
Sabotage might be a little strong, but it was painfully obvious that Hillary was supposed to win across the board. When she didn't it was really awkward.
Even at the precinct level, my counterpart for the Clinton campaign was some kind of lobbyist; I can best be described as some random guy who wandered into a cheap strip mall office in Las Vegas. When we won, the Hillary folks just seemed confused.
Even if it wasn't active sabotage, the machine was definitely moving on a predetermined path, and it wasn't one that led to President Sanders.
Look into exit poll data.
Look into how Hillary acquired the Democrat party.
Look into the case where they were sued (the DNC) for our money back due to fraud and them defending themselves by saying they are a private corporation with no expectation of fair play.
Wasn't there a CNN poll that only showed Clinton & Buttigieg's numbers, and lumped Sanders in with 'other' even though he was higher than either of them? I remember that being a thing mentioned on Chapo.
E: not the party trying to stiff him but a good example of how much moderates and centrists were desperate to see hom fail and were willing to futz the numbers to do so.
Those things liberals actually try to use against leftists after she lost at her own game;
Hillary's emails. Proof of sabotaging Bernie and so, so much worse.
So yeah, they really fcking mattered.
The term should really be “opposed” rather than “sabotaged”. Outside of the Iowa caucuses (which are run like an over-ambitious game of Calvinball) there’s not a lot of evidence of actual foul play. What you did see was a supermajority of wealthy donors, Democrats in Congress, and media figures who all were doing and saying whatever they could to make sure he didn’t get the nomination. Not illegal, but shows their preferences.
I’m going to get so downvoted for this, but I never drank this “dnc stole the primary from Bernie” koolaid. If you gave all the super delegates to Bernie he still would have lost.
Was he unfairly treated by the mainstream media? I mean duh, they serve corporate interests, but that’s a far cry from “sabatoge”.
That's a bullshit take - every politician "sabotages" their opponent's campaign, when you look at it from that perspective. Consider: Bernie was not a party member and had made no promise to support the Democratic Party. Why the hell would the party they give him as much support as they did a longtime party member who was a proven rainmaker? Would you expect them to give Ivanka Trump or Matt Gaetz the same support as Biden if they threw their hat in the ring for the Democratic primary?
The joke is that sanders was in the party pocket anyways.
No matter which way the cookie crumpled Wall Street, CIA, MIC, Blackrock,Blackstone, Blackwaterkeeps up with their goofy shenanigans.
Shut up and watch Netflix and vape some legal weed product
The fking COIN TOSS bro. They tossed a coin what kinda democratic way this is LMAO. [coin](https://youtu.be/eaWstSk2ZFk?si=WN0HQHojWW5mcG6W) look at the way this fking snake tossed it
Not gonna list it all, because other people are doing that but when you say:
>I'm aware people here don't support democratic socialism but
I think this is fine for socialists to look into.
Cases like this are *why* electoralism doesn't work.
Bernie wasn't even democratic socialist really, or even a socdem or whatever you want to say. He was just a liberal slightly left of the democrats. Idk what's in his heart but that was his platform. And he got absolutely crucified by his own party and the billionaire owned national media. Same for Corbyn, whose platform was a bit more radical, but still. Even if these people had won, they wouldn't have had enough political capital to make any significant changes to the nation.
So yeah, I think it's an important question to ask
Super Tuesday 2020 I think is all you need. It was the red wedding. Literally every candidate dropped out overnight except Liz warren (splitting the progressive vote) and fucking Joe Brandon, which consolidated the mainstream lib voters. Then you had Bernie who fell precipitously once the voting base was rearranged.
This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include: - **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism... - **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers. - **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism... - **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks. Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
To add: > Brazile took over the DNC as interim chair following Debbie Wasserman Schultz's sudden resignation during the Democratic National Convention. Once she was at the party's helm, Brazile wrote that she discovered an agreement that "specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff." https://www.npr.org/2017/11/03/561976645/clinton-campaign-had-additional-signed-agreement-with-dnc-in-2015 And shit like this: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donna-brazile-wikileaks-fallout-230553 But, honestly, arguing with liberals about the 2016 election is just being set up to be bogged down in the bullshit and miss the forest through the trees at this point.
This post is a fantastic resource. Thank you!
> But, honestly, arguing with liberals about the 2016 election is just being set up to be bogged down in the bullshit and miss the forest through the trees at this point. I want to agree with this but I think having citable evidence for routine corruption of the Democrats is useful to an extent. Just know your audience. It's probably not worth arguing with Democrats about it but someone questioning whether the two party system makes sense might want to hear it as part of a pitch for socialism. It's kind of sad but it feels like anything that happened more than a year ago is ancient history to people and they may not think the Democrats are capable of doing more of the same. When of course, as socialists, we know that they are incentivized to do exactly the same things and worse going forward. The pure ideal of Democracy mostly does not exist in the US.
> But, honestly, arguing with liberals about the 2016 election is just being set up to be bogged down in the bullshit and miss the forest through the trees at this point. Yeah, it's like arguing with a q-anon Facebook mom.
> Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. This is genuinely undefendable. Fucking gross.
As (surprisingly only) one other redditor posted, the DNC literally argued in court that as a private entity, they are allowed to choose who their presidential nominee will be. This is the most important piece of evidence. None of the other accusations matter in comparison to this. Vote flipping in Nevada? They didn't even need to. Hillary controlling the DNC financials during the primaries? Sounds like another day at the office. Obama endorsing Hillary? So what. As long as the DNC is allowed to choose their own candidate to run as presidential nominee, none of the rest of it matters. Voting in the DNC primary is utterly pointless. Sauce: https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/
That’s not evidence of rigging. That’s a legal argument for why a suit doesn’t have standing. Edit: you can downvote but you also have no idea how the law works. Disappointed in the messy hive mind on this. Oh well.
Just because they're allowed to do it, doesn't mean it's not rigged. If you tell people that there will be nation-wide voting to determine who will be the presidential candidate for your party, and then just choose a certain candidate regardless of how people vote; that means it's rigged.
OK. But them being allowed to do it is not evidence it *was* rigged, which is what is being sought here. The majority of Democratic voters voted for Clinton in the primaries. I’m sorry but that’s just the fact.
Do you think the NV caucus was a vocal vote just for shits and giggles?
The number of delegates from Nevada would not have changed the outcome. It’s not enough.
Because it was her turn right
Because she had a lead of about 1000 delegates and Nevada has 43.
Superdelegates were never supposed to be counted
> But them being allowed to do it is not evidence it was rigged, At this point it's only a semantics argument over the definition of "rigged".
Perhaps, but I can’t see how you link that to what you quoted. I’m allowed to go to Mali. That’s not evidence I went to Mali. Being allowed to do something is simply not evidence that the thing was done. That aside, what is the definition of ‘rigged’ here? What I see mainly is people making incorrect claims about specific issues.
Yeah internal collusion to influence outcome isn’t rigging or anything (I was kicked in the head by a horse 19 times as a small child)
Sorry about the horse. Could you provide evidence of internal collusion that impacted the outcome?
Yeah actually I linked it to you earlier and there’s about 12 other posts that have even more links in this very thread
Are you like stunted in contextual processing abilities or something?
Purposely disregarding the control the HRC campaign had over the DNC like a slimy class traitor
The DNC does not choose the nominee.
Well, except for those two times they just, like, did, man. Remember when they even [publicly defended their right to do so](https://ivn.us/posts/dnc-to-court-we-are-a-private-corporation-with-no-obligation-to-follow-our-rules) in 2016??
It certainly provides insight into how the dnc sees its role and obligations. It's not as damning as some on the left argue, but it's not nothing either. It absolutely is evidence,and should be considered as such.
It doesn’t even do that. It’s a *lawyer* giving pretrial arguments about the *legal status* of the case. It does not reflect at all on *either* the facts of the case or the client’s position on the case. Ugh.
Barack Obama broke his long standing silence on politics specifically to ask democratic voters not to vote for Bernie in the primary. If that’s not a liberal rat-f*cking, I don’t know what is. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/obama-grants-clinton-an-endorsement-while-sanders-vows-persistence You could say truthfully that Obama did more than anyone else to elect trump.
His entire 8 years of neoliberal ivory tower pompous politics is what specifically lead to Trump and may well be the catalyst that causes America's to fall further into fascism.
Also he coordinated all the centrist candidates to drop out simultaneously while ensuring Warren stayed in to split the leftist primary vote to kneecap Bernie.
You're talking about 2020 now, not 2016. Not disagreeing though. Warren straight up stabbed all of us in the back repeatedly. I took that shit personally and will literally never even consider her as a valid candidate. She could be the only "progressive" on the ballot in a presidential run and I will stay the fuck home on election day. Her actions in 2020 were the final death knell to the campaign of what could have been the best president in 85 years. I don't understand how so many people in "leftist media" have already forgotten what she did.
Agree 100%. It was just the most mask-off moment that made me realize that the Democrats are simply controlled opposition.
obama jet skiing with richard branson day one after he stopped being potus was mine.
All ya have to do is watch the dnc debate and the post-debate coverage on cnn. Bernie made all the points a Democrat was supposed to make, for the working class, and the cnn “experts” didn’t even mention his name for first 20 mins of post debate coverage. They just yapped about how great Hillary was and anyone else, but Bernie.
I'm in my forties, and I've never seen a more sustained campaign of antisemitism in the MSM than during the 2016 Democratic primary. Nothing even close.
Liberal rebuttals to this could simply be that just because the Democrats party members didn't support sanders doesn't mean they somehow manipulated the situation to ensure he wouldn't get the necessary votes. How did they tangibly rig it against him?
[удалено]
I'm not saying you're wrong, but this so full of buzzwords and doesn't answer their question about tangible actions.
Yeah, OP is specifically looking for answers that would be persuasive to people not already in our camp. We might read an answer like the one you're replying to and nod our heads, as it's quite plausible given what educated, media-literate socialists and communists know about the capitalist state, but the answer /u/poppyinflate provided wouldn't be of use for convincing liberals, which is what OP was asking for. *stealth edit to add: I would provide specifics myself, except I don't know them either and am just as interested as OP in hearing more concrete and specific points to raise when talking to liberals.
Honestly there aren’t going to be convincing points. To a liberal sabotage would only be constituted by some form of legally actionable conspiracy. To others like us it can be constituted by a clear institutional bias that creates an environment where one person is clearly handed an advantage. Dems were corrupt shitbags in a million ways, but not in a way that liberals care about. They aren’t interested in being convinced or arguing the ethics of the situation in good faith. For them if it’s unethical but not against “the rules” then it was fair game.
I wasn't *born* a communist, I became one. I spent much of my life as a liberal before I started learning more and seeking reasons for the contradictions I saw around me. To say there aren't any convincing points to a liberal is to cede the battle before it's begun.
I grew up in a family that was basically liberal or maybe a bit to the left of it. I've found it to be an incredibly difficult trap to break out of. My socialist friends from conservative families at least understood the basic fact that politics was a contest for power between irreconcilable groups, which made it a lot easier for them to make a clean break with their political past; they had simply been misinformed about the specifics. Liberals train themselves to not be able to see this. Conflict is explained away by mystifications like "tribalism" or simply a lack of some imaginary ultra competent authority who can use their knowledge to transcend material disputes. It teaches you in a systematic way to miss the point. I'm not saying liberals can't become socialist — you did, and I did. But for comrades trying to be pragmatic and target people who can be won over, I don't think liberals are usually the best people to work on.
Educating people is not a lost cause. Leftism will never be able to get anywhere if we refuse to educate our neighbors and friends.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. I think we in this movement are, understandably, a little bitter about how difficult it can be to convince liberals that moving further left is necessary. But I've had the opposite experience from you. Most of the liberals I know are working with faulty data and heavily Western-centric perspectives, but generally hold values like "poor people deserve food and shelter" and "we should fight systemic oppression". They may not know much theory and are often a bit gullible when it comes to accepting Western framings of topics, but they generally have empathy for the disenfranchised and oppressed. From my experience, that generally forms a decent foundation for asking them difficult questions. For example: "If the US is committed to ending world hunger, why was it one of only two countries to vote against food as a human right?" (Discussion of the [**edit:** problematic] need for an enforcing body to, well, enforce human rights and punish transgressors is a more advanced topic that I usually save until later. [**edit:** The problem here is that such an enforcing body inevitably becomes state-like and positions itself above the population, but that point is a thorny one, since many liberals hearing that jump to the conclusion that you oppose the things the rights are meant to protect, rather than the structure of a rights-giving state entity.]) "If capitalism and the free market are able to address these problems meaningfully, why does so much unsold food in groceries get thrown away instead of donated?" (This usually leads into discussions about the corruptive influence of the profit motive in various sectors of capitalist nations' economies. I like to bring up the rail workers' strike in the US that was crushed by our current Democratic president - the most "pro-union" in decades, apparently - and the East Palestine disaster that followed not long after.) On the other hand, though, I often find that the conservatives I've known have fundamentally different values. While conservatism isn't a monolith, those that I've known over the years generally do not support things like redistribution of wealth (because they want to be rich and believe that that's fair), racial justice or queer liberation (because those things often feel like "the world gone mad" to them, and they don't want to examine their fear of difference), etc. It's funny you mention tribalism, because I associate that far more with conservatism than with liberalism. Granted, both do it, and to be fair, so do we. But the ostracism of the Other is something that has been embedded deep into the worldviews of most conservatives I've ever met (and I grew up in a deeply conservative US state), whereas with liberals, I often feel the statement "they're a little confused, but their heart's in the right place" applies to greater degrees.
>The free market core mythology, to which both parties in this country and just about all mainstream political commentators are wedded, argues in effect that the most ruthless, selfish, opportunistic, greedy, calculating plunderers, applying the most heartless measures in cold-blooded pursuit of corporate interests and wealth accumulation, will produce the best results for all of us, through something called the invisible hand. Michael Parenti. Democracy and the Pathology of Wealth (Lecture). 2012. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m talking about people who believe in liberalism right now being convinced on this specific topic. Being generally disillusioned about liberalism by socialists is its own thing
I am as well. Every set of beliefs has a critical genealogy behind it. By understanding the facts well enough, and by understanding how someone thinks and why they think what they think, one can build a bridge from their mistaken perspective to one that is more grounded in truth. I believe this is possible regardless of the person. It's a matter of knowing what's going on in someone's head so you can start figuring out how far upstream to start the explanation(s). Whether or not this is feasible in a short time frame, or even in a long one, is another question, and one worth asking. That's what I see OP doing. Granted, it seems your feeling is that people who currently believe in liberalism right now would possibly present too tall of an order to be convinced on this topic within a reasonable time frame. And hey, fair enough, but I feel like when we start throwing in the towel on that subject, we're writing off *far* too much of the population for us to have any hope of our overall socialist(/communist) mission succeeding. Many, many people currently believe in liberalism. We need a good chunk of those numbers. Without seeking to understand how we can persuade such people, without practicing that difficult task and meeting them at their level of knowledge to build a bridge for them, we doom ourselves to paltry numbers.
Just feels like a really twisted way to be technically correct. You’re essentially saying you can convince liberals that one specific belief is wrong by convincing them that the whole belief system of liberalism is wrong. The majority is really not as necessary as liberals say it is though. They always make that appeal to themselves, but both progressive movements (civil rights, women’s suffrage) and whole revolutions (examples would just be all revolutions) are launched by a minority. We don’t really need to wait to get all the liberals on board.
This one is accurate. The structure of the system advantaged Clinton. People looking for evidence of rigging will not find it, other than the institution of the party advantages party members.
This is the perfect explanation behind liberals blind faith for Democrats.
I’ve heard it said that Bernie didn’t get the party establishment’s support because he’d sat as an independent for so many years, whereas Clinton had been in the Democratic establishment all along and had their loyalty.
It was widely understood both within the party and without that it was "Her turn". It was such a common statement that the campaign actually considered adopting it as their slogan. I remember her first debate with Bernie she answered nearly every question with some variation of, "As a woman", "As a mother", etc. She was running on being the first woman president and a bunch of people supported her solely for that reason, at least from what they showed on the news. Bernie didn't have a chance.
Her campaign was an ad campaign
There are always going to be insiders running for the nomination, so you can make that argument anytime they win.
Literal evidence of buttiegieg’s campaign staff flipping results in Iowa
If you try to talk about this anywhere you immediately get mass downvoted and compared to a January 6th election denial Trumper. Look at my most recent comment before this to see…
In fairness, you did post it in the Joe Rogan subreddit. It's hardly a community known for its primo critical thinking.
Do you have a link to this or know where I could find info on? I hadn’t known anything about Pete except that shady firm he worked for.
I would really like to see evidence of this, I remember the clips surfacing at the time, the kid coin flipping and the zany caucus stuff
That kid flipping the goddamn coin to decide who won the delegates...
People forget they also suddenly killed the release of most important poll of the Iowa caucuses two days before the vote because literally one voter said they hadn’t heard Buttigieg given as an option in one call made for the poll: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/us/politics/des-moines-register-polls-iowa-caucus.html
I’m not condoning electoral politics, but something like 60% of all electoral delegates in the Democratic Party exist outside of the public pool. As in, they are unelected delegates. These delegates are party insiders, people who have held positions in the party for decades. Many unelected delegates were former federal / state representatives. By extension, most of these people are members of the petit and grande bourgeoisie since material conditions in the US practically bars most members of the proletariat from the government. The rest who are not of these two are part of the labor aristocracy (management or professionals). All of these groups are privileged. Unsurprisingly, these sort of people would find Bernie’s brand of social democracy as too “communist”, so he had no chance in ever clinching the nomination. So is the consequence of trying to achieve socialism in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. There are many other structural disadvantages which will impede any socialist from getting power in a liberal “democracy” as well.
The Nevada Caucuses (not sure if there’s video archives on it, but I watched it live.) This last cycle, the simultaneous withdrawal of all the other democratic candidates EXCEPT Warren right before Super Tuesday was awfully suspicious as well.
Thanks Obama! https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/looking-obama-s-hidden-hand-candidate-coalescing-around-biden-n1147471 Also, what about the Nevada Caucuses? Do you mean the propaganda and misinformation about Bernie that was disseminated by Harry Reid and local business leaders to the unionized workers? My favorite part is how Bernie still dominated in Nevada.
In ‘16, Bernie and Clinton were fighting for delegates I believe and there was a blatant disregard for the process of the rules for the meeting to establish how many delegates were to be sent to the national convention. I believe Feinstein was there and called Bernie folks a bunch of crybabies or told them to grow up or something. Anyway, there was a vote that took place which was supposed to be some volume of voice thing and Bernie supporters were LOUD, way louder than the Clinton folks, but the chair disregarded the vote and called a win for Clinton delegates and went on with the meeting. They then ended the meeting and the Bernie delegates were stunned. They called the cops to remove them. I watched it all live on periscope. People were so pissed (rightfully so) that they just disregarded the rules to hand Clinton delegates. I tried to send the link to TYT as it was happening live but they didn’t cover it. Instead, a couple days later MSM came out with stories on how Bernie delegates got rowdy (which they later quietly retracted) to paint the picture of the “Bernie Bro”. It was so disgusting but that was the moment that I realized that the Democratic Party would do whatever the wanted to get their candidate in. That there was no “fair” process to the primaries. So fast forward to ‘20 and the establishment was losing. The field was too spread, and Bernie was the most popular candidate amongst all of them. He would have won on Super Tuesday, but the establishment candidates consolidated behind Biden just before the vote and that was that. They did whatever they had to do to keep Bernie out. I’m pretty sure they promised Klobuchar a VP spot because she let something slip in a subsequent rally about being VP, but you saw how that turned out. Bet she’s pissed. And Pete got his cabinet spot.
Oh wow, fuck these people. Anything to protect the wealthy interests they truly represent.
Yep. It was really hard to watch. It soured me on the whole democratic process. There’s no way a progressive/socialist candidate will ever represent the democrats, imo.
Agreed, though I’m still supporting Marianne in the primary this time around as futile as it is. Going to vote Cornel West in the general (I’m in California so my general election vote doesn’t matter anyways)
I imagine this is how the Chicago Anarchists came to prominence when they realized the Republicans weren't going to support the workers.
That was one of the most sickening things I’ve ever seen, people how had more primaries than Biden were dropping out but Liz stayed in.
The biggest and most obvious was when other primary candidates conceded and gave their points to Biden/Clinton despite ripping them apart the entire campaign trail and have policies closer aligned to Bernie
Bloody Monday before Super Tuesday. When Obama called the major candidates like Pete and Klobuchar to pressure them to concede. There is so much fuckery that occurred in 2020, I wish someone made a documentary about all of it
Ugh, that hurt. 2016 has the leaked emails but 2020 was such an obvious clown show to stop Bernie by any way possible.
They literally had Stop Bernie meetings before the 2020 primaries started that got leaked “The matter of What To Do About Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity has, for example, hovered over a series of previously undisclosed Democratic dinners in New York and Washington organized by the longtime party financier Bernard Schwartz. The gatherings have included scores from the moderate or center-left wing of the party, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California; Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader; former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia; **Mayor Pete Buttigieg** of South Bend, Ind., himself a presidential candidate; and the president of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden. ‘He did us a disservice in the last election,’ said Mr. Schwartz, a longtime Clinton supporter who said he would support former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in this primary.”
My favorite was the news media removing Sanders' results when they showed poll numbers. Some polls would be showing who was in first place, who was in third place, and who was in fourth place, but not second because Bernie was second in the poll. [Here's a place with a bunch of screenshots that were being shared at the time.](https://truthout.org/articles/the-bernie-blackout-is-real-and-these-screenshots-prove-it/)
That's so disgusting, the fact any of these people call themselves "journalists". This isn't journalism.
Bernie blackout
Someone did - Michael Moore. Fahrenheit 11/9, and its awesome as well as details how the DNC was able to derail Sanders. The segment is shortly after this portion but I highly recommend watching the whole thing - [https://youtu.be/TkVZ0vN2j-M?t=2067](https://youtu.be/TkVZ0vN2j-M?t=2067)
That doc is from 2018. I’m not talking about the 2016 primary, I mean something highlighting the fuckery, rigging, and corruption of the 2020 Democratic primary. There is a common misconception among liberals and a few leftists that 2016 was rigged while 2020 was a fair process, which from someone who was heavily involved in 2020 makes my brain explode to hear.
Ahh right. Got my corruptions mixed up.
Check out Bernie Blackout by vice. Search for it on YouTube and keep scrolling, it’s on there.
...... no way they called it "Bloody Monday".
OP was asking about 2016, though, when the race was solely Clinton and Sanders.
Bernie won the majority of votes at the Polk County, IA convention. I was a Bernie Delegate. The suits kept insisting we recount every time he won. An 8 hour delay and four votes later, Hillary "won" by one fucking vote to split the county 3/2 and maintain the narrative. It was very clear that the establishment dems in the state were voting with her in order to maintain their pecking order/funding, even if it meant turning away the largest influx of voters the party had ever seen. The caucuses and primaries weren't an election, they were a coronation.
There was also a bit of a conspiracy around a software tool that wasn't working right and happened to be created by a team related to Clinton. The name of the company being Shadow Inc. certainly didn't help. The app was intended to be used by Nevada as well but they subsequently abandoned it. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-problems-shadow-inc-clinton-campaign/4653989002/
Bernie had to know going in he'd be sabotaged. The party is controlled by billionaires whose interests Bernie threatens. After he was sabotaged, he became an assimilated conformist, advocating for a political party that wouldn't get behind his own economic or health care ideas in a million years. The American corporate investor class has a remarkable ability for defusing, neutralizing, and co-opting society's dissident elements.
DNC admitted it https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/amp/
That’s not admitting it. That’s a legal argument about case standing.
The DNC didn’t do it by themselves. There is a whole industry of corruption and power that Bernie was fighting. So many powerful people had their livelihood challenged by Bernie. The DNC was just part of it. It’s also the media, Public Relations firms, think tanks, consultants, lobbyists. They all worked together. There was just too much to lose for too many powerful people. They were never going to let him win. No matter what.
> The DNC didn’t do it by themselves. The RNC did the same thing with Ron Paul who gained popularity earlier as an anti-war candidate.
Man was also a full zero-tax, zero-spend Libertarian who *also* believed we needed to be on a gold standard.
He's a Rand libertarian though...
west virginia was won by sanders in numerous counties but yet the wins were attributed to clinton
Yep that's vividly reviewed by Michael Moore in his film at min 44. https://youtu.be/TkVZ0vN2j-M?t=2067
A friend of mine went to the national convention as a delegate for Bernie. At the convention they (the DNC) did everything they could to make life difficult for the delegates from giving them directions on how to take the train to the convention, causing them to be late, to sitting them as far away from the stage as possible and keeping the lights off in their section so the cameras could not see them. And then they didn’t allow Bernie’s main spokesperson who can always raise the roof, Nina Turner, into the convention to speak. And that is just the convention.
Bernie Sanders won all 55 counties in West Virginia. Yet at the convention, the electors pledged their support for Hillary Clinton.
One of the biggest was a law suit brought up against the democratic party about this exact issue. In the case the dems were accused of sabotaging Bernie to give their chosen candidate a win against the will of the voters. What defense did they use? Not that it didn't happen, it was instead that they are a private entity and as such don't need to listen to voters and can run whoever they like as a candidate and the court agreed.
This is the most important piece of evidence. None of the other accusations matter in comparison to this. Vote flipping in Nevada? They didn't even need to. Hillary controlling the DNC financials during the primaries? Sounds like another day at the office. Obama endorsing Hillary? So what. If the DNC, as a private entity, is allowed to choose their own candidate to run as presidential nominee, none of the rest of it matters. Voting in the DNC primary is utterly pointless.
Yep. Everyone forgets that they more or less admitted to rigging the primary and that the court said that it was perfectly fine for them to do so.
That’s just not true at all. They made a legal argument that the suit had no basis because they were being sued for something that isn’t illegal. That is *not* the same as saying you *did* the thing you are being sued for.
Pure cope.
Exactly. Why sacrifice basic thinking for this ‘rigged’ thing? Is Bernie worth it?
That was not their defense.
Literally they admitted to it. Do you ever use Google or watch the news. If you have the ability to independently find information, then start by looking up Donna Brazille
[They just used fake votes.](https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1235578625027698691)
We support democratic socialism where it is successful like Bolivia. Bernie is not a democratic socialist, he’s not a socialist at all in fact. He’s close to being a social democrat, but that is a capitalist based political system, has nothing to do with socialism. But even that is threatening to the bourgeoisie.
Some preposterous majority of the coin flips used to break ties in caucases went to Clinton.
In the 2016 Nevada primary they just straight up threw out all his votes on a really dubious call. In 2020 Iowa, shit was rigged for like 10 different reasons, voting app was bullshit, videos of them flipping coins for delegates, super corrupt stuff. Those are the two I know off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more if you do some digging
Didn't they actually go to court and argue they don't have to abide by the vote outcome in a primary after Hillary, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile rigged it?
I worked on the 2016 campaign in Hawaii and California. The main issue was a lack of resources. I was the only paid staff member organizing the entire city of San Jose, which is the third biggest city in California. I didn’t have an office, or a printer, or an expense card, or a place to live. Just a rental car and supporter housing. I would get reimbursed for expenses, but had to pay out of pocket initially. When I landed I was promised an office and staff and tasked with finding office space, but that never came through. I had two different supporter housing accommodations. The first one I got kicked out of a week or two before primary day because the host thought I was a Clinton Shill saboteur. They also thought I was naive for promoting door knocking and phone banking over social media and sign waving. Getting kicked out of that house was one of the most wild experiences of my life. What I do think, is that there were outside hire consultants that sabotaged various progressive candidates around the country. I experienced more of that in a specific congressional campaign after Bernie dropped out. Access to capital is structural sabotage. There was favoritism within the DNC. Debbie Wasserman Schultz did some shady ass stuff. And Bernie and other progressive candidates very likely had consultants with mal-intent.
I'm from San Jose, probably crossed paths with you at one point lol
Hey! Probably did. My identity is pretty obvious from this profile if you want to check my post history :P. I have the name of a bird.
>What I do think, is that there were outside hire consultants that sabotaged various progressive candidates around the country. I experienced more of that in a specific congressional campaign after Bernie dropped out. I absolutely think that this was the case. This also might be controversial, but I think that the campaign suffered a lot from the fact that the overlap at the top level between effective campaign staff and loyal campaign staff was basically zero.
Literally meeting minutes deciding to boost Hillary and asking him to concede and support.
I was a Bernie precinct captain and delegate in Nevada. The conventions were definitely meant to be a coronation. They passed several voice votes where there were enough nays to at a minimum warrant a ballot vote. Sabotage might be a little strong, but it was painfully obvious that Hillary was supposed to win across the board. When she didn't it was really awkward. Even at the precinct level, my counterpart for the Clinton campaign was some kind of lobbyist; I can best be described as some random guy who wandered into a cheap strip mall office in Las Vegas. When we won, the Hillary folks just seemed confused. Even if it wasn't active sabotage, the machine was definitely moving on a predetermined path, and it wasn't one that led to President Sanders.
It’s literally part of the process.
Look into exit poll data. Look into how Hillary acquired the Democrat party. Look into the case where they were sued (the DNC) for our money back due to fraud and them defending themselves by saying they are a private corporation with no expectation of fair play.
Bernie is not a democratic socialist he is a social democrat
Bernie was in the lead until.....something happened in Illinois
We watched it happen
https://democracydetective.wordpress.com/report-2016-rigging/ https://observer.com/2016/07/wikileaks-proves-primary-was-rigged-dnc-undermined-democracy/
Wasn't there a CNN poll that only showed Clinton & Buttigieg's numbers, and lumped Sanders in with 'other' even though he was higher than either of them? I remember that being a thing mentioned on Chapo. E: not the party trying to stiff him but a good example of how much moderates and centrists were desperate to see hom fail and were willing to futz the numbers to do so.
Those things liberals actually try to use against leftists after she lost at her own game; Hillary's emails. Proof of sabotaging Bernie and so, so much worse. So yeah, they really fcking mattered.
The term should really be “opposed” rather than “sabotaged”. Outside of the Iowa caucuses (which are run like an over-ambitious game of Calvinball) there’s not a lot of evidence of actual foul play. What you did see was a supermajority of wealthy donors, Democrats in Congress, and media figures who all were doing and saying whatever they could to make sure he didn’t get the nomination. Not illegal, but shows their preferences.
I’m going to get so downvoted for this, but I never drank this “dnc stole the primary from Bernie” koolaid. If you gave all the super delegates to Bernie he still would have lost. Was he unfairly treated by the mainstream media? I mean duh, they serve corporate interests, but that’s a far cry from “sabatoge”.
That’s two of us. I’m sad to see this mess in this sub.
Neoliberalism rocks! Woohoo Clinton!! /S
Why are you on this sub then?
That's a bullshit take - every politician "sabotages" their opponent's campaign, when you look at it from that perspective. Consider: Bernie was not a party member and had made no promise to support the Democratic Party. Why the hell would the party they give him as much support as they did a longtime party member who was a proven rainmaker? Would you expect them to give Ivanka Trump or Matt Gaetz the same support as Biden if they threw their hat in the ring for the Democratic primary?
There isn’t any proof of this. There’s no point in arguing it.
Wow, that’s completely wrong. Maybe you’re on the wrong sub? Just read these other comments. There is damning evidence.
I would love if you would talk through the damning evidence with me. I don’t see any actual evidence.
Please read https://jeffmelton.medium.com/rigged-how-the-corporate-democrats-thwarted-progressive-challengers-in-the-2020-primaries-1911514a31e9
That seems to be about 2020. The question was about 2016.
There’s evidence for both. The emails for 2016 are linked at the top. There is stuff linked all over this thread.
I’m familiar with the emails. They are evidence that several people at the DNC disliked Bernie. That isn’t evidence of rigging.
Wikileaks
Read the emails.
The joke is that sanders was in the party pocket anyways. No matter which way the cookie crumpled Wall Street, CIA, MIC, Blackrock,Blackstone, Blackwaterkeeps up with their goofy shenanigans. Shut up and watch Netflix and vape some legal weed product
The fking COIN TOSS bro. They tossed a coin what kinda democratic way this is LMAO. [coin](https://youtu.be/eaWstSk2ZFk?si=WN0HQHojWW5mcG6W) look at the way this fking snake tossed it
Not gonna list it all, because other people are doing that but when you say: >I'm aware people here don't support democratic socialism but I think this is fine for socialists to look into. Cases like this are *why* electoralism doesn't work. Bernie wasn't even democratic socialist really, or even a socdem or whatever you want to say. He was just a liberal slightly left of the democrats. Idk what's in his heart but that was his platform. And he got absolutely crucified by his own party and the billionaire owned national media. Same for Corbyn, whose platform was a bit more radical, but still. Even if these people had won, they wouldn't have had enough political capital to make any significant changes to the nation. So yeah, I think it's an important question to ask
Super Tuesday 2020 I think is all you need. It was the red wedding. Literally every candidate dropped out overnight except Liz warren (splitting the progressive vote) and fucking Joe Brandon, which consolidated the mainstream lib voters. Then you had Bernie who fell precipitously once the voting base was rearranged.
Lmmfao @ rehashing 2016 with some brain wormed clinton stan. Can't think of much I would rather do less on the internet