(July 28, 2016 at 1:56 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote: (My emphasis.) Fixed that for you, unless you have some evidence for thinking Hillary was in league with the party but Bernie was not.
Have you seen the email leaks from the DNC? Lots of DNC officials talking and plotting about how to sabotage the Sanders campaign, not so much (at all) for trying to make Clinton appear bad. Also, check up on how the burden of proof works. I'm not making a claim about Sanders, I'm making a claim about the DNC and Clinton, which I have evidence for. If you think Sanders was in league with the DNC, that is your claim, and it is up to you to provide the proof.
(July 28, 2016 at 1:56 pm)Minimalist Wrote: This is not about Sanders anymore, Brian. It's about them. They didn't win so they want to take their ball and go home.
No, it's about fair elections / primaries. The DNC has rules which state that officials have to be impartial during the primary process. The email leaks are evidence that they were anything but. The behavior during the primaries was further evidence of this, and now the ex-chair of the DNC stepped down and was immediately hired by the Clinton campaign.
(July 28, 2016 at 1:57 pm)Brian37 Wrote: No they did not. Do you know how many individuals in every state are involved in the voting process? Thousands, if not several thousand. Now, if it were so fucking "rigged" as you claim, then why would Bernie himself not say "fuck it, I am running third party".
There are plenty of ways the DNC rigged the primaries against Sanders without the need for thousands of individuals to be involved. As the email leaks revealed, there was collusion with the media, there were plans to get journalists to ask questions about his religious beliefs. The chair of the DNC was supposed to be impartial, and was anything but. The debates were limited and half of them were scheduled for the weekend when not many people were watching, meaning candidates that were less well known didn't get proper exposure. Even Politifact thought this was suspect: http://www.politifact.com/florida/statem...ie-wasser/
The DNC didn't need to enlist the help of thousands, they only needed a few in well positioned places. Though, as a recent report has highlighted, there may have been instances of voter fraud which denied Sanders a sizable chunk of delegates too.
As for why Sanders isn't running third party, I think he summed that up himself. He doesn't want Trump, and he knows that Clinton is the best chance to defeat Trump. He could run third party, but that would guarantee a Trump victory. However, that doesn't mean all his supporters have to vote the way he is, and some of his supporters were independents who don't feel an obligation to vote Democrat just because they supported a Democrat in the primaries.
Quote:He got several major rule changes and platform issues done. Primaries in BOTH parties are messy and words are always exchanged prior to the nomination within the same camps.
It's great that the DNC made several rule changes and included progressive platform issues. What's not so great is that Clinton has a history of flip flopping, so some of us don't actually trust that she'll follow through with these issues once elected. A President has no legal requirement to follow the party platform once elected.
Quote:BERNIE was not wrong with his complaints, but it is absurd to call it a conspiracy, even backed off calling it rigged, but called it simply a bad set up. Of course people have their favorites in primaries. And even in the GOP there were words exchanged between Trump and Cruz and Bush. Yea it is fucking ugly sometimes. But still, I find it hypocritical to support Bernie, then not follow his lead at this point.
It's not absurd to call it a conspiracy when there are emails which demonstrate a conspiracy. This is not about having favorites in the primaries; it is about DNC officials actively trying to sabotage the Sanders campaign in favor of Clinton's. Words exchanged between Trump and Cruz and Bush are words exchanged between candidates, not official RNC officers. If emails leak from the RNC which show that party officials tried to undermine Trump's campaign, that would be a conspiracy as well.
Supporting Bernie means I think he is the best person to be the nominee. I don't think it's hypocritical to not agree with him about who I should support when he loses is. His vote is his vote. My vote is my vote. He has reasons for voting Clinton, and I have reasons for voting third party.
(July 28, 2016 at 1:59 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Hillary swamped Bernie with votes, there is no way it can be called rigged. Even with a flawed process, which you could argue, the total votes even if we gave Bernie the math some claim he should have had, Hillary still won the popular vote.
It's rigged in the sense that Clinton was pushed as the favorite by the DNC (against their own rules), and the other campaigns were given limited exposure in order for Clinton to be the main candidate. I'm not arguing the DNC completely undermined the voting, but they certainly helped limit the exposure that non-Clinton candidates got in the run up to the primaries, and also during them.
Even if Clinton won the popular vote, again, that's not how the nominee is elected. Like it or not, but popular vote isn't used in the USA for electing Presidents or nominees for the Democratic party. Winning a primary by one vote, can in some cases, give you a lot more delegates than the loser. As I've said before, there was a report released the other day which found that as many as 183 delegates could have been assigned to Sanders, but weren't due to various reasons, including voter suppression among other things.
