Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Owe The Democratic Party A Damned Thing

By Tom Cahill

Bernie Sanders brought millions of new people into the Democratic Party, including young people, independents, and first-time voters. But what has the Democratic Party done in return?

Now that all states and territories have voted (with the exception of Washington, D.C.) and Hillary Clinton has emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee, the pressure is mounting for the Vermont senator to drop out and endorse Hillary Clinton, and for his supporters to fall in line and vote for the candidate the establishment pre-selected before anyone got a chance to vote.

The media never gave Bernie a chance

Months before Bernie Sanders announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton had used the powerful connections her family has long had to Democratic Party insiders to virtually secure the nomination with an insurmountable lead in superdelegates. This led to the establishment media crowning Clinton as the “uncontested” nominee, who was “poised to win the Democratic nomination without a serious contest.”

Just as the media hammered Clinton’s inevitability into our heads, cable news networks essentially ignored the tremendous energy behind Sanders’ campaign, like his August 2015 West Coast barnstorming rallies, which drew out nearly 100,000 supporters in Washington, Oregon, and California.

However, as the GDELT Project’s 2016 Campaign Television Tracker shows, the highest number of media mentions Bernie Sanders got in a single day that week was 479 on August 13, 2015. That same day, Hillary Clinton got 693 media mentions, a relatively average number of media mentions for Clinton, despite her not holding any mega-rallies. Sanders didn’t break 1,000 media mentions until October of 2015, the day after the first Democratic primary debate. Throughout the course of the primary cycle, Clinton got nearly twice as much media coverage as Sanders.

As Vox recently pointed out, the media plays a significant role in influencing group-think. By establishing Hillary Clinton as the undisputed nominee before anyone got a chance to vote, the media influenced future media coverage of Sanders, portraying Sanders as a non-serious candidate whose chances of toppling Clinton were virtually impossible:

There’s no doubt that the media was largely dismissive of Sanders’s chances from the beginning of the race, even before the first vote was cast, and in a way that severely underestimated his potential to raise funds, stay in the race, and keep winning states long after earlier insurgent candidates had been forced to close up shop.

Even Media Matters, which is run by Clinton attack dog David Brock, published an article at the end of 2015 showing that ABC World News Tonight devoted less than 60 seconds of coverage to Sanders’ campaign throughout the entire year. The Tyndall Report, which tracks media coverage, learned that Bernie Sanders earned fewer than ten minutes of combined prime time news coverage on flagship cable news networks in 2015. CBS Evening News gave Sanders 6.4 minutes of coverage, and NBC Nightly News gave him just 2.9 minutes.

There’s little doubt Sanders’ chances of winning would have dramatically improved had the media given the Vermont senator the same amount of coverage as the former Secretary of State leading up to the first primaries and caucuses. But once Sanders started winning, the Democratic establishment and the Clinton machine (which are arguably one in the same) began working overtime to not only slander Bernie Sanders and his supporters, but to actively stack the deck against him.

The Democratic establishment actively opposed Bernie Sanders

When Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz rolled out the debate schedule for the Democratic primary, Sanders supporters were outraged that only six had been scheduled, while the Republicans scheduled ten. Three of the Democratic debates were scheduled on weekends, when Americans are least likely to be inside, watching television. On two occasions, the Democratic debates competed with major cultural events, like NFL playoff games.
Wasserman Schultz said her debate schedule was meant to maximize viewer exposure to the candidates, which Politifact rated as “False.”  The fact-checking website put two charts side by side, showing that viewership for the Republican debates (nearly all of which were scheduled at prime time, on weekdays) dwarfed viewership for the Democratic debates:

 

Democratic debate ratings

Republican debate ratings

Near the end of 2015, Wasserman Schultz unilaterally acted to remove the Sanders campaign’s access to the DNC voter files, which contains all the crucial information campaigns need to conduct effective voter outreach. The DNC claimed the Sanders campaign improperly accessed information belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and suspended access to the 50-state file with just weeks to go before the pivotal Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary until the Sanders campaign proved it had destroyed all the data improperly accessed.

Even though the Sanders campaign insisted it had informed the DNC of the security breach allowing opposing campaigns to access their opponent’s data, and that there was no visible way to prove it had destroyed data it no longer had, the DNC refused to budge until massive pressure from Sanders supporters forced the DNC’s hand.

When Sanders started beating Hillary Clinton in campaign fundraising, Wasserman Schultz and the DNC took drastic action to try and tilt the money advantage back to Clinton by repealing a rule limiting contributions from Wall Street and corporate lobbyists, originally put in place by Barack Obama.

Several months later, it was revealed that Hillary Clinton and the DNC exploited loopholes in campaign finance law to allow wealthy oligarchs to contribute far beyond the maximum allowable limit to the Clinton campaign. While the maximum amount an individual donor can give in an election cycle is just $2,700, the Hillary Victory Fund (Clinton’s joint fundraising committee) was able to solicit six-figure contributions from billionaires like Walmart heiress Alice Walton as long as the money was given back to the DNC.

While the money was ostensibly meant for state Democratic parties to spend in down-ballot races, the money often went right back to the Hillary Victory Fund after passing through the accounts of state parties. The Victory Fund spent much of this money on efforts that singularly helped Hillary Clinton, rather than the party as a whole. The Bernie Sanders campaign criticized this arrangement as a violation of federal law. As US Uncut reported in early May, 99 percent of the funds meant for state parties had been hoarded by the Clinton campaign.

And of course, Bernie Sanders’ delegates were openly disenfranchised at the Nevada Democratic Convention after Roberta Lange, the state party chair, disqualified enough Sanders delegates to give Hillary Clinton the advantage, and refused to hear appeals from those she disqualified. Additionally, the DNC never made any efforts to correct the lie from lame duck California senator Barbara Boxer — who casually mocked Bernie Sanders’ delegates from the convention floor — that she was physically threatened by Sanders’ supporters.

When looking at all of these instances, it’s hard to argue the Democratic establishment wasn’t working overtime to help Clinton defeat Sanders by any means necessary, despite claims it was neutral in the primary.

The DNC turned a blind eye to rampant voter suppression

The Democratic primary was especially rife with reports of election fraud and major irregularities in multiple contests. However, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz remained seemingly indifferent in each instance, whether it was longtime Democrats’ voter registration mysteriously changing in the Arizona primary, making them ineligible to vote, Bill Clinton violating electioneering laws in Massachusetts, mass purging of voter rolls and forged signatures on voter registrations in the New York primary, and the Chicago elections board erasing votes for Sanders and adding votes for Clinton.

All of these instances fed the narrative that the Democratic primary was rigged against Sanders to benefit Clinton, and the DNC has acted with little urgency to bring accountability to the process. Even though New York’s Democratic attorney general and New York City’s Democratic city comptroller both announced official investigations into the irregularities pervading the voting process, Wasserman Schultz made zero mention of it in her statement following the New York primary.

The Democratic establishment will scapegoat Sanders and his supporters for a Clinton loss in November

Bernie Sanders has, for months now, polled better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. Electoral college maps drawn up by RealClearPolitics, using statewide polling averages, show that Sanders leads Trump by 93 electoral votes with 139 toss-ups, while Clinton only leads Trump by 30 electoral votes, with 180 toss-ups.

RealClearPolitics’ general election map for a Trump/Clinton matchup.

RealClearPolitics’ general election map for a Trump/Sanders matchup.

As the maps above show, Sanders is the stronger general election candidate for a number of reasons. Traditionally blue states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Oregon are swing states if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, while Sanders wins those states outright along with New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, both of which are perennial swing states. Meanwhile, traditionally red states like Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, and Utah are toss-ups if Sanders is the nominee. Missouri and Indiana are almost guaranteed to go Republican if Clinton is the nominee.

Despite this crucial data, the Democratic establishment will blame a Trump presidency on Bernie Sanders and his followers for not getting behind Clinton for the sake of party unity. Pundits have been arguing since May that Sanders staying in the race is harming Clinton’s chances to win in November, despite polls showing that Clinton is the riskier bet as a nominee. Public Policy Polling is already preemptively blaming Sanders supporters for a tight general election race in Pennsylvania, suggesting that a Clinton loss in the Keystone State would be Sanders’ fault.

The one way the establishment can unite the party before November

The truth is, the establishment is desperately hoping Sanders’ supporters will be bullied into supporting Clinton, as the sheer numbers behind the #BernieOrBust movement has the potential to swing the general election, given Clinton’s obvious vulnerabilities in the electoral college. But the Democratic Party has an easy solution to rally Sanders’ supporters behind their chosen candidate. All the party has to do is ban corporate lobbyists from the DNC, abolish the undemocratic superdelegate system, run on Sanders’ policy proposals like a $15/hour national minimum wage, tuition-free public college, and single-payer health care, divorce itself from Wall Street and the military-industrial complex, and actively work to remove the influence of big money in politics.

The Democratic Party establishment has proven for decades that they are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and do whatever it takes to acquire more power. When confronted on its abuse of power, the establishment assures us it will change for the better as long as we continue to enable it with our money and support. If the Democratic Party refuses to adopt the changes listed above, Sanders’ supporters have the numbers, the money, and the justification to form a new, independent political party and break the Democratic Party for good.