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.
