[rad-green] The Democratic Party, Not Russia, Has Delegitimized the Democratic Process

*https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/04/its-the-dnc-stupid-democratic-party-not-russia-has-delegitimized-the-democratic-process/
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/04/its-the-dnc-stupid-democratic-party-not-russia-has-delegitimized-the-democratic-process/>*


*Consortium News          November 4, 2019*

It’s the DNC, Stupid: Democratic Party, Not Russia, Has Delegitimized the
Democratic Process
*With the U.S. presidential cycle gearing up, Elizabeth Vos takes stock of
lessons from 2016. *

*By Elizabeth Vos <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/elizabeth-vos/>*
*Special to Consortium News*

*Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project
blame for the public’s doubt <https://www.washingtonpost.com/> in the U.S.
election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the
party’s subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the
Democratic Party establishment’s willingness to address even one of these
critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process
in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.*

The Democratic Party’s bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016
presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down
on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the
DNC
<https://www.courthousenews.com/bernie-sanders-backers-battle-dnc-in-11th-circuit/>,
as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the
U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment.
Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of
the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will
also likely impact outcomes in 2020.

The content of the DNC <https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/> and Podesta
<https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/> emails published by *WikiLeaks
*demonstrated
that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016
Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters
acting as surrogates <http://archive.is/d1FiG> of the DNC and its
pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP
primary process as a preferred “pied-piper candidate
<http://archive.is/HSDVz>.” One cannot assume that similar evidence will be
presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take
stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a
2016 Democratic primary debate. (YouTube/Screen shot)

*Social Media Meddling*

Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a
different guise and for a different cause from that which are best
remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing
<http://archive.is/5HhMM> hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails
in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional reports
<https://youtu.be/PPxmJIduADc> indicated that tech giant Google also showed
measurable “pro-Hillary Clinton bias” in search results during 2016,
resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in
favor of Clinton.

On the Republican side, a recent episode of *CNLive!*
<https://youtu.be/lUIe1U5_yYk> featured discussion of the Cambridge
Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with
tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big data and
artificial intelligence known collectively as “dark strategy.”
*CNLive! *Executive
Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company,
provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military
organizations “worldwide,” specializing in behavior modification. Though
Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.

The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race.
The barely-legal
<http://archive.is/RXUfB#selection-1555.219-1555.316>activities
of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported <http://archive.is/TqLex> by
this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an
online “troll army <https://archive.is/wn6Lg>” under the name Shareblue.
The *LA Times* <https://archive.is/ZagLg#selection-379.0-379.174> described
the project as meant to “to appear to be coming organically from people and
their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it
is highly paid and highly tactical.” In other words, the effort attempted
to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.

In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City
Board of Elections was shown to have purged <http://archive.is/7aTF3> over
one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before
the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal
law <https://archive.is/1PPs0#selection-1147.1-1147.189>. Despite this, no
prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.

Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the
admission falls in line with allegations across the country that the
Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former
secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered by reports
<http://archive.is/mQXoQ>  indicating that voting results from the 2016
Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.

*DNC Fraud Lawsuit*

“Bernie or Bust” protesters at the Wells Fargo Center during Democrats’
roll call vote to nominate Hillary Clinton. (Becker1999, CC BY 2.0,
Wikimedia Commons)

The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence
of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially within the
Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the
party’s right
to appoint candidates <http://archive.is/gikTu> at its own discretion,
while simultaneously denying any “fiduciary duty” to represent the voters
who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would
act impartially towards the candidates involved.

In 2017, the *Observer* <http://archive.is/OxCeu> reported that the DNC’s
defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders’
supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders’ supporters knew the
process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral
and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC’s lawyers argued that
it was the party’s right to select candidates.

The *Observer *noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney
representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:

…“People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary
elections for the Democratic nominee —nominating process in 2016 were fair
and impartial, and that’s not just a bedrock assumption that we would
assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we
assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But
that’s what the Democratic National Committee’s own charter says. It says
it in black and white.”

The DNC defense counsel’s argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud
lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party’s right to favor
one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such
favoritism was protected by the First Amendment <http://archive.is/5dgYD>.
The DNC’s lawyers wrote:

“To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run
directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the
central and critical *First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties,
especially when it comes to selecting the party’s nominee for public office*.”
[Emphasis added]

The DNC’s shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most
fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic.  This no indication that the
DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,

*Tim Canova’s Allegations*

Tim Canova with supporters, April 2016. (CanovaForCongress, CC BY-SA 4.0,
Wikimedia Commons)

If Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and
her forced 2016 resignation wasn’t enough, serious interference was also
alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor
Tim Canova in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman
Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a
2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent.

Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot
destruction <https://archive.is/a9Po9#selection-183.0-205.204>, improper
transportation
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T0Is5AZW9M&feature=youtu.be> of ballots,
and generally shameless
<http://archive.is/noVhm#selection-849.0-863.108> displays
of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race
against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for
irregularities, as the *Sun-Sentinel*
<https://archive.is/a9Po9#selection-183.0-205.204> reported at the time:

“[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took
Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months later when her
office hadn’t fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the
ballots in September, signing a certification that said no court cases
involving the ballots were pending.”

Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding
that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless,
Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the
2018 midterms.

Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the
Democrats, with  *The Nation*
<http://archive.is/mRSMZ#selection-1789.129-1795.42> reporting that the
GOP-controlled Senate blocked a bill this week that would have “mandated
paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions.”

*Study of Corporate Power*

A 2014 study
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B>
published
by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting
rights of the public: “Economic elites and organized groups representing
business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government
policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little
or no independent influence.”

In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party
establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect voters and
outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their
right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We’ve noted that interests
transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election
integrity as demonstrated in 2016.

Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the
legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing and real threats
to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents
a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign the perception of the legitimacy
of the U.S. democratic process.

Hillary Clinton’s recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi
Gabbard is being “groomed” by Russia, and that the former Green Party
Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a “Russian asset”, were soon
echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard
called <https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1185289626409406464> the
“rot” in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation
across the planet.

*Newsweek* <http://archive.is/vMWFT> provided a particularly glaring
example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed
Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In
an op-ed titled: *“*Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect
Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent,” Jamali argued
<http://archive.is/vMWFT#selection-427.582-427.746>:

“Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use
her as a tool to *delegitimize the democratic process.*” [Emphasis added]

Jamali surmises that Russia intends to “attack” our democracy by
undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis is
repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines <http://archive.is/vMWFT>:
“They want to see a retreat of American influence. What better way to
accomplish that than to attack our democracy by *casting doubt on the
legitimacy of our elections.” *[Emphasis added]

The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify
his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment Democrat Neera
Tanden), is the  *perception *of the democratic process, not the actual
functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics ensure that Russia will
continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for silencing
domestic dissent <http://archive.is/EtGqR> as we move into 2020.

Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary
— or even the general election – to be any fairer or transparent than 2016?

*Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular
contributor to Consortium News. *

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