2020 Is Hindsight

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

“This is outrageous. These conspiracy theories divide our party. Our criteria reflects the actual votes in two states and broad support through polling. Period.” - DNC Comms Director Xochitl Hinojosa

"To now change the rules in the middle of the game to accommodate Mike Bloomberg, who is trying to buy his way into the Democratic nomination, is wrong… That's the definition of a rigged system where the rich can buy their way in." - Jeff Weaver, senior Sanders campaign advisor

Or at least, it should be.

   Thanks to Citizen's United, Big Money is transparently saturating politics on both sides of the illusory Great Ideological Divide to such an extent that Deep Throat's famous advice to Woodward and Bernstein of "Follow the money" is no longer necessary. We know where the money's coming from and in whose pockets it wound up. The DNC even thanked Bloomberg for his money in a press conference. What money you may ask?

   Last December, Bloomberg gave $10,000,000 to House Democrats targeted by the GOP during the impeachment proceedings. Then, two days before announcing his vanity candidacy, Bloomberg bribed the DNC to the tune of $319,500 over three rapid-fire disbursements and, to hedge even more bets, kicked another $500,000 to the "Democratic" Party at the same time he launched his bid. So, for any of you neophytes and casual observers out there still wondering how a guy who blew off the Iowa Caucus (The Iowa Democratic Party got ten grand of Bloomberg's bribe money even though he skipped the caucus) and New Hampshire Primary last week could still make the debate stage last night in Vegas, I can think of ten million eight hundred thousand of them.

    Since Bloomberg's campaign is self-funded and wouldn't have otherwise stood a chance at qualifying, the DNC found it necessary to change the rules for the billionaire media mogul so he could qualify for the debate stage and, unlike the other five candidates, didn't have to meet a certain threshold of unique donors or fundraising goals. In other words, in an unintentional parody of Ronald Reagan's, "I paid for this microphone!", Bloomberg essentially bought the debate.

     Aside from this allegedly harmless reprise of Operation Varsity Blues, the money doesn't appear to be well spent. This far, Bloomberg has saturated the air waves with a relentless campaign ad blitz that's already turning off voters that's cost him another $420,000,000 and he's still trailing Bernie in all ten states polled recently (in which Bernie's leading in all ten).

    The problem is, Bloomberg jumped into the race just as it was beginning to shed some serious deadwood and bringing the field back up to eight. With so many proven losers like Biden, alsorans and poseurs, it all but guarantees a brokered convention in Milwaukee this July, which would virtually spell doom for Bernie's campaign. It would be the political equivalent of luring animals into a slaughterhouse and oleaginously promising to draw straws, with Bernie guaranteed to get the short straw and the bolt gun to the head.

     And if the field remains this logged-jammed until July, it'll be all but impossible for any candidates to get the necessary 1991 delegates, the bare majority, which would automatically trigger a brokered convention. And to give you proof that the fix is already well underway, Pete Buttigieg, who won neither Iowa or New Hampshire, is leading all the Democrats with 23 pledged delegates, with Bernie, the guy leading in all ten states polled and had been polled as leading in Iowa and New Hampshire, grudgingly given 21.

     You want to know what a brokered convention in Milwaukee would be like? Imagine the chimp enclosure at a zoo when feeding time's about 12 hours late. There's your brokered convention. It would make the Republican-sponsored 2016 "Democratic" convention look like a round of Kumbaya followed by a warm group shower.

Citizens Disunited

The shit show that was the 2016 convention may well serve as mere prologue for what's to follow. In the city where, ironically, the Continental Congress met and ratified world-changing documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and created representative democracy, showed little of that democratic spirit but plenty of Republican intent and tactics.

    Team Clinton (aka the DNC), plainly wasn't content with colluding with CNN on debate questions, accepting PAC money from shadowy Super PACs and Wall Street firms and the long-established complicity of the shockingly corrupt super delegates.
     No, Team Clinton hedged all its bets right up to the counts taken on the convention floor as Bernie delegates were shouted down, credentials stripped from those holding up anti-TPP signs, doors locked during speeches to prevent walkouts and noise suppressors installed in the convention center on the third and final day to drown out the protests of those Sanders delegates who were literally thrown out of their seats to be replaced with paid actors. Only Clinton loyalists were allowed near the stage and the mainstream media complied with misleading tight shots in a pathetic attempt to manufacture consensus.

     The closest we've come elsewhere to seeing anything like that was in the election day scenes in Gangs of New York, in which people were shown voting several times and when Bill Cutter beat to death a newly-elected sheriff. You want to know how right wing and spectacularly corrupt the current "Democratic" Party is these days? Look no further than Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall of 1863.

     Well, Clinton's out of the game now after suffering the stigma of losing an election that should've been a cakewalk to a glorified game show host and beauty pageant owner who gloried in being a walking moral septic tank. Clinton spends her days inveighing against Sanders and Bernie Bros, the most overrated bleacher bum on the planet, in a spiteful vendetta not seen since, well, the current squatter in the Oval Office.

     And Bloomberg promises more of the same. He's the "centrist" that neatly slimed his way into Hillary's place as the guy to beat while NeverBerners, the MSM and the "Democratic" establishment continues stumbling in their marvelous Frank Capra dream world in which Bernie Sanders was never born and the Pottersville of a world with Sanders is replaced with a gauzy Bedford Falls that never will be.

     The question from last night shouldn't be, "Who won the debate?" It should, instead, be, "Who lost it?" Well, I'll leave you to judge for yourself, Constant Reader, but my opinion is it was the one who didn't earn his way on that debate stage and had to bribe the "Democratic" Party for the privilege of standing there.