Red White & Blind

You’d be forgiven for feeling like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day right now. Not only is it early February, but it probably feels as if you lived through the 2016 primary, went to sleep for several years, and then woke up right back at the beginning of 2016.

As happened so many times during that primary, this past week a small state held an election that should have been efficient, clean, and fair, with a minimum of fuss and mistakes, but instead turned into a godawful “debacle” full of “irregularities” that mostly harmed the chances of one candidate, Bernie Sanders. And just like in that 2016 primary, some watchers of this new 2020 primary see that “debacle” as the result of incompetence, others see mere coincidences, and others see outright conspiracy and fraud.

What everyone agrees on is that this was a disaster for democracy that should never happen again.

Let’s break down this very first election of 2020 so we can determine whether it is fundamentally a conspiracy, gross incompetence, or coincidences that are to blame. We’ll begin with a list of everything we know, in chronological order. If you’re in a hurry, you can scroll down to the heading “Coincidence, Incompetence, or Conspiracy?” for my conclusions.

A Timeline of the Things We Know

2019

Spring 2019. The DNC and party upper establishment indicate for months that they would strongly prefer Bernie Sanders not be the nominee. (source, source)

Summer 2019. The Pete Buttigieg campaign participates in at least one of several “Stop Bernie” private meetings in the spring and summer of 2019. The Biden, Warren, and Klobuchar campaigns do not appear to participate in these meetings. (source, source)
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Like christmas trees in windows and jack o’lanterns on front porches, your mailbox swelling with political mail signifies the arrival of a particular season of the year: election season. If you’re living in California, this bizarrely inspiring time is here once again.

I’ve written very little politically since the (unfortunate) political turns of 2016 and the (fortunate) arrival of my son, so take these voting recommendations with a grain of salt and a sprinkle of curiosity. In fact, I don’t have a particularly cheerful outlook on our political situation right now, and, worse, the reasons to believe that your vote will be counted fairly are decreasing, but I’ll discuss that at the end of this piece.

First, I do recommend you vote, and to see how I’ll be voting in Tuesday’s June Primary, please view my full guide here.

A quick test to understand your viewpoint in today’s bizarre political media landscape.

It was a political year in which up was often down, and right masqueraded frequently as left. The year 2016 then wrapped up with a steady stream of diametrically opposed media stories all clamoring for recognition as “the truth.”

The mainstream media featured incessant talk of “fake news,” and pundits propounded conspiracy theories about Russians hacking email servers. The independent media continued to analyze piles of evidence showing collusion on the part of the mainstream media and the two political parties who ran the worst presidential campaign in modern American politics.

With all this news and theory swirling around, some of which must be false, it has become difficult to know at any one time whether you’re reading the news correctly, whether you’re seeing the role of the media itself clearly, or whether there’s a Matrix-like veil obscuring your comprehension of national events.

Here’s a quick test to determine whether

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Evidence of election fraud always starts with exit polls.

Exit polls are the most important polls the media commissions. Throughout this fifty-state 2016 Democratic primary between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the exit polls have shown again and again that the way people have voted, on the one hand, and the way the computerized counting machines have recorded votes, on the other hand, have differed significantly.

If you’re unfamiliar with exit polls, they are rigorous scientific instruments used throughout the world as a primary deterrent and safeguard against election fraud. While a few media pundits have written that exit polls only provide informal data for election-day media stories, that is far from their only purpose.

In Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, for instance, exit polls have been used to overturn elections. In Ukraine, when the recorded vote differed from the exit polls by more than 2%, people immediately knew something was amiss, there were protests in the streets, and the entire election was thrown out. The US State Department itself dubbed that Ukraine election fraudulent based largely on the variance from the exit polls. The State Department considers 2% to be the standard margin of error allowed for an election to be considered fair and authentic.

But for elections here in this country — even one involving a former head of the State Department itself — exit polls have been ignored by elections officials and the corporate media if they differ from the reported results. In state after state, (more…)

Mounting evidence indicates corruption and a stolen election.

Let us not mince words California. This has been a disgusting month for democracy here in our state. A massively important election was probably stolen via voter suppression and election fraud, and Hillary Clinton was prematurely named the winner. Are we going to stand for it?

Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters will all fight on, to the convention in July, and beyond. Sanders has made this clear during his speeches.

But the truth is, he shouldn’t have to fight on, at least not like this.

On June 7, Sanders not only won North Dakota and Montana, he probably also won California, as well as South Dakota and New Mexico.

It appears that the media, together with someone high up in the Democratic National Committee, conspired to, first, call the entire nomination on June 6, a day no one voted, and then to take advantage of cancelled exit polls — an essential check against fraud — to steal the election.

Worse, California seems to be another state in a string of suspicious elections.

For those of us who remain patriots, who still deeply treasure democracy, who remember the millions of people all over the world who have laid down their lives for this precious thing — the right to vote — we are at a crucial moment. (more…)

The most popular politician in the country is up against all three facets of the American political power structure, and he has already defeated two.

After weeks of inspiration and joy, there was anger and sadness this past week in the Bernie Sanders movement. After historic rallies throughout the state, Hillary Clinton’s apparent victory in New York left millions in the movement wondering whether it was the corporate media or the Democratic National Committee that was screwing them over. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but it’s a third culprit who deserves their scorn.

Yes, the DNC has actively worked to rig this primary for Hillary Clinton, by minimizing and delaying the debates, by counting superdelegates as if they vote before July’s convention, and by surreptitiously funneling money to her campaign that was solicited for down-ticket candidates.

Yes, there have also been countless instances of blatant propaganda in the corporate media, most galling perhaps the ones appearing daily in the New York Times and NPR — the so-called “N-axis” — where many thoughtful urban Democrats get their news. So tendentious has Paul Krugman become, for instance, one can only assume he’s angling for a position in a Hillary Clinton cabinet

But the Bernie movement has it’s own sources of news, thanks to the Internet you’re using right now, and the campaign has its own sources of funds, too, thanks to the number 27.

The Elephant in the Room

The obstacle that the movement has to confront right now is something else: the voting system itself. (more…)