Ctrl - F Sanders
0 results. Hadn't Hilary been dishonest and, as much as I hate the word, crooked enough to not allow Bernie to face Trump, this wouldn't have happened.
0 results. Hadn't Hilary been dishonest and, as much as I hate the word, crooked enough to not allow Bernie to face Trump, this wouldn't have happened.
I could also see an Elizabeth Warren / Joe Biden ticket doing well against Trump.
This article in Current Affairs turns out to be prophetic: http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrat...
> By biasing its internal electoral market the DNC selected the less competitive candidate defeating the purpose of running a primary.
Hillary, the DNC, and all their cronies deserved this. I would've voted for any Democrat who won the primary fair and square, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for someone who stole an election (and from one of the most well-liked candidates of all time, no less). Many of my friends felt the same way -- they either stayed home, voted 3rd party, or voted without selecting a presidential candidate.
The fact that they tried to bully/guilt everyone into voting for her didn't help much either.
But that article I linked is literally full of email chains which show the DNC clearly favoring Clinton. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows...
The DNC played favorites from the beginning, and sanders supporters aren't too thrilled. Let's not forget that the DNC chief resigned over this.
Moreover, none of the emails show the Clinton campaign influencing the DNC to rig the election, which is what was originally claimed (that she somehow stole the primaries to the tune of a 4 million vote victory).
Also, yes, Clinton did win most of the votes. And as of now it looks like she won the popular vote too. I don't doubt that she's more popular.
But take a look at the states where Sanders did well vs where Clinton did well...
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/national-results-map
Then take a look at which states she lost to Trump...
You may believe that the DNC wasn't 100% fair in the primaries, but nothing in their emails suggests they applied their own biases to changing the rules in favor of Clinton, so that belief is not supported by evidence.
There is a secondary issue that maybe Sanders would have performed better in the general election than Clinton did. It's hard to do this kind of counterfactual analysis, but I disagree. Despite the media's horse race story, Clinton was so far ahead in votes and polling that she was never in danger of losing the primaries and so didn't throw the kitchen sink of "scandals" at Sanders. Had the race been closer, you would have seen these "scandals," and you certainly would have seen them had Sanders run against Trump (https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...). More than that though, if progressive icon Russ Feingold couldn't win in Wisconsin, Sanders didn't stand a chance either.
Clinton did win most of the votes in the primary but I'm not going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't use her connections to help her campaign. That article by the way came out in June, before the DNC leaks in July.
Yes, I think it is hard to play "what if" history. It's been a few days and I've basically accepted President Trump. It'll help a lot of folks in this country, even if those folks aren't me.
How did he lose 4 million votes? Most of that can be found in the DNC emails, among other places. There was a huge media campaign smear against him (led by the DNC itself), massive amounts of donations were funneled in ethically questionable manners into the Hillary campaign, stealing money from state tickets. People were hired in a black flag op to discredit his supporters.
I'm sure the list goes further.
However, I do think one of his biggest issues was that he wasn't a member of the team. I saw it first hand at the caucus; members making references to the fact that she was a life-long democrat, as if it was actually important. Republicans certainly got over that quickly.
Still, if the DNC had played fair with Bernie, I think that two million votes flipping isn't so far fetched.
There is no evidence of the DNC running a smear campaign against Sanders.
> Massive amounts of donations were funneled in ethically questionable manners into the Hillary campaign.
You're presumably referring to the Hillary Victory Fund here. You can see on the donation page (still up: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/donate/go/) that the first $X of contributions goes to the Clinton primary campaign, the next $Y goes to the Clinton general campaign, the next $Z goes to the DNC, and the final money gets distributed to the state committees. The issue wasn't that the money was going into the Clinton campaigns but that it was going to the DNC instead of the state committees. The DNC's excuse was that they were using it to build common campaign infrastructure for use by the state committees.
> People were hired in a black flag op to discredit his supporters.
There is no evidence of a black flag or false flag operation against Sanders.
In summary, there is no evidence that the DNC sabotaged Sanders, yet he still lost by millions of votes, so the claim that he is one of the most well-liked candidates of all time goes against the actual voting data.