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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

They clamor for justice behind Donald Trump though. He’s used the mass’ frustrations to his own end, and they loved it enough to vote him into power.

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To be fair a lot were clamoring behind Bernie Sanders. But Hillary bent the DNC to do some fairly corrupt shit and so you got Trump. The democrats are still trapped by this neolib-technocrat-west-wing fantasy-land where the best person at debating wins regardless of the fact they don’t actually stand for anything.

What corrupt shit? What specific action did the DNC do that caused Bernie to lose?

Hillary won like every southern state, the Bernie folks are living in fantasy land if they think the DNC could control that outcome.

She won due to superdelegates and DNC corruption as well as media capture. The fact that Bernie did as well as he did in the face of this is a testament to how bad of a candidate she was.

Why should the superdelegates have flipped their votes against the popular vote? This makes no sense.

The only way Bernie would have won is if he convinced superdelegates from states that came out for Clinton to go against the popular vote in their state and erroneously vote for him. He still would have lost with no superdelegates, or if their votes were awarded to their state's primary winner.

Fantasy land.

Superdelegates shouldn't have existed in the first place. It's antidemocratic.

You are the epitomy of what happened during the election - bullying and deciding on how the election should go for others.

All the media and political establishment took Hillary's side. If they treated them equally he would have won.

Sanders would still have lost if there were no superdelegates.

Superdelegates weren't the only thing against him, as said in this exact thread.

This article is making it's rounds. It implies that Hillary had control of the DNC and "bailed it out": https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-b...

I saw some defenses of Hillary's actions (i.e. the 'bailout' was an ultimately good act, done to strengthen the DNC, proving her commitment to defeat Trump and protect progressivism etc.) which doubles as a cynical defense of Putin/Russian oligarch money in tech (it keeps Silicon Valley running and adding to US employment numbers)

The specific actions the DNC took to cause Bernie to lose includes: 1) They chose to put the debate between Hillary and Bernie at MIDNIGHT so people wouldn't watch the debates. It was at the start of the primaries when people didn't know much about Bernie so the DNC decided that nobody watching the Democrat's primary debates helped Hillary

2) In the debates, they gave the questions to Hillary before the debates. The DNC controlled debates gave them to a CNN person who would give them to Hillary

3) The DNC owns the decision about Super delegates. Super delegates == ignoring one-citizen-one-vote

4) Arizona greatly reduced polling stations. With 3+ hour waits, people gave up. The DNC knew that Hillary voters voted at a higher ratio on mail-in-ballots, so it skewed to Hillary.

5) The California level had Bernie votes made in a way that they were all not counted:

In California 2016 election, "NPP" (Non-party voters) the election committee training pole workers to give them "provisional ballots". All of those NPP votes ("provisional ballots") were thrown away. The only NPP voters that could be counted were "Democratic cross-over ballots", but they they poll voters weren't trained that way. Bernie Sanders votes where thrown away. In California Bernie had 61% in polls against Clinton, but then lost. . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoGeDGHmwJU

I don't think you can point at a specific action, but the leaked (Podesta, I think) emails seemed to show that the DNC was working to help the Clinton campaign to the detriment of Sanders during the primary. This lead to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the DNC chairman position.

Later, it turned out the Clinton campaign had essentially taken over the DNC far in advance of the primary results which is highly unusual, to the say the least. [1]

[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-b...

They advertised her superdelegate lead before the voting even began. They leaked debate questions to her in advance of the event. They smeared Bernie with unfair accusations and labels. They worked directly with big media outlets to either deny or put out negative coverage of Bernie. The Washington Post put out 16 negative stories on Bernie in one day. There was unregistering of progressives in New York, and a botched delegate counting process in Nevada. They reduced the number of debates before the first primary by at least a third. DNC leads got caught actively cheating, leading to their resignations - Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Donna Brazile. They actually used the excuse in court that the Democratic party is private and has no legal obligation to run fair elections, and could select in a backroom smoking cigars if they wished. They actually said on national television that superdelegates served the purpose of preventing grassroots candidates from winning. I could go on and on. All of these things are easily verified. I can give you more if you'd like, with references.

>they don’t actually stand for anything.

I've met lots of young women who adore Hillary and would beg to differ. The woman is a feminist icon.

Ok. Fair enough. But how does the blindness that feeds their bias any different than that which feeds say a Trump supporter.

I'm not sticking up for either. But to believe one side is less ignorant than the other is fairly naive.

The proles are the proles. Just because you side with one subset (because they match your beliefs) doesn't make them any less prole-y.

I agree with you but you'll rarely get anywhere on a public forum by framing 95% of the population as suckers. Which they are, but the truth hurts.

85% is more accurate. The 15% are the 1% plus their enablers/support/wannabes.

I agree, such statements are underappreciated. But I'm not running for office so popularity isn't really my concern. It also doesn't help to be silent when faced with the current status quo. Change is painful; saying what needs to be said even more so.

C'est la vie.

Not to neglect that she actually did win the popular vote. The majority is being held to the beliefs of the minority.

I know Trump voters, the majority of whom don't like Trump at all.

Their reasoning: "Why delay the inevitable? How else to wake up the country but to elect a disaster? As things get worse we're ready as we'll ever be."

(FYI: I'm in Michigan where enough of us held back our Clinton vote to send a message that we need a progressive non-corporatist. Margin of victory for Trump was smaller than empty presidential sections. It's over in Michigan for the DNC.)

I'm sure that electing a regressive corporatist was a wonderful improvement.

I guess is harder to pretend that things are ok? Many people wanted change. I doubt the reality of how that changes is materializing is keeping up with what those who voted for Trump wanted

I hope they realize that their elected legislative representatives matter a lot more for this... The president is chief diplomat, chief military and legal executive, a veto holder. They also do a lot of appointing. Not much else, in reality. So we elected a bloviating racist to be our chief diplomat, because we don't like corporatist legislators? Ok...

>So we elected a bloviating racist to be our chief diplomat, because we don't like corporatist legislators? Ok...

Yes. I believe the phrase used to describe Trump was something along the lines of "a brick through the window of the establishment."

They clamor for justice behind anyone who will promise it to them, authoritatively, with or without merit. Trump is a symptom of the underlying problem.

But that's the beauty of the ruse isn't it? The Establishment (of both parties) has the masses believing Trump invented racism, sexism, income inequality, etc. That before Trump there were no such things. Trump is to blame for racism?

That would be funny if it wasn't so ridiculous.

>The Establishment (of both parties) has the masses believing Trump invented racism, sexism, income inequality, etc. That before Trump there were no such things. Trump is to blame for racism?

No, "the masses" have never believed that. Not even Trump's most rabid opponents believe that he invented racism, for instance, merely that he is more openly racist than his predecessors, and that he is more openly supported by racists than his predecessors.

So covert racism is okay? But open support is not?

The point is, the (white) "liberal" left has been sitting on it's hands, head in the sand, believing there has been sufficient progress. They did well to sell that (lie).

Now Trump shows up and suddening all hell is breaking lose? Nah. It's been there all along; swept under the rug. So rather than admit "yeah we underestimated the lack of progress" Trump & Co get the blame. This is fake history and it conpletely ignores real history.

Note: I'm not a Trump supporter. He's not my type of leadership. But we can't solve the right problems the right way if we are in complete denial about the root of those problems. The left's just-blame-Trump strategy is a great distraction. It's also, ultimately, a another step in the wrong direction.

The stupid ignorant masses don't appreciate their intellectual betters on HN. They ignored hollywood, silicon valley, the media, and voted for Trump (with Russia's help of course).

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