Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

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I find it entertaining that the only groups calling "rigged" and sowing disinformation without any evidence is Donald Trump and his sons, and Bernie supporters. When folks say that Bernie is very Trump-like and his followers very similar to Trumps, they can use "rigged" Iowa caucuses as another great datapoint. Caucuses are notoriously messy and take time to tabulate and understand. No one including the national party likes them.

The funniest thing about your lazy "rig" attack is that the national parties DO NOT RUN THESE PROCESSES!

It's literally entirely state-run.

So, according to Donald Trump and Bernie supporters, the Iowa state Democratic Party is rigging their own caucus by feigning incompetence purely of their own accord to help Washington insiders. The minority party of a tiny conservative state is self-rigging to help DC oligarchs, apparently.

Ridiculous.

EDIT: For the record, you are amplifying dangerous political disinformation that is being intentionally used to sow discord and division by the GOP https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1224672579023261707

EDIT2: If you truly want to see a "rigged" process, look at the GOP, who have CANCELLED dozens of primaries and declared Trump the nominee by act from on high. Literally just cancelled democracy. But sure, caucuses suck.

I agree that it's bad to make a quick leap into conspiratorial thinking, but many Bernie supporters still have a bad taste in their mouths from 2016, when the DNC essentially conspired with the Clinton campaign to stop Bernie. That's the lens these moments are viewed with.

There is 0 evidence for this and the fact that people still think this is evidence that Russian intervention was successful.

Bernie won 43% of the vote to 55%. There was no rigging. He got kid gloves.

>“The agreement — signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and [Clinton campaign manager] Robby Mook with a copy to [Clinton campaign counsel] Marc Elias— specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote in the story under the headline “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC.”

>Brazile added of the deal: “[Clinton’s] campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/d...

Yeah, irrelevant. The fact that this was spun as some sort of conspiracy is a massive indictment on how naive Bernie supporters are.

Meanwhile, there's an actual international conspiracy to hand-pick a president from our enemies and the Sanders folks don't make a peep. Instead, they boo John Lewis. Disgusting.

Ironically, the DNC did not conspiratorially help Clinton against Bernie, you just quoted another bit of weaponized disinformation used by the right to divide the left.

Let me be frank: Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 nomination fair and square and there was no rigging, no conspiracy and no cheating going on.

If you think otherwise, you've been lied to by propaganda and disinformation, and you should question every source that led you to that conclusion, because those sources will be working in 2020 to do worse.

- Brazile now says she found “no evidence” the primary was rigged.

- Warren now says that though there was “some bias” within the DNC, “the overall 2016 primary process was fair.”

- “I found nothing to say they were gaming the primary system,” Brazile told me.

In fact, smart insiders believe that the "invisible primary" of democratic insiders hurt everyone BUT Bernie, because they got rid of all of the moderate competition like Biden, and gave Bernie a clear path as an outsider to being the #2 in the race, something he would have struggled to attain without the insider winnowing.

You mean Brazile, the one who leaked town hall questions ahead of time to Clinton?

edit: I'm not a Bernie supporter so it doesn't really bother me, I just found it amusing that you're quoting Donna Brazile here. Who was responsible for one of the clear, actual offenses against Bernie in 2016 for which she was forced to resign from CNN only to be rewarded with being head of the DNC. Well if she says everything was fine, I guess I better reconsider my sources...

Yes, because it’s incredibly surprising that a town hall in Flint would have a question about Flint

Let me be frank: I don't give a shit if candidates got questions for a town hall (not a debate!) an hour before hand.

Personally, I prefer when questions go out beforehand so we get more thoughtful answers. "Gotcha" style questions require candidates to rote-practice certain political speeches and stock answers, and those rapid fire live questions devolve into stump speeches every time.

But getting questions to a town hall is not rigging a primary. It's not even close.

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/17/donna-brazile...

This is just not true. Biden’s campaign has complained about the way this caucus was run: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481315-biden-campaign-...

Bernie’s campaign, on the other hand, has multiple times rejected the notion that the process was rigged: https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-campaign-refute...

I was responding to someone who literally said the caucuses were rigged by the DNC to hurt Bernie. Read the thread please!

And for the record: Biden has never called this process rigged at all. Your link shows him rightfully criticizing the many failures including the technology failures.

Bernie's fans on reddit and beyond are certainly using the "rig" word just like Donald's fans are though!

You do realize that the Iowa Democrats who prefer Bernie or Pete are the SAME DEMOCRATS running this process right?

There is no national party there. The people running this are Iowans. If they, as you say, prefer Bernie or Pete, then why would they be intentionally hurting their own guys?

I wish people would learn about these processes so they could think through their own disinformation! What you're saying literally doesn't make sense.

Why would Iowans who you claim are mainly Pete/Bernie followers help Biden by sabotaging their own caucuses?

Rigging is not the right term for what's happening but you have to admit that if Pete or Bernie end up winning Iowa and Biden ends up 4th, delaying the results will dampen the impact of the outcome. Nate Silver just pushed an article about the impact of timing of the primaries on the outcome. Then you have to so factor in the Des Moines poll getting pulled, which supposedly showed Biden coming in 4th.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/iowa-might-have-screwed...

https://theweek.com/speedreads/893477/sanders-reportedly-fin...

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