Context: http://underlore.com/the-electionfraud-is-real/
Why did Bernie think it was best to work within the Democratic Party instead of starting or joining a third party?
There’s a big difference between cynically asserting corruption and knowing for a fact the entire endeavor is totally false.
With the DNC now admitting they rigged the 2016 primary in open federal court, asserting to do so is totally legal because the DNC is actually a private corporation “doing business as” (a DBA) of “DNC Services Corporation,” things have changed from cynical conspiracy theory or logical inference to indisputably official reality.
It’s now literally public record that the DNC believes it had the right to if it so chose arbitrarily choose a candidate and forgo a primary process entirely. The argument for super delegates being legal is presumably the same.
Search the transcript for the word cigar and you find on page 36:
But here, where you have a party that’s saying, We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.
That has massive consequences. Knowing is different from believing.
Consider for example the absurdity of asserting that Russia should be sanctioned for manipulating an election that the DNC is now asserting was legally a total sham. Because the RNC is a DBA as well. They too presumably would have this legal right to elect whoever why ever and dispense with voting.
That means the DNC is saying that the election for president of the United States is as trivial as a joint poll or contest between the Coke and Pepsi corporations.
Now that argument will either fly or it won’t, but either way now that it’s exposed in federal court, we’ll likely demand that reforms be made as a result of this. Regardless of the outcome of what is ultimately a fairly powerless civil suit. (Powerless in the sense that injunctive relief and/or a check is the best that’s possible as a direct outcome. The judge for example literally can’t order a new set of elections, as far as I know.)
Now, they aren’t saying that they rig all the elections, just that it’s legal for them to do so basically because the DNC is a private corporation that can do whatever it wants legally.
But we all know that isn’t true really, as it’s clearly part of our democracy. At some point the private actions of the private corporation becomes public policy and law. They are trying to get the best of both worlds, all the power and none of the oversight, but it’s not going to work that way. Either reforms will happen (either substantive or merely convincing) or turn out is going to drop into the single digits and the first domino will have fallen.
What won’t happen in my opinion is that this admission causes a third party to become viable because then you’re back with the original problem. They’ll just be a private corporation also. Coke vs Pepsi vs Bob’s Cola.
IMO we’re going to force the DNC and RNC to become the official government things everyone expects them to be and all that that entails. Who knows what that’ll look like or how it’ll play out though.
Bernie knows that like it or not we’re a two party system. Single transferable vote would solve that but until its solved third parties will always be spoilers at best. While the DNC primary might be legally a sham, the various local elections for congress are presumably not. (Though of course that now clearly requires confirmation and scrutiny.)
That means that the answer is still imo not letting the DNC do whatever it wants via #demexit, but to siege the castle and replace the ones that do not govern in our interests.