Hillary Rigged the 2016 Election (Yawn)

If you watched the Sunday talk shows last year, you couldn’t miss seeing Donna Brazile defending Hillary Clinton at every turn. So it’s real whiplash to hear about Brazile’s new book trashing the person she spent so much time defending. And you thought the Republicans had trouble!

As we noted in our pages, such as this one, it was obvious that the Democratic primary system was set up to disadvantage liberals, such as by front-loading the conservative states, so a moderate candidate could run up a big lead at the beginning. But it goes much deeper than that, according to Fox News.

Hillary’s erstwhile champion is now calling foul.

Last year’s presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was rigged by the Democratic National Committee – just as Sanders’ supporters suspected – to hand the nomination to Clinton, according to a bombshell claim by Donna Brazile. The onetime Clinton confidante, CNN commentator and former interim party boss made the explosive claim Thursday while touting a new book that could sever her ties to Team Clinton for good.

“I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested,” Brazile wrote in a piece for Politico Magazine. . .

The proof, according to Brazile, was a joint fundraising agreement document between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund and Hillary for America. It had been signed in August 2015, four months after Clinton announced her candidacy and a year before she officially secured the nomination over Sanders. . .

“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to 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. “Her 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.”. . .

It’s typical, she said, for candidates to make such arrangements with party organizations – but after they’ve won the nomination. Brazile said the arrangement does not appear to be “illegal, but it sure looked unethical.”

The New York Post asks if that’s what pushed Vice President Joe Biden out of the race.

There was another person out there — then-Vice President Joe Biden. Though grieving over the tragic loss of his son Beau, Biden was still seriously considering a late entry into the race. Indeed, it would not be until October that Biden would declare himself out of contention.

Consider then, that a formal agreement signed by the DNC and the Clinton campaign was executed in August 2015, two months before Biden made his decision.

There was another serious, popular prospect who may have been prevented from making the run: Elizabeth Warren, who is quoted in the Daily Caller.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts believes the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rigged the 2016 presidential election primaries in an attempt to sway the votes towards former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Warren told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she believes the DNC and primary were rigged for Clinton, calling it “a real problem” Wednesday and saying that Democrats must hold members of their party accountable.

Of course, Hillary’s main opponent became Bernie Sanders, and it was up to Brazile to inform him that he had been, well, screwed, according to Politico, which broke the story. Yet, Bernie was more interested in the big picture—could Hillary win?

Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were. The polls were unanimous in her winning but what, he wanted to know, was my own assessment?

I had to be frank with him. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere. I was concerned about the Obama coalition and about millennials.

How did all this happen? International Business Times blames the Supreme Court.

“This situation shows that if anyone is divorced from reality, it was the chief justice in assuming they wouldn’t take advantage of this,” Stephen Spaulding, chief of strategy and external affairs for Common Cause, a non-partisan government watchdog group, told International Business Times.

The case in question is McCutcheon v. FEC, a suit brought by Shaun McCutcheon, a Republican activist from Alabama. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, striking down a federal limit on the total amount individuals could give to parties, candidates and committees each election cycle, which at the time was $123,300. . .

As a result, joint fundraising agreements between candidates, state parties and committees, became more powerful. For example, while an individual can only give $2,700 per election to a specific candidate, $10,000 to a state party, or $33,900 to a national party committee like the DNC, joint committees can pool those limits together to solicit larger donations. The more groups that come together through joint fundraising agreements, the larger the checks written to the joint organization can be. In the case of the joint fundraising agreement the DNC had with the Clinton campaign and state parties, donors could write a $350,000 check to the joint committee, which then directed the money wherever it wanted.

Imagine if Biden and/or Warren had made a serious run at the nomination. Either likely would have beaten the fantastically unpopular Hillary Rodham Clinton, and more than likely, destroyed the even more unpopular Donald John Trump. Oh, well, live and learn. . .but with the Democrats, probably not.