Summary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused Bernie Sanders of taking millions from Big Pharma during a heated exchange, but Sanders refuted the claim, stating his donations came from workers, not corporate PACs.
Kennedy repeatedly insisted Sanders was the top recipient of pharmaceutical money in 2020, but financial data shows no corporate PAC contributions to Sanders.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has profited from anti-vaccine activism, earning millions from lawsuits and speaking fees.
The debate ended without Kennedy answering whether he would guarantee health care for all as HHS secretary.
How did they do that?
Not only was the primary rigged, but it was established in court that both, it was rigged, and that the DNC are fine to rig their primaries.
https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/
“ On August 25, 2017, Federal Judge William Zloch, dismissed the lawsuit after several months of litigation during which DNC attorneys argued that the DNC would be well within their rights to select their own candidate. “In evaluating Plaintiffs’ claims at this stage, the Court assumes their allegations are true—that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz held a palpable bias in favor Clinton and sought to propel her ahead of her Democratic opponent,” the court order dismissing the lawsuit stated. This assumption of a plaintiff’s allegation is the general legal standard in the motion to dismiss stage of any lawsuit. The allegations contained in the complaint must be taken as true unless they are merely conclusory allegations or are invalid on their face.
The order then explained why the lawsuit would be dismissed. “The Court must now decide whether Plaintiffs have suffered a concrete injury particularized to them, or one certainly impending, that is traceable to the DNC and its former chair’s conduct—the keys to entering federal court. The Court holds that they have not.” The Court added that it did not consider this within its jurisdiction. “Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, possessing ‘only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.'”.”
Im not sure that means what you think
An opinion piece with a hyperbolic factually unsupported headline? TDD doesn’t care. They’re here for the misinformation. They literally posted another article to NPR claiming that NPR said that it was rigged. NPR didn’t say that. NPR quoted a tweet from Trump saying that. NPR didn’t. They’re literally quoting Trump let that sink in.🤔
Yes those were the rules the Democrats had used for the last 40 years. It wasn’t actually rigging. It wasn’t very democratic. But when you’re abiding by the rules that were set up. That’s not called rigging or cheating. them’s the rules. That’s why I voted for sanders. Because even though he didn’t win the grand prize he won concessions to change those rules and actually make it more democratic. Before those rules. We didn’t even get to vote publicly in the presidential primary.
It’s been rigged for 40 years to keep candidates like Bernie Sanders out and push shitty candidates forward. Controlling the rules is rigging it.
Before this the party simply picked a candidate at the convention. The public didn’t get to vote.
It wasn’t a very democratic primary process ironically. It was definitely far too weighed towards national leadership. But hardly rigged. It’s hyperbolic and unconstructive to even claim. The fact Obama won only illustrates that. Rules didn’t change between Obama and Sanders. Organizations are allowed to set their own rules within reason. And Sanders helped make them better.
And despite all that. So many people who claimed to support Sanders seem so focused on hindering him. Ask yourself why has Sanders not echoed your claims. Why hasn’t he been a party to any of the laughable failed suits supposedly filed in defense of him. Think critically. I’m no fan of the national Democratic party. I think the state parties should take leadership back. This doesn’t do that. All these false claims do is aid the fascists.
If you want to punish national Democrats. Don’t enable fascists with division. Build your local and state party to be independent of the national party. It’s what we all need to do. And that will make them listen.
the term rigged is bullshit. What people have answered before is more accurate which I would describe as pushing other candidates to endorse and play ball and they would be rewarded. Your article uses the term rigged a lot but gives no explanation for the actions its considers to have rigged it.
We don’t know if it was rigged because that was never actually addressed in court.
The DNC came in and said:
Their argument in court was that, as a private organization, they have a right to do that, and since they have that right, the lawsuit should be dismissed. Their argument was that as a private group, they can rig it if they want to and it’s only their own rules that they are breaking so nobody can stop them. How can anyone take such an argument at face value? “We totally didn’t rig it, but if we did, it was totally legal to do.”
Have you heard that old saying?
This is the DNC pounding the law (“we’re a private organization, that’s not how this works”) to be able to avoid fact-finding discovery.
People always focus on “pound the table” but I think “pound the law” should also be considered. Because there’s a lot of bullshit ass law out there.
The DNC went well out of their way to avoid talking about the facts and to focus on the legal mechanisms protecting them from having to admit facts. They also flat out admitted that if they wanted to choose the candidate, they could, and nobody could stop them. It was literally their argument for why the lawsuit should be dismissed, that it was legal for them to choose the candidate without input from the party.
no because the accusation does not really fit what I would call rigged. which would be like changing votes or something. what they did was basically influence influencers.
Anything where an election is manipulated is “rigging” an election. You’re just splitting hairs.
https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/scale_super/3/33013/2638039-election rigging.jpg
Notice that the image I just showed is named “election rigging.jpg”?
The Definition for “rig”:
rig: manage or conduct (something) fraudulently so as to produce a result or situation that is advantageous to a particular person.
Having literal media organizations promoting the idea that the Super Delegates were all in the bag for Clinton and emails that showed they actively tried to hamstring him all falls under “rigging.”
Are you suggesting a video game as a source for a definition of election rigging? Was there a better quality source you could use?
but influencing is not really manipulating or if you believe it is then any promotion or advertising becomes rigging. I think again the big thing here is fraudulently and what that means to folks. For me again its like changing votes, disenfranchisement, and jerry mandering would fit but getting one guy to be on your side publically over another with promises. Thats always gonna be a thing.
Rigged is the correct term, in spite of you lack of curiosity.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496/leaked-democratic-party-emails-show-members-tried-to-undercut-sanders
Don’t forget they were DKIM verified to be real and unaltered.
But Assange was turned into the villain in this story because he didn’t personally hack the Republicans and get dirt on them too, and because nobody did it for him, that’s all his fault somehow. I’m still not entirely convinced of the story that he somehow had similar access to similarly compromising material on the Republicans and just chose not to release it.
Yet somehow…
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/media/trump-campaign-hack-news-media-report-iran-wikileaks/index.html
Huh. Hmm. Interesting. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, there’s a thing called “editorial discretion” something no one seemed to think Assange deserved. Let alone once again that I have never seen definitive proof that Wikileaks had documents on Trump in 2016 that they refused to release. We even had a massive internal leak of their chats and nothing about having Trump info that they were sitting on and not releasing.
Note: Assange is shown in the chat logs to be quite the sexist and to in particular have an overly glaring hate for Hillary Clinton. I’m not saying Assange is a good dude, I’m pretty sure he’s a sex pest, and he has the sexist attitude to support it. But in this instance, regarding the DNC emails, I think he was unfairly maligned.
To quote Orwell apocryphally: “The truth is the truth, even if it comes from a scoundrel.”
Assange is no hero here and clearly has/ had an agenda of his own. I think if anything it shows we shouldn’t rely on personalities or tribes of one for necessary acts of public good. Its a good thing that the DNC emails were leaked, and more importantly, found to be unaltered. Anything about Trump also should have just been fully released. Its a bad thing that didn’t happen. It would be better if Assange had no editorial hand in what did or didn’t get leaked, but thats not what happened.
Ooh fancy. Quoting Orwell and Trump now.
Try reading your own source as there is a whole explanation about why the case was dismissed that you need to read.
Oh, oh. It gets soooooo much better. Search the article for the word rigged. There’s one instance. Where they literally link to a trump tweet or truth calling it that. And I dunno about you. But if the only sources I can find to support my opinions are DT. I’m changing my opinion fast! 🤗
NPR didn’t call it rigged. They quoted a tweet from Donald Trump calling about. Why are you spreading Trump lies?
Says the revisionist historian. What a crackup.
All right quote any revisionist history you like. Give me an example just for fun. Whether I ever did or didn’t. At least I’m not quoting a fascist to be divisive.
You offer only negative value in these discussions.
Put your projection aside. Take Trump’s words out of your mouth. And quote a single instance.
Those were the rules. Those have always been the rules. So you’re saying an organization has no right to have a say in its leadership?
No it is not. Rigged implies making it impossible for the result. Like changing votes or otherwise just messing with the system like that. What was done was basically cajoling influential people. The voters could have still voted bernie in by giving him the majority of votes. Heck even trumps win is more rigged because of voter disenfranchisment and jerrry mandoring which is directly mucking with the process. Encouraging heavy hitters or influential folks to be negative about him or positive about clinton while being bs just does not fit with rigged. man its just like both sides kind of thing. its like yeah in the broadest terms, yes but folks take it way down to be like literally exactly the same and its like. no. by no means. in the details there is a massive gulf between them. details being things like no surprise billing or funding renewables and such. pretty big deal items. calling it rigged is disingenuous.
Since you are trying to rewrite history, I’m at least going to post this here so people understand the context of why we say, with out mixed words or a lack of emphasis, that the DNC rigged the primary against bernie.
This wasn’t incompetence—it was outright election interference. The DNC didn’t just favor Clinton; they actively sabotaged Bernie Sanders while pretending to be fair. The leaks confirmed everything.
No sources for anything and up to this point your only quoted source explains the flaws in your claim.
Maybe hold back on commenting about this further.
im not rewriting history I just have a problem with the term. I voted for sanders in the primary and what the party did was dick moves and shit. The reason I have a problem with terminology is see so much of slipperly slope kind of thing. This especially with politicians are the same, dems/rep same, so might as well not vote or vote for rep. and its like. yeah same but really not. this thing with sanders. its not something that could really be changed much. The funding thing gets there and I can see making the argument with it. Also the data maybe but scheduling gets some weak sauce and the rest is even less. A big question is how do you fix this in the setup of the party? I can’t see anything outside of vote for better people so that party leadership which comes out of that are better. People can donate directly to bernie instead of the party and only answer poles for bernie if they want. Now I would like to see super delegates eliminated as that is just straight out (ironically) anti democratic. Don’t get me wrong as I do get frustrated and bernie really represents what I want. To many issues that just are not worth it to me and not enough emphasis on universal healthcare and regulation and taxing those of means.
It’s funny that they don’t actually have a proper response to this. All tropical ding dong can do is quote Trump. Pretty ironic don’t you think?
The DNC colluded to push Clinton/Biden, giving Bernie’s challangers more publicity and promising other candidates positions if they drop out and endorse Clinton/Biden
The DNC actively worked against his campaign in both primaries. There was ample info in the WikiLeaks drop in 2016.
And in 2020, there was the conspicuous action of every other candidate suddenly dropping out and endorsing Biden. We didn’t get the same inside view as the previous primary, but it’s pretty plain to see that there machinations by the DNC again to push for this.
And we pretty much had a similar move this last election, not allowing for any sort of primary.
I don’t think it can be a serious position to deny that wealthy, powerful interests control the DNC, and therefore actively work against candidates who threaten their wealth and power. It’s not a hidden secret (donors, PACs, politicians getting rich, etc). And of course the same is true with the GOP too.
Why this worries me most is that I think it’s a losing strategy by the DNC. AOC is clearly a preferred candidate for a future election, but if she runs, I fully expect the DNC to do everything they can to sabotage her campaign in favor of a milquetoast politician who won’t upset their donors. And the GOP would win again (presuming we have elections anymore).
Also presuming the DNC decides to bother with primaries.
So help me understand. When Obama faced the exact same pushback and bias against him was he also cheated? Because he got the exact same treatment. The exact same treatment as most other people who ran in a Democratic primary for the last 50 years. I absolutely agree that the Democrats primary rules were ironically not very democratic. But no one got cheated. They all signed up knowing the rules. Better yet unlike all the ones before him. Sanders despite losing one concessions to make the primaries more democratic.
So why was it only cheating or shenanigans when Sanders was involved?
Obama was cheated, but he caught the DNC off guard. They learned their lesson from that and prepared more for Hillary’s coronation that Obama disrupted.
Obama was also an insider, so they didn’t fight back quite as hard. But they used a lot of the same dirty tricks, stoking racism against him and accusing the opposition of sexism.
You’re arguing on a very narrow definition of “cheated.” If you agree that the Democratic primaries were not democratic, then it’s just a matter of semantics. The DNC had rules on their charter to conduct primaries impartially. They did not abide by those rules, and flat out said they didn’t have to. That’s conducting a supposedly impartial primary fraudulently in order to give advantage to their preferred candidate. It’s not criminal fraud, but it is the definition of rigging. They did do it to Obama and he overcame it, they did it to Bernie learning from their mistakes and Bernie couldn’t overcome it.
The primary process was absolutely far too weighed towards national leadership. But it wasn’t “rigged”. Obama winning proved that. No matter how many excuses you make. Hillary and many in the national party were sure pissed about it. And yet they didn’t change the rules.
Yes national leadership had their pick. They always have. But even the courts didn’t find that the party had rigged anything or done anything in violation of the rules. Tropicaldingdong’s own links elsewhere in the threads prove it an disprove his claims. Leaving them just quoting Donald Trump to support their claims. And if Donald Trump is your source of truth you have problems.
It’s like you didn’t even read the post you’re replying to. Not sure what axe you have to grind, but it’s clear that you have a lot of presumptions about what everyone here thinks and some unnecessary hostility to people who are engaging with you in a civil manner.
You seem to basically agree with what others are saying about unequal influence and control, which is precisely the point. It might be legal but I don’t think it’s a controversial view to acknowledge that our laws are rigged in favor of the wealthy against working people.
If Obama had actually meant what he said in his campaign speeches, I think they would have stopped him. But that’s obviously total conjecture on my part. His policies certainly showed he was fine playing playing along with the establishment though.
I tried to point it out in the reply you ignored, but you need to look up what “rigged” means. It doesn’t necessarily mean a guaranteed outcome, it means conducting something fraudulently to give one particular outcome or person an advantage. That’s quite literally what the DNC does, by their own admission, and from your own comments it doesn’t sound like you disagree. You just can’t accept that those actions equate to “rigged.”
The courts didn’t say the DNC hadn’t rigged it. The courts said the DNC hadn’t broken the law, based on the DNC’s argument that it was within their rights to – you guessed it – rig the whole thing.
“Cheat” is a wide-ranging term which is a little too cumbersome to use here, but there were absolutely some shenanigans at play.
The heavily abridged version (which is open to criticism for doing so) is that the democratic leadership had effectively selected Hilary Clinton before the party had even had the chance to select the candidate officially, and Bernie’s campaign had it’s legs done before it even had a chance to take off.
Would Bernie have won? Who knows, but he’s consistently a decent and open candidate.
They consistently presented these super delegates as a forgone conclusion.
Brilliant, thank you for the clarification. Eight years feels like a long time ago.
It’s still infuriating.
It’s completely inappropriate here. If I tell you the rules to the game. And you agree to play. As Sanders did. And we both abide by the rules. Then no one cheated.
Shenanigans? Barely. Wasserman Schultz lost her job over it. Minimally impacting the Sanders campaign for a few days at most.
The Democratic primary rules were ironically not very democratic. But no one violated them or cheated anyone. Sanders knew that that going in. And he still almost won. Not only that. He didn’t whine like a entitled child that he’d somehow been cheated. In a winner take all contest. He lost. But still won concessions. That’s why I voted for the man. He made the future primaries more democratic and open to people like himself.