Sanders Protests That Democratic Convention Is Rigged Against Him

Sanders May

I’m sure it wasn’t any surprise to  Bernie Sanders that the Democratic establishment would rig the convention against him, and I see his protest more as an effort of Sanders to continue to fight for the nomination, despite the odds against him. Politico reports:

In a letter to the chairwoman, Sanders noted that of the 45 names he submitted to Democratic National Convention committees, Wasserman Schultz appointed only three.

“I believe the composition of the standing committees must reflect the relative support that has been received by both campaigns,” Sanders wrote in the letter dated May 6. “That was why I was so disappointed to learn that of the over forty people our campaign submitted at your request you chose to select only three of my recommendations for the three standing committees. Moreover, you did not assign even on of the people submitted by our campaign to the very important Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention.”

Sanders said that if the disagreement over convention committee appointments is not resolved, he would have his delegates move to change the platform on the floor of the convention.

“It is my hope we can quickly resolve this in a fair way,” Sanders wrote. “If the process is set up to produce an unfair, one-sided result, we are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention.”

As I discussed recently, the system is heavily rigged to prevent insurgent candidates such as Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination. The Democratic primary system turned out to be even more rigged and less Democratic than the Republican. Despite the likelihood of Sanders beating Clinton in the upcoming primaries, the system has guaranteed that Clinton will go into the convention with a majority of delegates. Sanders’ only remaining hope is if superdelegates defect from Clinton to him.

It is unlikely that the superdelegates will support an outsider over the establishment candidate. This could only happen if the situation changes considerably between now and the convention. There is the long shot possibility that superdelegates could change their mind if they saw how much weaker a candidate Clinton would make against Trump than Sanders, but I fear that many establishment Democrats would rather lose with Clinton than allow Sanders to take control of the party.

As I discussed yesterday and Gawker discussed today, Clinton is capable of blowing it against Trump, despite her considerable lead at the present. She has demonstrated both in 2008 and this year that she is a terrible candidate and makes many mistakes with messaging. While she currently has a strong lead over Trump, she would be facing a very tough race against virtually any other Republican, and it is not impossible that Trump could overcome his deficit in a race against a candidate who is as unpopular and flawed as Clinton.