Democrats' Shadowy Plot to Stop Bernie Sanders
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (Gage Skidmore /
Flickr)
Yogi Berra, the great Yankees catcher, had the memorable line, "It's like
deja vu all over again."
Bernie Sanders supporters might have been thinking the same thing after the
fiasco of the Iowa caucuses.
It was just four years ago that the corporate hacks who run the Democratic
Party rigged the 2016 primary election process to favor Hillary Clinton and
stop Sanders: The Democratic National Committee, which is supposed to stay
neutral in a primary, secretly funneled party funds to Hillary's campaign,
fed Hillary debate questions before a CNN town hall, and selected
superdelegates who pledged their votes to Hillary before the first primary
votes were even cast.
This time around, Democratic Party insiders appear to be playing the same
game. Throughout 2019, corporate Democrats and their media allies disparaged
and minimized Bernie's campaign, asserting that it had little chance of
winning the nomination. But these tactics didn't work. In late December,
Sanders was leading in polling in Iowa, New Hampshire, and nationwide, and
was close to the lead or within the margin of error in other important
primary states like South Carolina, Nevada, California, and Texas.
I imagine that the forces of corporate greed feared that if Sanders could
claim victory in the Iowa caucuses, he might gain momentum that would make
him impossible to stop. To the rescue came a company called Shadow.
Shadow is one of these Democratic Party consulting operations stuffed with
former staffers of Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 presidential campaign.
Shadow used its leverage with high-level Democratic donors to secure a
contract with the Iowa Democratic Party to count the votes. And it
completely bungled the job. The company tried to report results in the
caucuses through an untested app slapped together in a few months. The app
prevented precinct chairs from reporting the vote totals on caucus night,
throwing the entire process into chaos, humiliating the Democratic Party,
and demoralizing the Iowa voters who took the time to come out and caucus.
It also denied Sanders the opportunity to make a victory speech, although he
won the popular vote and at least tied the pledged delegate allocation.
The dark money group that launched Shadow was cofounded by Tara McGowan, a
veteran of Obama's reelection campaign, and the wife of a senior strategist
with the Pete Buttigieg campaign, which paid Shadow $42,500 last July for
digital services. These conflicts of interest apparently failed to raise any
alarm bells at party headquarters.
Buttigieg's investment in Shadow paid off big when Iowa officials announced
partial results that allowed him to claim victory. Moreover, by paying
Shadow for data services, Buttigieg signaled to the Democratic Party
operatives-a loose alliance of consultants, corporate lobbyists, and
pundits-that if elected, he will keep the money flowing to these bandits,
despite their terminal corruption and incompetence. It's no wonder that he's
a favorite of the party establishment and Wall Street donors. Sanders, on
the other hand, is a mortal threat to this consultant class and to their
business model of collecting checks for doing horrible work.
The corporate donors to the Democratic Party fear and loathe Sanders because
he is not in their pockets. Unlike the so-called "centrist" Democrats,
Sanders does not accept corporate contributions, and he does not do
fund-raisers with high-dollar contributors. Instead he relies on a large
army of small donors. This makes him incredibly dangerous to the corporate
elite.
In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton pivoted the Democratic Party into
partnership with Wall Street and with the same corporate donors funding the
Republican Party. In effect, the Democratic Party sold its soul for
corporate dollars. As a result, the Democrats have become a faux opposition
party, taking on Republicans only in areas where their corporate patrons
don't have a stake, like abortion rights and gay rights. But when it comes
to bank bailouts, forever wars, fossil fuel extraction, and for-profit
health care, the Democrats are all in.
You don't have to take my word for this. Numerous academic studies have
confirmed that corporate interests get their way, no matter which party
holds power. The comprehensive 2017 study Democracy in America? by political
scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens posits that "the wishes of
ordinary Americans [have] little or no impact on the making of federal
government policy."
To cite just one recent example, last February, ExxonMobil announced the
discovery of a gas field off the coast of Cyprus that's one of the largest
found in recent years. This December, members of Congress came together
quietly, without hearings or debate, to provide military assistance in the
development of this gas field. The winner, of course, is corporate America.
ExxonMobil profits from the gas extraction, and a private company called
General Atomics benefits from the drone fleet that will be maintained in the
region to protect the operation. The losers, as always, are the American
people, who will pay for all the military operations while all the profits
from the drilling go to private corporations-a blatant form of corporate
welfare. The other big loser is the environment. Tapping into another gas
field will speed the destruction of the planet. Plus, offshore gas drilling
produces methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide when
emitted.
Sanders is a threat to this bipartisan business-as-usual model of corporate
profits over the needs of ordinary Americans. If elected, Sanders has
pledged to pursue policies that benefit people over corporations, like free
college, Medicare for All, and a Green New Deal.
The forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex seem
prepared to stop Sanders at all costs. As Biden fades from contention, they
are putting their money on Mayor Pete. If he stumbles, the party is prepared
to install Michael Bloomberg at a brokered convention. Bloomberg, the
world's eighth richest man, has $61.9 billion at his disposal to influence
the Democratic Party. The DNC has already changed its rules to allow
Bloomberg to qualify for the debates. That, coupled with the Iowa caucus
fiasco, has fueled calls for the resignation of DNC head Tom Perez.
The Democratic Party's embrace of Bloomberg puts the lie to the excuse that
Sanders should not be nominated because he is not sufficiently loyal to the
Democratic Party. Until just recently, Bloomberg was a Republican. In 2004,
Bloomberg endorsed George W. Bush, praising his decision to invade Iraq.
The chaos of recent weeks might give Sanders supporters their most potent
argument yet. The Democratic Party has become so corrupt and dysfunctional
that it can't even perform the most basic function of a democracy: counting
the votes. It is time to turn to new leadership. Or we can stick with the
corporate Democrats and blame the Russians again when we lose to Trump.
This article was first published on the Chicago Reader and is distributed in
partnership with the Independent Media Institute.
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of
the newly independent Reader.
Leonard C. Goodman / Independent Media Institute
