It’s simple really. She owns the Democratic Party apparatus, lock, stock and both barrels.
I could explain Hillary Clinton’s “money laundering” scheme, which allows her billionaire and millionaire donors to increase their donations to her campaign far in excess of the legal limit on individual contributions (all perfectly legal thanks to the Supreme Court), in elaborate detail, but since Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks has already done all that work for me, I’ll let him do the heavy lifting:
Clinton’s Big Money supporters, in addition to what they contributed to her various Super Pacs and her campaign, were/are able to funnel up to an additional $1,320,000 per married couple in 2015 and 2016 to the DNC and Hillary’s campaign (the individual limit per person is only $660,000) by making additional contributions to those 33 state Democratic Party organizations.
If you watched the video, I hope you caught the part where Cenk explains that under last August’s agreement, which was put in place long before you and I had any say in who would the Democratic nominee, Hillary basically bought the support of the super delegates in those 33 states. The way this deal works, the super delegates are all getting kickbacks in the form of contributions laundered through the DNC. Again, this is all perfectly legal, despite the transparent similarity to a payola scheme.
Yes, this story is almost ancient history now in our 24/7 news cycle, now, but it’s one we shouldn’t forget. This deal goes a long way toward explaining how Clinton scared away any other major establishment candidate from entering the race (cough – Joe Biden –cough) or anyone but Sanders from mounting an insurgent campaign (cough – Elizabeth Warren – cough).
By January 2014, Obama’s largest Super Pac in 2012, Priorities USA Action, had already been transformed into Hillary’s Super Pac. By August, 2015 nearly all the big donors and state parties (along with their super delegates) were effectively in her pocket. Last August, Bernie Sanders badly trailed Clinton in the national polls and most Democrats just assumed she was the only viable and electable candidate the party could field.
In short, that deal secured the support of a significant number, if not a majority, of the super delegates for Hillary. In essence, she purchased them with the help of the DNC and the 33 state parties cast their vote for Clinton long before we cast our votes. It explains everything you need to know as to why super delegates are vowing to support Hillary regardless of the outcome of their state’s primary or caucus elections.
This arrangement whereby the fealty of powerful individuals to their sovereign could be bought through the payment of money, land or other “favors” used to be called Feudalism. But we don’t have kings and queens in America, anymore, at least not in the legal sense. However, what we have is a sham “democracy,” i.e., a Potemkin facade of a democracy, where the majority don’t get to decide who runs for office, the rich, powerful and well-connected do. The elections in the Soviet Union are the closest facsimile to our modern day political system.
It’s one of the reasons that Bernie’s campaign is a historic event in American history. Despite all the money and skullduggery and flat out corruption by the movers and shakers of the ironically named “Democratic Party” directed against a virtually unknown, self-described Democratic Socialist is unique in this era of Oligarchic control of the political process. Powered only by the enthusiasm of his supporters and their small, but far more numerous donations, Bernie has pushed, arguably, one of the most corrupt candidates in my lifetime to spend far more money, time and effort to secure the Democratic nomination than she ever anticipated, one which she no doubt once believed would be a stone cold lock the day after the results of the Iowa Caucuses were counted.
Well, as Cenk says, it’s “her party,” though even the candidate who now appears more electable versus any Republican in the national polls is her opponent. Of course, we are witnessing the same drama play out on the Republican side, with a full court press by the Republican establishment to do anything to stop Donald Trump, even if that means getting into bed with the loathsome Ted Cruz.
And people wonder why so may Americans feel shunted aside by our two party system with its pay to play immorality that does everything to benefit the top of the economic food chain, and tosses a few scraps every once in a while to the rest of us. And then they wonder why the rate of individual American citizens who register to vote increasingly do so as independents. Indeed, voters registered for either party has sharply declined.
Well, the high rollers who bet big on Jeb Bush and other establishment figures on the GOP side of this duopoly lost their money. Hillary Clinton is counting on the bet her big money donors made on her to pay off, even should she she fail to win a majority of ordinary delegates after the primaries are over. So far, it has, even if she is limping to the finish line exposed as a seriously flawed candidate and perpetual gaffe machine.
