Clinton, Kentucky, & Why the DNC is ignoring the writing on the Wall
Last night, Bernie Sanders very nearly pulled out a double-victory against the establishment corporatist backed by the DNC Elites and their allies in the Main Stream Media. Former Secretary Clinton "won" with just a hair over one-half of 1% of the vote after out-spending Sanders in Kentucky as well as basically camping out in the Blue Grass state for the better part of a week and a half.
In what is statistically a draw, it comes as no surprise that the Pundits in the Main Stream Media ( particularly the ones receiving a corporate pay-check from either Comcast or Time-Warner ) spent the better part of the evening painting this "victory" for Hillary as the final nail in Bernie's coffin and gleefully discussing for the 7,546th time in the last week why Bernie needs to call it quits instead of asking some extremely important questions that the contests in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oregon bring to mind. One of the larger one's being this: If Hillary is so inevitable and so imminently electable, why is it that she has such a difficult time getting registered Democrats to vote for her in an overwhelming majority?
Because let's face it, that's an issue she does have.
What it boils down to is this. The delegate math is difficult, Senator Sanders has said so himself. But the polling isn't. Over 6 months with poll after poll showing fairly consistently that not only does Bernie Sanders do better in a head to head general election against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton, but that Bernie does so by double digits in a number of them. A fact that is down-played to the extreme by both MSNBC and CNN, almost fanatically so. Another fact that was glossed over last night is that Kentucky is a closed primary. Independents ( at least those which lean towards democratic ) have been favoring Bernie Sanders heavily nation-wide. Here again, Hillary "win's" ( if it can be called that ) in a state were the uber-important Independents, which make up 43% of registered voters nationally, are not allowed to vote. The fact that Sanders carried a majority of the counties in Kentucky was also noticeably not mentioned.
In addition as it turns out, though Hillary technically "won" by barely a half of a percentage point, she did so in a contest that had extremely LOW voter turn-out. Estimates were already in the basement for turn-out for last night's primary in Kentucky. Estimates in the commonwealth of Kentucky were at around 20%. Turns out 20% was being optimistic . Only 17% of registered democrats went to the polls in the Blue Grass State last night, a dismal figure that blows a very large hole in the Clinton Campaigns insistence that Hillary has "energetic support" among democrats. The media pundits, while not directly acknowledging this, sluffed it off as "Kentucky will vote for Trump in the general anyway", an argument they abhorred when it was pointed out that most of Hillary's early wins in the southern state primaries would vote GOP in the general election... On the subject of the Oregon primary, where voter turn-out was over 36% (over twice the percentage in voter turn-out of Kentucky), Bernie looks to carry the state by around 10 points, which was another very pertinent fact that did not seem to receive much coverage last evening.
You would think with negative double-digit polling numbers in authenticity and trust, plus a deep deficit in support among Independents (without which neither party can win in November) the DNC Big Wigs would be getting cold feet about their preferred candidate. But if they are, they are hiding it very well. Mostly the DNC establishment seems to have decided to completely ignore the warning signs that primary after primary is giving them....
That A: Their candidate has some serious electability issues.
And B: Bernie's supporters are not falling sullenly into line to support Hillary Clinton.
Some in the DNC establishment seem to be getting an inkling of what's coming down the pipe in November if Hillary gets the nomination. But instead of acknowledging the growing number of polls which show Trump either tied with Clinton or beating her by a narrow margin in November, they have decided on a different course. And that course is to start laying the ground-work to blame Bernie Sanders and his supporters if Hillary gets the nomination but loses the general election. This groundwork can be seen daily from almost every arm of the corporately owned Main Stream Media. The shenanigans pulled by the DNC Elites at the Nevada state convention are being spun into a well honed message of " See those Bernie people, they are crazy, look what they did in Vegas for absolutely no reason, they'll pull a Ralph Nader, it's going to be their fault!". The DNC refuses to acknowledge the serious flaws in their candidate, the extremely serious trust issues millions of voters have with her, and the deep dislike ( right or wrong ) that Independents have of Sec. Clinton.
At times, it almost seems like the DNC establishment, the Belt-Way Elites, and their corporate backers would rather lose with Hillary Clinton than win with Bernie Sanders... And why not? If Bernie wins it would probably mean an end to the revolving door between Capital Hill and which-ever lobbyist firm paid the biggest bucks. If Bernie wins then the DNC can kiss those large corporate checks to their Super-PAC's goodbye. Also no Big-Pharma or Insurance Industry "donations" for keeping Universal Healthcare OFF of the table... Same for the Banks that are backing Hillary. These financial monsters are making billions off the student loan industry, why would they want a candidate to win that might actually pass publicly funded higher-education? Better to risk losing an election than risk their profit margins...
If Bernie Sanders is elected President of the United States and becomes the Leader of the Democratic Party, all the cushy back-room deals that the DNC Elites enjoy would be a thing of the past. Whether Hillary wins or loses, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, Barney Frank, and the rest of the Roberta Lange's of the DNC don't risk the end of establishment rule.... And maybe, possibly, that is what this election has really been all about for them.... Maybe it's more about maintaining control of the Democratic Party and stamping out real change than winning an election.... Maybe that's why the DNC absolutely refuses to see the writing on the wall...
