2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination

If the Republican race is Calvinball, with everyone making up the rules as they go along, the Democratic race is more like — zzzzzzz — golf.

With Barack Obama ineligible to run for a third term, Hillary Clinton believed her time had come (again). Political independent Bernie Sanders and a few other Democrats had other ideas.

The hacked e-mails showed that the DNC viewed her nomination as a foregone conclusion, and it probably was. But they claimed to be neutral, while pressuring media surrogates to boost her image with favorable stories while ignoring Sanders. Did the DNC rig the primaries? Not exactly. But they worked closely with Hillary's campaign, hosted fundraising events that raised tens of millions for her at the expense of state committees, and made a mockery of party bylaws that required them to remain neutral in primaries.

Democratic primary polls
Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. Your Bernie Bros out there on the internet are walking into a trap, as is your Millennial fleet. It was I who allowed Sanders to tie me in Iowa. My campaign is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops awaits them on Super Tuesday. Oh, I'm afraid my Firewall will be quite operational when your friends arrive.

Clinton v. Sanders was hardly comparable at all to the narrow, bitter fight of 2008. The extent of the attacks was probably the gun control issue. Bernie came up short by 12 points and basically just outperformed in caucus states for his wins, which why the black caucus and Hispanic caucus opposed him. Many of his supporters are new primary voters likely would not have voted if he had not entered the race, meaning he brought many new voters into the democratic process. Many voted for Johnson or Stein as alternatives and a small number voted for Trump himself.


 * Senior citizens prefer to use the early voting process. They were confirmed to be Hillary's secret weapon the moment she stepped into this race. (It's just a matter of Clinton's voters being older and harder to motivate to go spend hours standing around at a caucus.) That gave Bern an advantage in the caucus format, since the lack of the youth vote in 2010 has been cited as a major reason Dems lost the house. But equally, his base is far more impacted by flaws in voter registration.
 * Hillary has never done particularly well in the West: she was shut out of Bernie's home state and spent literally $0.00 in Utah and Idaho. Whistle-stops only. She was conserving resources for the general election. Meanwhile, Sanders, who already had a "home court advantage" of sorts, spent plenty of time and money in the area.
 * As Hawaii goes, so goes...uh, we dunno. Hawaii has high populations of Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans, two demographics that haven't voted in large numbers yet. That's why the results of Hawaii were kind of unpredictable.

Did you ever hear of the tragedy of McGovern the Wise?
Nevada was a garbage fire. The state cut funding for elections, which caused huge lines due to inadequate polling stations. Those glitches hurt Hillary and Bernie both, but since a majority of Clinton supporters chose to vote early, she still won by a large margin; this didn't sit right with Bernie's supporters. Voters in Arizona have a legitimate claim, and lawsuits have been filed to address this concern.

Everything seemed to fall apart in New York. Looking back, Bernie's design flaw was his misunderstanding of the media; each time he had a chance to strike gold, he missed and went for copper.
 * Sanders waited days to respond after Nevada, even running away from reporters (!) while campaigning in Puerto Rico, before releasing his statement: In it, he concentrated on self-congratulatory stump speeches, and again reiterated allegations of voter suppression.
 * When given a softball question which fits perfectly with his campaign (he was asked to name a specific instance where Hillary changed her vote based on campaign contributions), Bernie whiffed.
 * After coming off his winning streak into the must-win state of NY, his pope "visit" was overshadowed both by his NYPD interview and "Clinton is unqualified" comment, which was a response to what Clinton said on a similar question; he walked back from it, but he fell into that media trap easily.
 * In the weeks leading up to California, Hillary's emails should have been at the forefront, but instead Bernie tried to get Trump to debate him.
 * The hiring of Comic Book Guy was especially obnoxious, as his attack dog persona and Bernie's "fun grandpa" schtick were oddly mismatched. Had Sanders taken the deal Harry Reid offered him, he could've been the most powerful man in the Senate, but Jeff Weaver flushed that idea. What's left? A quixotic quest to be mildly annoying to Democrats for a month.

Most of Sanders' staff were let go after his New York loss; they basically had a skeleton crew in California only. All this combative talk implied that Sanders would to do what he promised: have a contested convention in Philadelphia. For a while the candidates were caught in this awkward dance where they couldn't not show solidarity while simultaneously withholding any official endorsement. Sanders wanted to cash in his leverage for some party reforms, but that market had already crashed. Nevertheless, Hillary was forced to make some concessions: The DNC Chair (Wasserman-Schultz) usually appoints all 15 members of the platform committee. Instead she picked four, while Bernie picked five.

As of May, there weren't enough delegates left for Sanders to reach the magic number 2383, the minimum required to win the nomination. He waited so long to concede that the DNC was plagued by protests and booing from the Bernie delegation for 4 nights straight.

Accusations of bias
The DNC claimed to be neutral, while pressuring media surrogates to boost her image with favorable stories while ignoring Sanders.

But the bigger story was how they pressured state-level Democrats to host "joint fundraising events" with the DNC and Hillary, ostensibly to benefit those downticket state races. Campaign finance records show that they raised tens of millions in those events, deposited into the coffers of local committees in compliance with laws noted above. But those deposits were subsequently transferred directly to Hillary's campaign within a day. 99% of the $61 million raised at those events ended up in Hillary's "Victory fund". It was blatant circumvention of campaign finance law. And those wealthy donors were then "maxed out", meaning that they couldn't contribute to state Democrats in the general election. When Bernie cried foul, they even went as far as calling attention to the fact that Bernie was not Christian prior to key Bible-belt primaries. When all this came to light, staffers took the fall and Wasserman-Shultz took a cushy job on Hillary's campaign staff.

Delegates won thus far
As of May, there simply were not enough delegates left for Sanders to reach the magic number 2383, the minimum required in order for a candidate to earn the Democratic Party's nomination. He would have had to gain the support of superdelegates, which was going to be difficult, as he had called them undemocratic for supporting Clinton "against the will of the people". For quite some time, despite mounting pressure for him to drop out, Sanders refused to concede and used his remaining leverage to influence the Democratic Party's platform and legislative agenda, arguing that defeating Trump should not be their only goal at this point.

At last count, Hillary Clinton had 2220 pledged delegates while Bernie Sanders has 1831. (These numbers do not count superdelegates as they will not vote until the convention in July, though neither do the pledged delegates.) Note that neither candidate can officially declare the defeat of the other without help from superdelegates. On June 12, Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

Conspiracy theories
Throughout the course of the 2016 democratic presidential primary, some Sanders supporters claimed that Democratic Party actors preferred Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. While this is a perfectly valid and accurate claim, some took the claim too far, theorizing that the Democratic Party establishment and/or the Clinton campaign rigged the primary in favor of Hillary over Bernie. This belief become so popular among the left that now some Democratic Party activists, along with many conservatives, believe the conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party rigged their presidential primary.

Voter fraud
Some conspiracy theorists claim that Clinton campaign operatives and Democratic insiders engaged in election fraud, ballot manipulation, and literal election rigging.

The American election system is a mess. It’s handled locally, it’s extremely complex, and it’s grossly underfunded. As a result, the election system is prone to mishaps and errors on behalf of local election officials. These routine snafus are commonplace throughout the electoral system, and they aren’t really evidence of rigging – it’s evidence that the way America conducts its elections is incompetent. With regard to the 2016 primary, there’s simply no evidence that these local election officials were Clinton plants or Democratic Party operatives who intentionally sought to engage in voter fraud in order to help Clinton and disadvantage Sanders.

Exit polls
According to Nate Cohn, conspiracy theorists claim that early exits showing Sanders winning states, and the subsequent results showing Clinton winning, was proof that Clinton rigged the primary. Conspiracy theorists believe that exit polls are usually accurate, and cherry pick instances in which the exit polls correctly predicted the winner to bolster their assertion. The problem lies with the assumption that early exit polls are usually good. In fact, early exits are not a great predictor of the final vote count. Nate Cohn writes that when it comes to exits, there are a lot of sources of polling error – even more than a regular poll. According to Cohn, it’s not clear as why the early exits were off, but the most likely reason is that early exits oversampled Sanders voters because younger voters are more likely to fill out exit polls. Since young voters are an overwhelmingly pro-Sanders constituency, exit polls would be biased in favor of Sanders. Thus, part of the systemic polling error originates from an oversampling of younger voters.

Frontloading
A disproportionate number of southern states had their primary contests take place near the beginning of the 2016 presidential primary. Since Hillary's strongest support came from southern states, Bernie Sanders supporters claimed that the DNC had deliberately placed these southern states at the beginning of the primary calendar in order to give her an advantage over Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders himself criticized the frontloading of southern states.

The main problem with this claim is that the DNC did not, and does not have the ability to change the primary calendar. State legislatures have the power to change the primary calendar. In preparation for the 2016 presidential primary, many southern states wanted to place their primaries near the beginning of the primary so they would have more sway in determining the nominee. As a result, southern state legislatures passed legislation moving their state primaries closer to the beginning of the year. These southern state legislatures were dominated by Republicans when they passed this legislation, so if you're going to blame anybody for frontloading the southern states, you'd have to blame GOP-controlled state legislatures, not the Democratic Party.

Brooklyn voter purge
Over a hundred thousand Brooklyn voters were purged right before the New York primary. On one hand, voters are generally purged for inactivity. However, purging lots of voters right before a primary is considered unusual, since voter purges generally happen well ahead of voting. In addition, many active voters were improperly purged. AJ Vicens wrote that the purge “handed Hillary Clinton a much-needed win over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.”


 * Hillary’s margin of victory was larger than the number of Brooklyn voters who were purged from the rolls. Even if we assume all the purged voters voted for Sanders, Hillary still would’ve won the primary.


 * The victims of the voter purge were more likely to be pro-Clinton than pro-Sanders. The type of voters who get purged are inactive voters. Inactive voters are voters who haven’t voted within the last two presidential elections. Since Sanders’ base is predominantly young voters, his supporters are less likely to be affected by the purge, since much of his base’s voters haven’t been voting long enough to skip voting in the last two presidential elections. The demographic composition of inactive voters skews towards older voters, who are more likely to be pro-Clinton. Thus, the voters most likely to be hurt by the purge would be voters who supported Clinton.


 * A WNYC report found that the victims of the purge were predominantly Hispanic, a pro-Clinton constituency. Thus, the purge hurt Hillary more than Bernie.


 * Brooklyn was pro-Clinton in the primary, so letting more Brooklyn voters vote would’ve helped Clinton.

In sum, the Brooklyn voter purge probably depressed potential turnout in favor of Clinton, which actually helped Sanders.

Arizona
In the Arizona presidential primary, there were egregiously long lines at the polling places. These long lines dissuaded some voters from voting. According to RoseAnn DeMoro, a Sanders supporter, long lines in Arizona was evidence of rigging.


 * Latino voters in Maricopa County, AZ, who were most likely to experience long lines, were an HRC-friendly demographic. Why would Dems disenfranchise their own voters?


 * The DNC doesn’t have any control over the polling stations. The state’s secretary of state does. The Republican Secretary of State of Arizona cut the number of polling places in the state, which directly led to long lines.


 * There's no evidence that voters dissuaded from long lines would’ve given Sanders a victory in Arizona.

Closed primaries
Closed primaries are primaries in which only voters who are registered in a political party are allowed to vote in that primary. In closed primaries during the 2016 democratic presidential primary, registered Democrats were more likely to be pro-Clinton, while independents – who are either affiliated with a minor party, or no party – were more likely to back Sanders. As a result, closed primaries were more friendly to HRC throughout the primary. RoseAnn Demoro, writing for Salon, listed closed primaries as one of the ten reasons why the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential primary was rigged. But it was known well ahead of time that these states had closed primaries, and there’s just no evidence that the Democratic party coordinated to make more closed primaries to shut out Sanders voters during the primary without giving Sanders voters enough time to adjust to the rules change.

Debate scheduling
Sanders supporters claim that the DNC scheduled the Democratic debates at times that would elicit low ratings. Bernie Sanders' former presidential campaign manager Jeff Weaver claimed in an interview that the debate schedule was rigged. Political scientist Boris Heersink writes that while it’s possible that DNC staffers scheduled the primary debates with the intention of helping Clinton, there’s no evidence for this claim. In addition, Heersink writes that there’s no evidence that Hillary’s vote margin in the presidential primary can be explained by the timing of the debates.