CHAPTER 5

Round One: Hillary Declares Victory Over Sanders

To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms.

Donald J. Trump, Briarcliff Manor, New York, June 7, 20161

The first Democratic presidential debate among primary contenders was held on Tuesday, October 13, 2015, hosted by CNN at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to Politico, the debate drew 15.3 million viewers, the most to ever watch a Democratic primary debate in history.2

The debate lagged the GOP, with 24 million viewers watching the first GOP primary debate hosted by Fox News on August 6, 2015,3 and 23 million watching the second GOP primary debate hosted by CNN on September 16, 2015.4 Donald Trump was widely credited with making the first GOP debate the most watched presidential debate ever, giving the highest-rated telecast in the 20-year history of the Fox News Channel, topping dramatically the first GOP primary debate in 2012, also hosted by Fox, that drew only 3.2 million viewers.5

These viewer statistics left no doubt the public was fascinated with the GOP contest that was shaping up as Donald Trump, the “David” in the contest, facing 16 challenger GOP professional “Goliaths.” By contrast, few professionals had any doubt Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. Some 10 million Americans found it considerably less interesting to watch the Democratic primary debate where the major point of interest was how far to the left would Bernie force Hillary to go?

Tuesday, October 13, 2015: Democrats’ First Primary Debate

Hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the headline of the evening came when Bernie Sanders got an opportunity to address the question of the controversial private email server Clinton used as Secretary of State. Sanders’ reply went viral, almost immediately. “Let me say—let me say something that may not be great politics,” Sanders began. “But I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.” The audience in the Wynn Hotel applauded loudly, Clinton smiled, reaching across to shake hands with Sanders, who was standing at the podium next to her. The comment appeared to absolve Clinton of any legal culpability in the scandal, with Sanders making it clear he did not believe the issue should be an issue in the presidential campaign, at least not in the Democratic primaries. Hillary repeated her use of the private email server was “a mistake,” saying it “wasn’t the best choice,” comments meant to distinguish her email policy from a crime. She attacked congressional investigations into her email use as a partisan political effort “to drive down my poll numbers.”

Sanders hit Clinton hard over her decision as a US senator to vote in favor of going to war in Iraq in 2003. “I’m the former chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee, and in that capacity I learned a very powerful lesson about the cost of war, and I will do everything that I can to make sure that the United States does not get involved in another quagmire like we did in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country,” Sanders said. “We should be putting together a coalition of Arab countries who should be leading the effort. We should be supportive, but I do not support American ground troops in Syria.”

Aware of Sanders opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement that had been negotiated by the Obama administration while Clinton was Secretary of State, Clinton hedged, implying she had decided not to support the deal. “You know, take the trade deal. I did say, when I was Secretary of State, three years ago, that I hoped it would be the gold standard. It was just finally negotiated last week, and in looking at it, it didn’t meet my standards. My standards for more new, good jobs for Americans, for raising wages for Americans,” Clinton argued. “And I want to make sure that I can look into the eyes of any middle-class American and say, ‘this will help raise your wages.’ And I concluded I could not.”

For the most part, the candidates agreed on standard Democratic Party issues, articulating virtually identical talking points when asked about questions concerning income inequality, the need to create jobs, and the issues of open borders and immigration. “While the Republican primary has been roiled by the emotional debate over immigration, the Democratic candidates were largely united in their call for providing a path to legal status for the millions of people currently in the U.S. illegally,” the Associated Press reported. “The party is counting on general election support from Hispanics, a group that overwhelmingly voted for Obama in 2012.”6

The partisan mainstream media, largely supporting Clinton, were quick to call the CNN debate a victory for Clinton. “From gun control and banking regulations to debt-free college and Social Security benefits, Mrs. Clinton positioned herself as a champion of liberals, young people, and the elderly—the very voters who make up the Sanders coalition—while also repeatedly reaching out to women, as an advocate for families and children (and as, potentially, the nation’s first female president),” reporter Patrick Healy wrote in the New York Times. “Mr. Sanders, whose plain-spoken disgust over the email controversy drew praise, looked sheepish and reactive at other points, hesitating to attack Mrs. Clinton forcefully over her ties to Wall Street, and running into trouble defending his past opposition to stricter gun control laws and immigration reform.”7

In all, the Democrats conducted 9 primary debates between the first debate and the last, on April 14, 2016. By the last debate, the television audience had dwindled to 5.6 million, approximately one-third the audience that watched the first debate.8 While the viewership of the GOP primary debates also declined about in half from the first to the last debate, the audience for the last GOP primary debate, held on March 10, 2016, was still 11.9 million viewers9—with twice as many people watching the last GOP primary debate as watched the last Democrat primary debate.

Again, this reflects Donald Trump’s ability to dominate the media during the entire 2016 presidential debate, both pro and con, as a measure of the extent to which Trump captured the imagination of the American public from the moment he first declared his candidacy. The other factor explaining less interest among television viewers for the Democrat primary debates was the degree to which Clinton and Sanders were basically in agreement on what had become standard Democratic party talking points in recent years. While Clinton and Sanders debated fine points on their opposition, for instance, to the National Rifle Association, or their support for Planned Parenthood, both were for increased gun regulations that conservatives saw as limiting Second Amendment freedoms, and both supported public taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood in their enthusiasm that the Supreme Court decision Roe versus Wade had established abortion as a “woman’s right to privacy” even though the subject was not addressed in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. These “inside baseball” fine distinctions were obviously less interesting than the GOP primary debates, where to the end candidates opposing Donald Trump for the nomination questioned the legitimacy of his campaign, or their obligations to support him as Republicans should he win the nomination.

Clinton and Sanders Trade Early Primaries

On February 1, 2016, Clinton beat Sanders in the Iowa primary by the narrowest of margins, 49.8 percent to 49.6 percent. Then, a week later, on February 9, 2016, Sanders grabbed the headlines, beating Hillary 60.1 percent to 37.7 percent in New Hampshire. Hillary easily won the next two primaries: Nevada on February 20, 2016, with 52.6 percent of the vote, and South Carolina, on February 27, 2016, with 73.3 percent. On Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016, Clinton won 8 primaries—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and American Samoa—compared to Sanders wining 4 primaries—Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Vermont. The totals when the Super Tuesday voting was complete gave Clinton a comfortable 200-delegate lead over Sanders.

The first real surprise in the Democratic primary contests came on March 8, 2016, when Sanders won the Michigan primary by a margin of 1.5 percent. The political world was truly stunned. “Hillary had been polling ahead by 21 points, right up until Sanders pulled off the upset. Clinton had been widely expected to win the Rust Belt state, having led Sanders by double digits in polls leading up to Tuesday’s primary,” Politico noted, reporting Sanders’ win in Michigan. “But the Sanders campaign deemed Michigan a “critical showdown,” and aggressively attacked Clinton for her policies on trade and her ties to Wall Street. Sanders is hoping his win in the delegate-heavy Midwestern state—second in delegates only to Texas so far—will show that his populist economic message can resonate elsewhere.”10

FiveThirtyEight.com, the blog where polling guru Nate Silver is editor in chief, attributed the surprise win to pollsters that underestimated the youth turnout. Voters under age 30 made up 19 percent of the Democratic primary voters in Michigan, nearly as large a share as voters 65 or older. While pollsters had estimated voters under 50 would constitute about one-quarter of Democratic voters in the Michigan primary, voters under 50 instead turned out to be more than half. “The pollsters underestimated Sanders’ dominance among younger voters,” the blog concluded, while overestimating the enthusiasm of Clinton’s older supporters to turn out and vote for her.11

In late March and early April 2015, Sanders won a string of 8 out of 9 primaries, all by double digits, with Sanders racking up wins in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and “Democrats Abroad,” while Clinton won only Arizona. Yet, amazingly, Clinton came out ahead in the delegate total. How was this possible? The answer requires an understanding of an important quirk in the DNC process of nominating the party’s presidential candidate: namely, “superdelegates.”

February 18, 2016: Hillary Health Concern Surfaces During Las Vegas Trip

On February 18, 2016, on a campaign trip to Las Vegas in advance of the Nevada primary, Hillary Clinton was observed boarding her airplane in Chicago wearing her normal contact lenses. But when she arrived at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for a late night meeting with hotel workers, she was observed wearing heavy black frame eyeglasses fitted with Fresnel prism lenses typically medically prescribed for patients suffering from double vision.12 This followed a speech Hillary had given earlier in the week in New York at Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture where Hillary suffered from her third public coughing fit while giving a speech about race relations.13 Reporting on the coughing fit, Breitbart News noted that Hillary’s coughing got so bad that the audience started chanting, “Hillary! Hillary!” to provide encouragement while Clinton started taking sips of water preparing to pop a cough drop.

Hillary had worn the heavy black frame eyeglasses fitted with Fresnel lenses when she testified before the US House Oversight Committee Hearing on May 8, 2013, investigating Benghazi, when Hillary lost control, responding to Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican-Wisconsin, asking why the Benghazi terror attack happened. A famous video clip resulted, shown often by Hillary opponents throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Hillary wearing the black frame eyeglasses and a solid green dress jacket explodes. “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” Hillary pleaded, raising both arms up, her palms extended upward in an exasperated expression. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d go kill some Americans?” she continued. “What difference at this point does it make.”14 Then, on October 22, 2015, when testifying to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Clinton suffered a coughing fit that temporarily halted the panel’s questions.15

“Brain damage” from Clinton concussion in 2012?

The issue of the Fresnel lenses came to national attention in May 2014, when Republican strategist Karl Rove insisted at a conference that voters must be told why Hillary was wearing the eyeglasses fitted with Fresnel prisms that Rove suggested were only prescribed for people who have traumatic brain damage. As reported first by in the New York Post’s “Page Six” column, Rove said that if Hillary runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012.16 Hillary had insisted the fall was attributed to dehydration from a stomach virus. She had also insisted that a subsequently developed blood clot in her head was successfully treated without causing brain damage. In a subsequent interview with the Washington Post, Rove claimed Clinton had spent thirty days in the hospital, recovering from the fall and the blood clot. “Thirty days in the hospital?” Rove questioned. “And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.” The Washington Post corrected Rove, noting that it was three days not 30 days as Rove had claimed, that Clinton spent after being admitted to New York Presbyterian Hospital—Columbia University Medical Center for a blood clot that developed after the fall caused by dehydration related to a stomach virus, according to Clinton aides and hospital officials.17

When Bill Clinton was confronted by Rove’s accusations during a question and answer session at the Peterson Foundation in Washington, on May 14, 2014, Clinton told the audience that the concussion Hillary suffered “required six months of very serious work to get over.” ABC News, in reporting on President Clinton’s comments, summarized the history of Hillary’s fall, her concussion, and her subsequent brain clot. On December 30, 2012, Clinton was hospitalized at New York Presbyterian Hospital after a blood clot in her head was discovered during a follow-up exam to the concussions she experienced several weeks earlier.

On December 30, 2012, State Department spokesman Philippe Reines “In the course of a follow-up exam today, Secretary Clinton’s doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago. She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at New York-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours. Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required.”18 On December 31, 2012, Clinton’s attending physicians released the following additional statement: “In the course of a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday, the scan revealed that a right transverse sinus venous thrombosis had formed. This is a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. It did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage. To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the Secretary with blood thinners. She will be released once the medication dose has been established. In all other aspects of her recovery, the Secretary is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff.”

On November 16, 2015, Washington-based watchdog group Judicial Watch released an exchange between her aides Huma Abedin and Monica Hanley dated January 26, 2013, regarding Clinton’s schedule. They indicated it was “very important” to go over phone calls with Clinton because the former Secretary of State was “often confused.”19

The issue came up again during the third Democratic Party primary debate in Goffstown, N.H., on December 19, 2015, when Clinton took a five-minute bathroom break at the third Democratic debate, returning to the stage late, as contenders Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, an early contender for the Democratic party nomination who, as previously mentioned, suspended his campaign after the Iowa caucus, stood on stage ready to resume the debate after a commercial break. Clinton remained offstage, awkwardly leaving her center stage podium unoccupied. Initially, reporters attributed her delayed return to the stage to the distance of the woman’s bathroom to and from the on-stage podium.20 Alex Swoyer, writing on Breitbart.com explained Hillary’s disappearance from the debate stage by reporting from law enforcement sources backstage that the delay involved a “flare up of problems from brain injury” that required Hillary to sit in a chair off-stage to recover from fatigue, dizziness, and disorientation.21

WikiLeaks released emails leave no doubt the Clinton campaign was worried early in 2015 that Hillary’s health could become an issue. On March 14, 2015, a Clinton campaign manager emailed Podesta, asking Podesta if he had talked with Hillary about taxes and health. “I know both are hyper sensitive but I wonder if both are better dealt with early so we can control them—rather than responding to calls for transparency. What do you think?”22 In an email dated April 21, 2015, Clinton top aid and confidant Huma Abedin warned various top campaign officials that Hillary was “going to stick to notes a little closer this A.M., still not perfect in her head,” an apparent reference to Hillary’s continuing post-concussion problems with mental functioning.23

Hillary: “High Risk” for Blood Clots

The information on Hillary Clinton’s health released by her presidential campaign was limited to a letter from Clinton’s personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, dated July 28, 2015.24 In that letter, Bardack revealed that Clinton is generally “healthy,” but she pointed out two incidents of thrombosis, the medical term for “blood clotting within the veins.” Bardack continued noting that Clinton had experienced two incidents of blood clots in her leg, “Her past medical history is notable for a deep vein thrombosis in 1998 and in 2009.” Bardack’s letter also confirmed that Clinton had experienced a transverse venous thrombosis—a blood clot between the brain and the skull behind her left ear—as a result of the concussion she suffered in 2012. “As a result of the concussion, Mrs. Clinton experienced double vision for a period of time and benefited from wearing glasses with a Fresnel Prism.” As a precaution, Bardack noted, Clinton was placed “on daily anticoagulation.”

The New York Daily News, in an article published in 2007 when Clinton turned 60 years old,25 described the 1998 incident as “a potentially fatal scare.” She was campaigning on behalf of Chuck Schumer’s New York Senate bid and had a swollen right foot that caused severe pain. “She thought she just needed to slow down from constant flying,” wrote New York Daily News reporter Heidi Evans. “A White House doctor told her to rush to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where doctors diagnosed a large blood clot behind her right knee.” Clinton told the newspaper: “That was scary because you have to treat it immediately—you don’t want to take the risk that it will break loose and travel to your brain, or your heart or your lungs. That was the most significant health scare I’ve ever had.”26 Hillary sent another email to Cheryl Mills, dated August 19, 2011, regarding an article Clinton had read, “Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?” In a separate email sent two months later, Clinton’s top foreign policy advisor at the State Department, Jacob Sullivan, informed her about a drug called Provigil (Modafinil) that is used to treat “excessive sleepiness in patients with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and multiple sclerosis” as well as “excessive sleepiness caused by narcolepsy.”27

Evans reported that Clinton claimed she no longer took blood thinners and had “otherwise enjoyed good health while zig-zagging across the country for the past nine months, keeping a schedule that exhausts aides half her age.” “I’m lucky that I’ve got a good stamina,” Clinton told Evans. “I try to take care of myself. It’s much harder on the road [since] there’s too much junk food and temptation around. I don’t exercise as much as I did before I got into the real heat of the presidential campaign, but I try to get out and walk.”

But Dr. Bardack’s 2015 assessment disagreed, noting Clinton had been taking anticoagulant medication continuously since the 1998 blood-clot incident. “She [Hillary Clinton] also was advised in 1998 to take Lovenox, a short-acting blood thinner, when she took extended flights; this medication was discontinued when she began Coumadin.” While Bardack did not specify when Clinton’s medication was switched from Lovenox to Coumadin, she made it clear Clinton is still taking Coumadin, evidently now on a continual basis. “Her Coumadin dose is monitored regularly and she has experienced no side effects from her medications,” Bardack wrote.

WND.com reporter Jerome R. Corsi, researching Clinton’s medical condition, noted that the two medications Clinton was taking daily were old medications, both developed from natural ingredients. For Clinton’s hypoactive thyroid, Bardack prescribed Armour Thyroid, a natural medication made from desiccated pig thyroid glands. For Clinton’s high-risk propensity to develop blood clots, Bardack prescribed Coumadin—a brand name of warfarin, which initially was developed as a well-known rat poison, designed to cause rats to bleed to death after being ingested.28 These two medications are confirmed in her physician’s report.

“Hillary’s hypothyroid condition can lead to hypercoagulability, a tendency toward excessive blood clotting, that makes more complicated the use of the blood-thinning medicines she needs to control what appears to be a possibly genetic tendency of her body to produce blood clots,” Dr. Ronald Hoffman explained to WND. “The medical literature cautions that patients on Armour Thyroid may need to reduce the amount of Coumadin they are taking, and this requires constant blood testing to make sure the mixture of Armour Thyroid and Coumadin are adjusted just right,” he cautioned. Hoffman, a New York City Physician who hosts the nationally syndicated radio program, Intelligent Medicine, was a past president of the nation’s largest organization of complementary and alternative doctors, the American College for Advancement in Medicine, or ACAM. Additionally, Hoffman is the founder and medical director of the Hoffman Center, specializing in a natural medicine approach that combines nutritional and metabolic medical assessment tools with high-tech innovations in traditional medicine.

Clearly Clinton’s medical conditions were far more serious than she and her team let on.

Clinton’s Lock on “Superdelegates”

The Democratic National Committee’s presidential primary process differs from the Republican National Committee’s process in one important way—“superdelegates”—an elite class of DNC delegates not bound by the outcome of the primary contests in their various states.

Superdelegates were established by the Democratic Party to give party elites an unfair advantage over Democratic Party primary voters in deciding which candidate will emerge from the party’s primary and caucus system to be the party’s presidential nominee. The DNC introduced primaries and caucuses in 1972, as a reform to take the selection of the party’s presidential nominee out of the hands of backroom bosses who typically had brokered ballots in contested conventions to select a candidate favored by the Democratic Party’s professional leadership in Washington.

Superdelegates were created as a corrective after the 1970s DNC reforms introducing primaries and caucuses which resulted in two losing candidates, both trounced by the GOP in landslide elections: George McGovern in 1972, who was easily beaten by incumbent President Richard Nixon; and Jimmy Carter in 1976, who lost his bid in 1980 to GOP challenger Ronald Reagan. When Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged President Carter in 1980 in a fight that went to the convention floor, the DNC constituted the Hunt Commission, chaired by then-North Carolina Governor James Hunt, with the result that superdelegates were born.29

Under DNC rules, a superdelegate falls into one of the three following categories:

1.   A major elected official, including senators, members of the House, governors, and leaders from each state’s Democratic Party;

2.   A notable party figure, such as former and current presidents and vice presidents; and

3.   Select leaders of organizations affiliated with the Democratic National Committee.30

Democrat superdelegates tend to express their support before the primary in their state, but under DNC rules, superdelegates can change their minds right up until they vote on the first ballot.

In total, there are 712 superdelegates, controlling about 15 percent of the nominating process, with the remaining 85 percent of the delegates chosen by DNC primaries and caucuses. The great advantage to being a superdelegate is that unlike a regular delegate, a superdelegate is free to vote on the first ballot at the DNC national nominating convention for whatever candidate the superdelegate chooses to support. Normal delegates are bound under DNC rules to vote for the candidate who wins their state primary or caucus election.

So, while Sanders won 15 of the 24 regular delegates in the New Hampshire primary, six of the state’s eight superdelegates had already pledged to support Clinton, with the other two superdelegates refusing to say. So, the real outcome of the New Hampshire primary, in which Sanders won the popular vote, was 21 delegates for Clinton versus 24 delegates for Sanders, with 2 superdelegates yet to commit, despite Sanders having defeated Clinton by 22 percentage points.31 Analyzing the New Hampshire primary results, the Washington Post wrote that superdelegates gave Clinton a huge advantage over Sanders to win the 2,382 delegates needed to win the nomination. With most of the DNC’s 712 superdelegates pledged in advance to Clinton, independent of results in the DNC state primary and caucus contests, Sanders could earn a majority of the 1,670 delegates up for grabs in popular voting all over the country, and still lose the nomination.32

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in attempting to explain to CNN’s Jake Tapper the impact of superdelegates on Sanders’ New Hampshire delegate outcome, found herself having difficulty explaining how the DNC superdelegate process was fair to grassroots Democratic voters seeking to promote diversity in primary outcomes. “Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists,” she said.33

June 7, 2016: Hillary Declares Herself the Winner

On June 7, 2016, at 2:18 am GMT, in the early morning hours on the day of the Democratic primary in California, the Associated Press reported Hillary was on the edge of an historic moment. “Eight years after conceding she was unable to ‘shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling,’ Hillary Clinton is embracing her place in history as she finally crashes through as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee,” the AP noted. “Throughout her surprisingly rocky primary campaign, Clinton has been cautious about emphasizing her trailblazer status. But as she campaigned in California in recent days, the former Secretary of State signaled she was ready to acknowledge her distinction as the first woman to top the presidential ticket of a major US political party.”34 Then, in a separate press release as the votes were being counted in California, the Associated Press reported that early results in the California primary looked like Hillary Clinton had enough pledged delegates and superdelegates to clinch the Democratic nomination.35

That evening, June 7, 2016, Hillary, wearing a white pantsuit with jacket combination, gave a “victory speech” to supporters in Brooklyn, New York, the site of her campaign headquarters. It was eight years to the day since her famous June 7, 2008 “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” speech, conceding to Barack Obama after losing the Democratic primary in California. ”Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it,” Clinton told supporters that night eight years ago.36 ”The path will be easier next time.” This time around, eight years later in Brooklyn, Clinton announced she finally was the Democrats presumptive nominee, becoming the first woman to lead a major political party presidential ticket.

In 2016, assured she was going to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Hillary made the evening a celebration of feminism. “Tonight’s victory is not about one person,” Hillary said, kicking off the speech.37 “It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible.” From here, Hillary transitioned into the 19th century campaign to establish women’s suffrage. “In our country, it started right here in New York, in a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848. When a small but determined group of women, and men, came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights, and they set it forth in something called the Declaration of Sentiments, and it was the first time in human history that that kind of declaration occurred,” she said. “So we owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you.”

Smiling broadly and looking self-satisfied if not outright smug, Clinton had begun her speech by invoking once again the glass ceiling image, saying, “And it may be hard to see tonight, but we are all standing under a glass ceiling right now. But don’t worry, we’re not smashing this one.” She continued proclaiming her victory in this feminist tradition, “Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone—the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee for president of the United States.” Hillary’s point was clear: voters should vote for her because she was a woman. In the context of intolerant Democratic Party far-left ideology-driven politics, few Hillary supporters saw any hypocrisy that the plea to vote for Hillary because of her sex was inherently sexist.

On Thursday, June 9, 2016, the Associated Press reported Bernie Sanders was now under increasing pressure from unnamed Democratic leaders to abandon his presidential campaign. “He vowed to fight on for a political revolution but showed signs he would bow to the inevitable and bring his insurgent effort to a close,” the AP reported. “For Sanders, as his remarkable White House bid runs out of next steps, the only question is when. Just as important for Sanders is how to keep his campaign alive in some form, by converting his newfound political currency into policies to change the Democratic Party, the Senate or even the country itself, on issues including income inequality and campaign finance reform.”38 The AP noted Sanders had promised to continue his campaign until the last primary, scheduled for the District of Columbia the following week. But that pledge was in question as about half of Sanders’ campaign staff was being laid off, two people familiar with Sanders’ plans confirmed to the AP.

In a White House meeting with President Obama on Thursday, June 9, 2016, Sanders indicated his willingness to support Hillary, but he still refused to concede. Speaking outside of the White House after meeting with President Obama, Sanders said of Clinton, “I look forward to meeting with her in the near future to see how we can work together to defeat Donald Trump and create a government, which represents all of us and not just one percent.”39.

The Associated Press reported that tensions between the Clinton and the Sanders campaigns simmered throughout a platform meeting in a steamy hotel ballroom over two marathon days in Orlando during July, just prior to the opening of the DNC nominating convention in Philadelphia.40 “Despite winning concessions on many issues, Sanders supporters booed angrily over losses, such as failing to get clear opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal,” the AP reported. “Near the meeting’s end, Sanders’ backers angrily shouted down an effort to add Clinton’s name to the document in a number of places, which they took as an implication that she was already the official nominee.” The Clinton camp elbow bending to add her name to a list of platform committee recommendations risked alienating. ”To do it now [add Hillary’s name] is a slap in the face to us. She is not the nominee,” Diana Hatsis-Newhoff, 54, a nurse from Palm Beach, who was a Sanders supporter, told the AP. But, finally, after stalling for weeks as he sought to get liberal policy concessions from Hillary and as he lobbied to push the Democratic Party platform farther left, the AP noted Sanders had finally agreed to drop out of the race.

Appearing with Hillary in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—a state that Sanders had won convincingly just five months earlier, Sanders endorsed his rival. “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process, and I congratulate her for that,” Sanders said, speaking from a podium fronted with a Clinton campaign message that read, “Stronger Together.” Sanders continued, officially suspending his campaign: “She will be the Democratic nominee for president, and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States.” Sanders’ determination to move the Clinton campaign farther left was evident in his closing remarks. “We produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party,” Sanders told supporters. “Our job now is to see that platform implemented.”41

Sanders on Superdelegates: “A Rigged System”

In April 2016, a controversy within the Democratic Party flared, when Sanders supporters, including many Millennial voters, became disgusted that Sanders had won 8 of the last nine primary contests by double digits but Hillary got more delegates. “This is primarily because of the Democratic Party’s superdelegate system, which has come under harsh condemnation in this election for being thoroughly undemocratic,” Ben Norton wrote on Salon.com on April 12, 2016. “Hundreds of unelected party elites known as superdelegates or unpledged delegates have enormous sway in the primary election.”42 Norton further objected to media partisanship of Clinton for lumping superdelegates into the total delegate counts in reporting on the primary elections, making it look like Clinton had a larger lead than she actually did. Norton calculated that Sanders had approximately 45 percent of the pledged delegate votes, the delegates actually earned through votes, making the contest much closer than it appeared when the superdelegates overwhelmingly backing Hillary were added to the total.

On Monday, May 2, 2016, Reuters caught up with Sanders in Evansville, Indiana, just ahead of the Indiana primary the next day. During the campaign stop, Sanders explained to Reuters that the Democratic process was a rigged system in how the Democratic Party awards superdelegates that are unelected and free to support any candidate they wish. “When we talk about a rigged system, it is important to understand how the Democratic convention works,” Sanders argued. “We have won 45 percent of the pledged delegates, but we have only earned 7 percent of superdelegates. So, in other words, the way the system works is you have establishment candidates who win virtually all of the candidates.” Sanders clearly understood the Democratic nominating process was rigged in Hillary’s favor. “It makes it hard for insurgent candidacies like ours to win,” Sanders concluded. While acknowledging he trailed Clinton when superdelegates were added into the total, Sanders still insisted it was nearly impossible for Clinton to win the 2,383 delegates needed for the nomination without superdelegates.43

On April 14, 2016, Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon during an interview on CNN’s “New Day” said there was “zero percent chance” Clinton would not go to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia as the nominee. Fallon estimated that with a “good outcome” in the New York primary scheduled for the following Tuesday, and the five states voting on “Super Tuesday II,” or the “Acela Primary” after Amtrak’s Acela Express train, April 26, 2016—Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island—Clinton would be approaching the magic number of 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination. ”And then at that point there’s a few contests in May, and when you add up the pledged delegates that she’s amassed right now, she’s got a lead of about over 200 pledged delegates over Sen. Sanders,” Fallon continued.44

As it turned out, Clinton won New York and four of the five states on April 26, 2016, with Sanders taking only Rhode Island. The next day, the Associated Press affirmed Fallon’s calculation had been correct. “Clinton is in a stronger position, now about 90 percent of the way to the nomination,” the Associated Press reported on Wednesday, April 27, 2016. “Sanders, who denied his rival a clean sweep Tuesday with his win in Rhode Island, is down to needing a miracle.”45

But the issue of superdelegates and the way Sanders had voiced being treated unfairly in a Democratic primary process rigged to nominate Clinton caused Millennial voters to become turned off in droves. At a Saturday afternoon meeting on July 23, 2016, in a small room inside Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, the first meeting of the Rules Committee of the Democratic National met and rejected a proposal to eliminate the role of superdelegates in future Democratic presidential primaries. The decision was reached ignoring the vote taken in multiple state Democratic conventions that had voted in favor of eliminating, or otherwise minimizing or limiting the power of superdelegates. There was little chance the proposal would be adopted, given that the DNC Rules Committee was co-chaired by former Massachusetts congressman and outspoken Hillary partisan Barney Frank.46 Debbie Wasserman Schultz had also appointed 25 members of the Rules Committee allowed to vote on the proposal. The amendment, co-sponsored by 52 members of the Democratic Party Rules Committee was defeated when 108 members voted against and only 58 in favor.47 The proposal to eliminate or limit superdelegates was taken only after Sanders delegates were locked out of the room.

WikiLeaks: DNC Determined to Undermine Sanders Campaign

Although the Clintonites and democratic campaign operatives would claim that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange hacked their most sensitive documents and blame the Russians, they ignore the fact that multiple sources had come forward. These sources indicate that the material had been leaked, not hacked online, and had been supplied to WikiLeaks by a disgruntled democratic national committee staffer who was disgusted by the way they were bending the rules to screw Bernie Sanders. I believe that person to be Seth Rich, who shortly thereafter took 5 slugs to the back. Although the Washington Post would claim that the motive in Rich’s murder was robbery, the DNC staffer’s father told reporters that his wallet, money, and jewelry were intact.

Starting on Friday, July 22, 2016, the week before the Democratic National Convention was scheduled to nominate Hillary Clinton for president at the party’s convention in Philadelphia, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks made public the first cache of 19,252 emails from Democratic Party officials.48 Over two drops, WikiLeaks published 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments from the email accounts of seven key Democratic National Committee figures, including DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda, Senior Advisor Andrew Wright, and key officials from the DNC finance arm. The emails covered the period from January 2015 through May 25, 2016.49 The emails were particularly damaging for the proof provided that “Hill-BOTS” had conspired with Democratic Party regulars to rig the primaries so Bernie Sanders had no chance whatsoever to win. The derisive robot-derived name “Hill-BOTS” given Hillary Clinton operatives, including both paid and self-recruited operatives, described a group of Hillary-supporting political operatives who intervened into the political process and posted aggressively on social media to defend their candidate and trash political opponents.

One particularly damaging email shows DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall emailing DNC communications director Luis Miranda, with copies included for several other DNC communications directors, on May 5, 2016, not mentioning Bernie Sanders, but suggesting the issue of religion could be used against a certain suspected atheist with a Jewish heritage. The email read: “It might make no difference, but for KY [Kentucky] and WVA [West Virginia] can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God? He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”50 Marshall’s point was that in the upcoming Democratic primary contests in Kentucky and West Virginia—two states with a large Southern Baptist population, Hillary Clinton could gain an advantage if Luis Miranda managed to leak out to Hillary supporting reporters the story that Bernie Sanders, a Jew by ethnic heritage, was really an atheist. Almost immediately, Marshall apologized to Sanders, posting as the only public comment on his otherwise private Facebook page: “I deeply regret that my insensitive, emotional emails would cause embarrassment to the DNC, the Chairwoman, and all of the staffers who worked hard to make the primary a fair and open process. The comments expressed do not reflect my beliefs nor do they reflect the beliefs of the DNC and its employees. I apologize to those I offended.”51

Another email involved DNC national press secretary Mark Paustenbach emailing Luis Miranda with the suggestion that the DNC should leak a story to Hillary-supporting partisan reporters with “a good Bernie narrative” suggesting that Sander’s campaign is a disorganized “mess.” Dated May 21, 2016, three weeks prior to the California primary, Paustenbach emailed to Miranda the following: “Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign is a mess.”52 After giving three examples of what he considered “a mess,” Paustenbach closed the email with the following: “It’s not a DNC conspiracy, it’s because they never had their act together.”

Progressive analyst and reporter Michael Sainato, after studying the WikiLeaks DNC email database came to the conclusion that the emails reveal Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the DNC, shared with other key DNC officials “a resentful disdain” toward Sanders, providing evidence the DNC favored Clinton long before the primaries began.53 Instead of treating Sanders with impartiality, “the DNC exhibits resentful disdain toward him and the thousands of disenfranchised voters he could have brought into the party,” Sainato wrote, on the eve of the DNC national nominating convention in Philadelphia. Sainato further commented that the WikiLeaks dump of DNC documents was particularly damaging because the bias to rig the nomination for Clinton and against Sanders was confirmed by a leak of internal DNC memos made public on the Internet by Romanian hacker Guccifer 2.0 on July 14, 2016.54 The files released by Guccifer 2.0 showed the DNC staff strategizing as early as March 2015 to make Clinton the nominee.

“The WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 leaks are the perfect end to a Democratic primary that undermined democracy at every possible opportunity while maintaining plausible deniability,” Sainato continued. The party’s rules, including the use of superdelegates—who disproportionately endorsed Clinton before the primaries began—are intended to provide the Democratic Party leverage over the election process. Throughout the primaries, decisions were made by DNC officials to help Clinton build and maintain a lead over Sanders.” Perhaps most damning of all, Sainato concluded given the bias of the DNC to nominate Clinton, Sanders had to run not only against Clinton, but against the entire Democratic establishment. “Heading into the Democratic National Convention, voters are beginning to understand that their voices are of little concern to the leadership,” Sainato concluded.

On July 24, 2016, two days after the first of the two-part WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned her post as chair of the DNC, leaving no doubt just how devastating to Democratic Party credibility the leaked documents had been. The DNC vice-chair, Donna Brazile, a Clinton supporter, was appointed to serve as interim DNC chair. Schultz submitted her resignation on a late Sunday afternoon, the day before the DNC was set to kick off its national convention in Philadelphia.55 The timing could not have been worse for the Democrats.