Will Rigging the Primaries Backfire on the DNC?

By Nikos Biggs-Chiropolos, The Kennedy Beacon

We thought we had been through this debacle before, but for the third straight election the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is trying to rig the party’s primary to throw the nomination to the candidate favored by special interests and corporate backers instead of rank and file Democrats.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders contested a long and bitter Democratic primary campaign. Clinton finally sealed the nomination in early June that year, but accusations of rigging the contest from Bernie Sanders unnerved both her and voters.

Although Clinton established a narrow lead over Sanders in pledged delegates (who are determined by vote counts in each state), the question of her winning the nomination had been moot for weeks. In the lead up to the final primaries, an overwhelming percentage of superdelegates (unpledged delegates/party insiders who are free to ignore actual voting results) supported Clinton, even in states where Sanders was the overwhelming choice of Democrat voters. 

Additionally, Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, including from Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, revealed the extent to which the DNC had favored Clinton throughout the primary. Donna Brazile, who became interim head of the DNC, sent Clinton debate questions in advance and openly mocked Sanders and his supporters. The DNC even had an agreement with Clinton’s campaign that gave them authority to make final decisions on hiring, strategy, and finances, despite purported neutrality in the primaries.

Sanders eventually endorsed Clinton and awkwardly supported her in the general election, arguing that Trump was the greater evil. But the DNC’s anti-democratic moves were a contributing factor to her loss due to the mistrust they caused. 

The party tried to reform and establish new rules for the 2020 election. They created a Unity Reform Commission and reduced the power of superdelegates. Due to the large number of declared presidential candidates, the party organized double-header debate nights in the 2020 primary season to give all credible candidates the opportunity to make their cases to the American people. And yet, the DNC again pulled out all the stops to rig the outcome in 2020. 

Throughout the primary season, Democrats insisted that the party had plans to prevent a possible Sanders victory, and even discussed changes to the rules to make sure Sanders could not get the nod at their convention. When Sanders took an early and commanding lead in delegates, the DNC went into panic mode. Directly following the South Carolina primaries, establishment Democrat candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar willingly sacrificed their own chances and withdrew their candidacies to endorse Joe Biden. This move was odd given that both of them had significantly outperformed him in the first two state primaries. Yet suddenly, instead of it being Sanders against a splintered field, it became a united effort to block the voters from choosing for themselves who they wanted to represent them. 

The DNC’s chief goal was to do everything possible to stop Sanders. And they succeeded. As Barack Obama made phone calls behind the scenes, the DNC was busily stifling the voice of the people to throw the nomination to the candidate who promised big donors that “nothing would fundamentally change.”

Now, here we are in 2024 and the DNC is back to its usual tricks. Except this time they are even more brazen about rigging the game to insulate the octogenarian incumbent from a primary challenge rather than letting voters choose. Since Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared their candidacies, the DNC and the Biden administration have alternated between insulting them and ignoring their existence. 

As President Joe Biden’s campaign equates his re-election with “saving democracy,” the DNC is refusing to host debates between Biden and the two candidates challenging him. They have even argued in court that the DNC can choose a candidate regardless of what the voters say. 

These moves come despite polling that makes it clear that voters do not agree with the DNC establishment; 80% want to see debates between the primary candidates, and 72% of them are Biden supporters. But with 20% supporting Kennedy before even seeing him on a debate stage, the party is doubling down.

The DNC and Biden are colluding to rig the entire primary calendar and make it a coronation of the historically unpopular incumbent rather than a chance for voters to decide. 

Biden, who won the South Carolina primary in 2020 — a victory that revived his candidacy after losing badly in Iowa and New Hampshire — now insists on South Carolina leading the primary schedule. However, in doing so, the DNC is upending a century-long tradition of New Hampshire holding the first in-the-nation-primary, and thrown Democrats in that state into electoral chaos, because they are required under New Hampshire law to hold their primary at least one week before any other primary (rather than whenever the DNC decides they prefer it to be). Additionally, Democrat and Republican primaries must be held on the same day, yet the DNC is still refusing to collaborate. 

Further exacerbating an already problematic historical moment, the DNC has now issued new rules, stating that any candidates who appear on the ballot in New Hampshire’s “unsanctioned” primary can be punished by receiving zero delegates. 

For many, it is increasingly difficult to see the DNC’s move against New Hampshire as arbitrary, considering Kennedy has recently polled at around 30% in the state after months of efforts and grassroots organizing there. The DNC has also now issued directives to Iowa demanding it postpone its caucuses to a later date than the first-in-the-nation status (with New Hampshire) that they have held for 50 years. 

In 2020, Biden placed a dismal fourth in the Iowa caucuses and an even more embarrassing fifth, with zero delegates, in New Hampshire. Naturally, reducing the influence of these votes seems advantageous to him.

Meanwhile, the DNC’s decision to give so much weight to South Carolina is bizarre when one considers that the state has voted for the Republican candidate in every general election since 1976, while New Hampshire and Iowa are both competitive swing states that have shifted support between both parties in recent elections. It only makes sense when one considers that South Carolina’s primary single-handedly revived Biden’s moribund candidacy in 2020.

The DNC’s tainted primary calendar is also creating significant uncertainty and confusion for many states. Not having firm primary dates in New Hampshire, Iowa, and Georgia, for example, is undermining voter outreach and organizing in those states. This situation begs the question: Is the DNC going all out to disenfranchise voters? While Biden and the DNC shout “norms” to purportedly save democracy, they ignore historic norms on election dates, on holding votes on the same days as the Republican primaries, and on awarding delegates and the nomination based on primary votes and performances.

State organizers, and voters, have no way of knowing when the votes will be held or when deadlines to register voters will be. In many cases, they do not even know who will be allowed to vote in the primaries because each state and its branch of the DNC have rules about whether primaries are open (meaning any registered voter can participate); closed (meaning only registered Democrats can participate); or hybrid (some combination of the two usually meaning that non-affiliated, or Independent, registered voters can participate but not registered Republicans). 

Plus, Kennedy supporters and would-be voters have reached out to Secretary of State’s offices in numerous states and received non answers or conflicting answers about when the primaries will be held and who may be eligible to vote.

The DNC, along with the Biden administration, have also shown constant disrespect towards Kennedy by basically refusing to treat him as a serious candidate. When the Georgia state Democratic Party issued a typo-plagued document giving the impression that voters there may not be counted, Kennedy contacted the party for clarification and received no response. It ended up leading to a clunky ordeal where Kennedy publicly shared his conclusions that the DNC was trying to take away his votes in Georgia, which led the party to give a statement to the Washington Post saying he was mistaken. One can reasonably conclude that they were happy to try to embarrass him rather than help him understand the rules.

And, most appallingly, Kennedy has been denied early Secret Service protection by Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) despite it being the norm for presidential candidates since the assassination of his father. Even longshot, and opposition, candidates like Ben Carson have received security protection. But refusing it to Kennedy again speaks to the Democrat Party’s refusal to treat him as a real candidate. This issue culminated on September 16 when an armed man falsely posing as a US Marshal was arrested at one of his rallies, although thankfully no one was injured.

The larger tragedy isn’t only that the DNC sees itself as judge and jury to anoint an unpopular incumbent to run in the general election. It’s that Democrats do best when enthusiasm translates into high voter turnout, and the DNC is taking steps that can only amount to a lower voter turnout. 

Energy behind Obama in 2008 propelled both his historic victory and corresponding strong Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. By refusing to acknowledge that the Emperor (Biden) has no clothes let alone coattails and suppressing primary votes from being held, the DNC is likely conceding the Senate to a GOP majority as well as scuttling the chances of winning back the House — to say nothing of state and local races across the country.

After running away from competitive primaries, the general election of 2024 may be the first time America sees whether or not Biden, at 81, can withstand the rigors of a nationwide campaign and televised debates. And rather than “saving democracy,” the DNC’s anti-democratic maneuvers may end up conceding all three branches of government to the GOP and reinstalling Donald Trump in the White House, which would put the future of American democracy at risk according to the DNC’s very own talking points. 

If Biden is not up for the fight of his life, wouldn’t it be better for “democracy” to learn that truth during the primary? Doesn’t the Democratic Party want to be represented by a candidate who has the best chance in the general election?