Rigging nominating conventions not new: goes back to TR’s defeat at 1912 GOP Convention.

 Rigging nominating conventions not new: goes back to TR’s defeat at 1912 GOP Convention.

Many Berniecrats still claim the Democratic National Committee rigged the last 2 conventions to deprive adored progressive Bernie Sanders the nomination, first from Hillary, then Joe.

As one who supported Bernie, I’m not convinced. In 2016, Hillary won 34 Primaries with 16,700,000 votes to Bernie’s 23 Primaries and 13,200,000 votes. In 2020, Biden cruised to 46 Primary wins with 19,100,000 votes. Sanders garnered just 9 Primaries with 9,700,000 votes.

Here we are in the ’24 campaign with charges by Bobby’s campaign that the nominating process is rigged to hand of the nomination to a highly disliked President Biden.

Before examining Bobby’s charges, we need to go back 111 years to 1912, the beginning of the Primary process allowing party voters to decide who should be their nominee.

Republicans were engaged in a donnybrook between incumbent Bill Taft, hand picked by Teddy Roosevelt to replace him in 1908, and Teddy himself, who turned on his protégé for allegedly betraying TR’s progressive legacy.

The combatants competed in 11 Primaries. TR swamped Taft 9 to 2, garnering 60% of the nearly 2 million votes and 411 delegates to Taft’s 201. Looked like a slam dunk for TR’s nomination.

But at the Chicago Convention, held appropriately at the Chicago Coliseum, the Taft controlled party apparatus awarded 235 of 254 unpledged delegates to Taft, essentially stealing the nomination from the wildly more popular TR.

Teddy bolted the Convention, started his Progressive (Bull Moose) 3rd Party run which threw the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

And that has been the template ever since when the party elite no like the upstart against the establishment candidate.

That brings us to the current upstart Bobby Jr. who is challenging incumbent Biden on many issues, particularly his foreign policy of perpetual war to maintain worldwide US hegemony. The flash point is Bobby’s call to negotiate an end to US proxy war against Russia over Ukraine. Biden is committed to weaponizing it into America’s next trillion dollar war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians but not a single US soldier. Even worse, Biden’s war policies daily threatens US Russian nuclear confrontation, the closest we’ve come to that since the Cuban Missile Crisis 61 years ago.

Bobby’s challenge terrifies the Democratic establishment. They refuse to debate, the principle means of voters comparing leading contenders face to face. Their sycophantic corporate media follows orders, eliminating Bobby from any mention on network and cable news.

More DNC tricks to sink Bobby. It seeks to move up the Biden friendly Georgia Primary ahead of the unfriendly Biden NH Primary. Even worse, the DNC threatens to remove any Democrat who campaigns in NH from appearing on the Georgia Primary ballot.

That may be good for the DNC and Joe Biden. But, just like 1912, it is not good for John Q. American, who deserves a fair campaign to put the best person up against traitor Trump or other regressive Republican in 14 months.

Worst of all? Erasing the only viable peace candidate from the campaign raises the risk the next president will likely continue a foreign policy ensuring America’s worldwide decline, even nuclear confrontation with North Korea, China and especially Russia simultaneously.

The ghost of 1912 convention rigging continues to haunt America today…to our detriment.