A popular internet meme asks how the Democrats can accuse alleged Russian hackers of subverting American democracy when the DNC leaks expose that the primary elections were a fraud.

The most recent Gallup poll , conducted from July 18-25, found that 58% of voters had an unfavorable opinion of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton with only 37% of voters saying they support either candidate – historically negative figures worse than ever reported for any candidate for the US presidency and a glaring red flag for American democracy.

It begs the question of how in a Democratic society can a candidate opposed by more than 50% of the public can oppose the candidate – either one – who will ultimately take office as a representative of the people. This inexplicable reality faced by American voters, millions of whom according to a separate poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP) would choose a giant meteor crashing into earth rather than selecting either of the candidates, in fact has an explanation as was learned by the DNC leaks.

Donald Trump called it on May 4, 2016 when he posted on Twitter that "I would rather run against Crooked Hillary Clinton than Bernie Sanders and that will happen because the books are cooked against Bernie!" The candidate whose selling point is actually that he knows the rigged system better than anybody else because he used to be a part of it, turned out not so surprisingly to be correct.

Wes Perry (@WesPerry31) July 29, 2016

​On the eve of the Democratic National Convention whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks brought the proof to the party exposing a nebulous web of connections between top Democratic operatives, leading mainstream media ‘journalists,’ and Hillary Clinton’s campaign who together conspired to push anti-Bernie narratives on the public and to launder money towards the former Secretary of State’s campaign whose millionaire and billionaire donor class struggled to keep pace with Bernie’s small-dollar fundraising machine.

One email between operatives even stooped so low as to have a Democratic operative go out into the field to ask what Bernie Sanders "believes" – whether he was Jewish or an atheist – in order to mar the candidate in the eyes of the political staffers’ "Southern Baptist peeps."

Other emails included pushing the narrative that Bernie supporters turned violent in the wake of the Nevada Democratic Convention, itself subject to claims of impropriety by Democratic Party officials, even though Sanders supporters did not engage in physical conflict or "throw chairs" as was first reported by top Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston. The DNC asked that this narrative be pushed "without attribution" – that the fiction not be traced back to Party officials.

The emails also expose a steady pattern of reporters routing through the DNC before their own editors, Democratic Party officials being able to pre-select the questions that would be asked of Clinton or her surrogates, and fundamentally altering the manner in which the mainstream media covered the race.

The fix was in. An American election was stolen. The people are left to choose between two candidates who hardly rate higher than arsenic poisoning in the public opinion. That is why the narrative that Putin somehow attempted to rig the American election is so cartoonish – it was already rigged.

"I think pointing the finger to Russians is just a way to distract people from the central issue which is that the DNC was using a rigged game to prevent the popular guy from actually getting the election," said Arvin Vohra in an interview with RT.

He’s right. Unfortunately, that strategy has been adopted full hog by the mainstream media from the first time that the words were uttered from the lips of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook who concocted a conspiracy theory out of whole-cloth that is now the election’s lead narrative.

When asked about allegations that Russia was behind the DNC email leaks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blasted the reporter saying "I don’t want to use four-letter words." Many Americans probably feel the same way, but those folks will never be given a chance to vote for their candidate – and at least now they know why.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.