populistprogressive:

Ronald W. Dixon | December 18, 2015



UPDATE 1 (11:16 PM): It appears as if Bernie Sanders will regain access to his list on Saturday morning. The corruption that I describe in this blog post is still very real, though, and I suspect that Schultz only agreed to it in order to save her own political future and to prevent a potential third-party run from Sanders.



Since the start of the Bernie Sanders campaign, he has received staunch opposition from the Democratic establishment. Most notably, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), chaired by Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has done everything in their power to protect Hillary Clinton from criticism. Schultz, who worked on Clinton’s presidential campaign during the 2008 election cycle, purposely scheduled the 2016 Democratic debates so that they are both infrequent and held at times which hardly anyone would watch them.



Prior to Friday, the evidence that the DNC has been working as a campaign arm of the Clinton campaign, treating the primaries as a coronation rather than a nomination, seemed quite clear, but Schultz’s decision to ban the Sanders campaign from accessing their own voter list seems to confirm the blatant political corruption in the Democratic establishment.



To provide a brief background, the DNC has been relying upon NGP VAN, a program that maintains a master list of Democratic voters, for their database needs. If you’ve ever phone banked for a Democratic political campaign, you most likely used this software to generate phone numbers to dial. The DNC controls a master list, and each campaign contributes to, and maintains, separate portions of the list which they are only allowed to access. Previously, the Sanders campaign, with no fanfare, informed the DNC that there was a breech in the NGP VAN software, potentially exposing Sanders’ list to other Democratic candidates. Fast forward to Wednesday: the Sanders campaign found out that some of their staffers viewed and stored data from the Clinton list after discovering that there was another breech. The Sanders campaign quickly fired at least one of their staffers (although he is maintaining that he purposely documented what he saw as a way to create a record of the breech to maintain transparency) and alerted the DNC.



What did Schultz do in response? She quickly banned the Sanders campaign from accessing their own list until they provide a full account of what happened, as well as thorough evidence that they no longer have the Clinton data. A few hours later, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver gave a press release denouncing the DNC’s brutal, sudden overreaction and declared that if they don’t have access returned to them by later in the afternoon, the campaign would proceed with a lawsuit. The DNC refused, so a lawsuit was filed.



Schultz defended her actions, even going as far as to compare the Sanders campaign to house robbers, declaring on CNN that, “it’s like if you had, if you found the front door of the house unlocked and someone decided to go into the house and take things that didn’t belong to them, and then when they were caught, they still insisted on having access to the house.”

Of course, Schultz’s analogy is fallacious; why would “thieves,” as she put it, go to the trouble of reporting their theft to the authorities (the DNC), and punish those who stumbled upon the “stolen items”? Moreover, we should consider the fact that Time Warner, which owns CNN, is a major Clinton donor, and Stu Trevelyan, the CEO of NGP VAN, is a Hillary supporter himself. It should also come as no surprise that the Clinton campaign swiftly claimed that the Sanders campaign stole millions of dollars’ worth of voter data (since when is accidentally stumbling upon, creating a record of, and then reporting a breech equivalent to “theft”?).



While I am very angry at Schultz, Clinton, and the rest of the Democratic establishment for their war against Bernie Sanders, I would be lying if I claimed that the controversy is at all surprising; Bernie was riding an excellent wave of good news this week, securing a large union endorsement from the 700,000 member Communications Workers of America, earning an endorsement from the 1 million-strong Democracy for America website, and reaching the record-breaking 2 million campaign contributor mark all in the same week. What better way to soil his good week by halting his campaign dead in its tracks and having the only major Sanders news coverage this week focus on dubious thievery claims instead of his landmark successes from earlier in the week!



If Schultz was not actively working for the Clinton campaign, and if she was actually doing her job of acting as a non-partisan Democratic mediator and administrator, she would have either A) waited to block access to the list from the Sanders campaign until there was evidence that the alleged abuse actually happened and was systemic in the campaign, or B) suspended access to the list for all campaigns. The former would have not assumed guilt, and it would have allowed the Sanders campaign to continue functioning while also extending its long track record of transparency by providing a full account of the alleged abuse with little controversy. The latter would have been bad for every Democratic campaign, but it would have given the IT team who manages NGP VAN the opportunity to fix all problems before the other candidates could potentially exploit the breeches.



Instead, Schultz took the option that highlights her bias against Bernie Sanders. By blocking access to the Sanders campaign’s own list, and by accusing them of theft on national television, she has, once again, demonstrated that she is an incompetent leader who is actively working on behalf of the Clinton campaign.



Moreover, this controversy further demonstrates Hillary Clinton’s lack of ethical fiber. Remember when Bernie Sanders defended Clinton on national television on her email scandal, claiming that many of the Republican attacks were sometimes motivated by sexism? And remember when she turned around and accused Sanders of sexism during the first Democratic debate by taking one of his claims completely out of context? That example pales in comparison to Clinton’s dubious reaction to the alleged theft of her data.



Given everything that has happened over the past few months, I’ve come to a decision: if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, I will not vote for her by default. A few policy disagreements shouldn’t necessarily dissuade someone from supporting a particular candidate (for example, I believe that Sanders isn’t progressive enough on guns). My decision,rather, comes from the culmination of her blatantly conservative record and beliefs, her disingenuous flip-flops, and her lack of trustworthiness, consistency, or ethics. In fact, depending on how drawn-out the data breech controversy becomes, I would even recommend that Bernie run as an Independent candidate.



Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the Democratic establishment do not represent progressive values, and if Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, or, worst comes to worst, Donald Trump, becomes our next president, it will be their fault. Why should we support them by default if they have done nothing but corrupt the political system and attempt to sabotage campaigns which represent true progressivism? A Sanders Independent run, either stemming from permanently losing access to the voter data or failing to win the Democratic nomination, would send a powerful message that we won’t support crony politicians simply because they carry the banner of the Democratic Party.



If Schultz really wanted to do justice for Democratic voters, she would step down immediately, and if Hillary really wanted to authentically act progressive, she’d defend her fellow Democratic opponent, just as how he has down countless times for her before. Unless we see swift resignations and a stark change in rhetoric and policy choices from the Democratic establishment, we have no reason to provide them with blind obedience. Indeed, their intransigence is harming the party which is supposed to represent progressive values, and the only way we are going to be rid of this corruption is by electing a leader who has dedicated his entire life to fighting for progressive causes: Bernie Sanders.



If you want a political, economic, and societal revolution, vote for Bernie Sanders. If you want more of the same, support the Democratic establishment by voting for Hillary Clinton. It is as simple as that. While I would prefer Sanders to be elected as a Democrat, if it comes down to it, I would whole-heartedly support him as an Independent candidate for president, and I know that millions of others would also support this endeavor.

