The Democratic platform has established cut-and-dry policy talking points over the last few election cycles: Medicare for All, campaign finance reform, tackling climate change, regulating and breaking up Wall Street and big banks, Universal Basic Income, and taxing the 1%.

The Democrats also tout themselves as the political party for women and minorities.

Tulsi Gabbard fits the bill, supporting each key progressive Democratic issue. Moreover, she is a woman, a minority, a veteran, and she has cross-party appeal because of her willingness to engage in thoughtful debate and refusal to play identity politics.

Gabbard seems like an obvious choice for the DNC to throw their weight behind to make a run at The White House in 2020.

Establishment Democrats Declare War

Tulsi, also a veteran, being promoted to Major in 2015.

Democratic party leaders may not like her anti-interventionist agenda. Rep. Gabbard is campaigning heavily on ending regime change wars that cost Americans billions of dollars each year and cost us even more personally with the lives of our troops endangered overseas and at home (veterans between the ages of 18 and 30 have the highest suicide rate of any demographic).

Democrats have said leaving these countries to their own devices would create a larger group of evil in an unstable region, or an authority vacuum, allowing for more sinister leaders to rise to power. In contrast, Tulsi says that we should not act as the world’s policemen and that we often create more problems than we solve with military intervention. Some Democrats imply that her foreign policy plans are a product of her youth and naivety (she would be the youngest US President ever elected).

Tulsi argues she’s anything but. She has served as a soldier in the Army National Guard for 16 years (being deployed to Iraq twice), and she’s been on the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees for 6 years.

Critics also call her an “Assad-supporter” because she went to Syria on a fact-finding mission in 2017, wanting to “hear from the Syrian people herself,” and to learn about what solutions they desire for their war-torn state.

While in Syria, President Bashar-Al-Assad got wind of the congresswoman’s visit and extended an invitation to meet, which Gabbard accepted saying:

“When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so because I felt it was important that if we profess to indeed care about the Syrian people … then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there’s a possibility we could achieve peace. And that’s exactly what we talked about.”

It’s Gabbard’s position that America can’t achieve peace with our adversaries if we’re unwilling to talk to them. On the same trip, the congresswoman met with the opposition as well, and members of different religions and political affiliations.

Economically, she supports raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, deregulation and tax breaks for small businesses, and increasing taxes on the 1%. Gabbard also advocates using the money wasted on endless wars in the middle east to invest in America’s economy.

Her policies represent a growing Nationalist, pragmatic wing of the Democratic Party, and there’s much overlap with the Libertarian-Republican that also identify themselves as Nationalist.

Why has it been so hard for her to gain momentum?

The Democratic establishment doesn’t want her to be president, and their reasons date back to “mistakes” Gabbard made just after her being sworn in as a congresswoman. What did Gabbard do that blacklisted her with the Democratic establishment?

She delivered Hawaiian treats to all of her congressional colleagues — including Republicans — when she took office, despite instructions to “stick to her side.”

Moreover, she took meetings with President Trump and his administration to make her case for an anti-interventionist foreign policy and to see where they could find common ground, at a time when all Democrats abstained from even meeting with the newly elected President.

Gabbard doesn’t walk the party line. While serving as DNC Vice Chair, she saw the corruption within the party and stepped down to support Bernie Sanders. The DNC sent a curt email via political strategists and fundraisers that was later released by WikiLeaks, threatening that they would not support her in any future political endeavors.

Text of email from Darnell Strom to Tulsi Gabbard in 2016. (Full Email via WikiLeaks)

The DNC (and the Media) Are Ready to Rig the Primary Again

At a May town hall, Currie Dobson attempted to ask Tulsi a question.

He explained the fear many Democrats have of the DNC repeating their 2016 actions to purposefully swing the Democratic Primary to the candidate of their choice. His question was taken over by a DNC operative in Hawaii that reframed and obfuscated his inquiry.

Former DNC chairman Howard Dean has stated all Democratic candidates are more qualified than Tulsi (factually incorrect).

The media, likewise, has continually smeared Tulsi — Bari Weiss of the New York Times recently appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and called the congresswoman’s policies “monstrous” and said she was the “mother-load of bad ideas,” although she had trouble naming the policy positions that she had a disagreement with. Online commentator Jimmy Dore went on to characterize Weiss as regurgitating “received opinions” from the offices of the New York Times and within the Mainstream Media bubble.

And Now There’s Russia-Gate: This week a story broke in The Daily Beast claiming the congresswoman was getting a fundraising boost from Russian sympathizers.

However, after the sticker shock of the headline, it reads more like a dishonest attempt to halt Gabbard’s momentum than it does a credible threat. In the first quarter of 2019, the Tulsi Gabbard campaign raised more than $4.5 million.

Three of those donors have alleged “ties” to Russia. The first, donating $1,000, is a Russia studies professor at NYU — seriously.

The second, donating $2,500 is Sharon Tennison, an American activist who started a Russian/American citizen diplomacy group in the 80s to try to help end the cold war.

The third, donating $1,000, is a former employee of a comedy show that airs on RT.

To date, the campaign has had over 100,000 individual donors — more than establishment darlings like Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Jay Inslee (many of whom have raised much more money, as their donors are often big-money interests).

With such strong opposition from the Democratic establishment, no doubt Tulsi Gabbard has an uphill climb in the Democratic primaries, but if voters are able to sift through the wreckage of her coverage on the mainstream media enough to find her policy proposals and points of action, Democrat and Republican voters alike may find that they’re on board with what they’re hearing.