Don’t Think of It as Rigging, Think of It as Investing

This year’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) may be the greatest public display of cognitive dissonance in history. Through leaked e-mails we’ve learned that the Democratic Party primaries were being manipulated by the DNC to favor Hillary. I was hoping that Bernie’s supporters were going to react by flipping every table at the DNC and storming out. Instead many of them are latching onto the suspicion that the e-mails were acquired by Russia as fact and using that to sweep the entire affair under the rug. Apparently factual information ceases being factual if Russia acquired it.

Political corruption is nothing new. Politics itself is an exercise in corruption. But the e-mails give us an interesting insight into the payoffs. Take the DNC’s former chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The leaked e-mails revealed that she used her position to rig the election in Hillary’s favor. Although this revelation forced her to resign, she was immediately snapped up by the Hillary campaign:

Ms. Wasserman Schultz was widely criticized during the Democratic primary by supporters of Bernie Sanders of using her position at the DNC to tip the race toward Mrs. Clinton. At least some of that was confirmed at the weekend by the release by Wikileaks of internal DNC emails, which forced her to announce her resignation Sunday.

But in a reaction statement to reporters Sunday, Mrs. Clinton gave Ms. Wasserman Schultz a soft landing by announcing that she would join the Clinton campaign.

Corruption is becoming more blatant now than ever before. It used to be that a scandal like this would require somebody like Wasserman Schultz to stay out of the public limelight for at least a few weeks before joining another political organization. Now corrupt politicos can jump right into the next political organization and nobody gives a damn.

Wasserman Schultz is just one example of the corruption going on in the DNC. Another example revealed by the leaked e-mails is how the DNC planned to give large donors federal appointments:

Democratic National Committee documents recently released by WikiLeaks include spreadsheets and emails that appear to show party officials planning which donors and prominent fundraisers to provide with appointments to federal boards and commissions.

[…]

The records, which WikiLeaks released along with nearly 20,000 hacked DNC emails and other documents on Friday, also expose one of the Beltway’s worst kept secrets: that wealthy politicos can often buy their way to presidential appointments.

Worst kept secret is right. Like most corrupt activity that occurs in the political realm, the fact that big donors received special privileges was well known. What these e-mails provided was proof. Writing off accusations of such payoffs can no longer be relegated to the realm of conspiracy theories.

What’s the lesson from these leaked e-mails? The same lesson we always learn about democratic systems: your vote doesn’t matter. Every dollar and hour donated to Bernie’s campaign was wasted. Not only did Bernie sell out in the end by endorsing Hillary, but he had no chance of winning anyways because the DNC itself was manipulating things behind the scenes to ensure Hillary received the nomination. Bernie, effectively, only existed to create the illusion that there was a choice for the Democratic Party presidential nominee. But the DNC had already decided on its candidate and from there on it was predestined that Hillary would win by hook or by crook.