In a few hours from now (if I’m getting my time zones right), Americans will hit the polling booths in another six primary states. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I reckon Bernie Sanders is fucked.
If you’re an outsider running for high office, then it’s possible to overcome a Party establishment. And sure, a Bernie Sanders could also overcome the concerted efforts of various corporate actors out to thwart him. He could also quite conceivably overcome wall to wall, 24/7 mainstream media coverage that’s largely only looking to hang negative memes from his campaign and/or compile a list of “gotcha!”s.
Bernie could maybe even get away with throwing in a bit of self sabotage – insist Biden, a man who epitomises the very thing he claims to represent an existential threat to, is his friend and a decent guy. He could throw surrogates under the bus if they point to Biden’s obvious corruption. And when asked whether Biden can defeat Trump, he could even be so stupid as to say “yes” and still win at the ballot box.
Or at least, he could if the votes being cast at the ballot box (for those citizens who can actually get to a ballot box) corresponded with election results (those that were actually counted). But they don’t.
When California was called for Bernie Sanders with barely 1% of the vote counted, I admit I was a bit puzzled as to how the likes of CNN could call it at such an early point in the process. Well, it turns out that CNN gets the results of exit polling conducted by Edison Research. Those polls gave Sanders a 15% winning margin in California. Yet according to TDMS research…
The unobservable computer counts cut his lead by half (to 7.3%). In the total delegate count to date, substituting the estimated California and Texas exit poll delegate apportionments for the apportionments derived from the computer counts, results in candidate Sanders currently leading candidate Biden by 42 delegates instead of trailing by 45. (my emphasis)
See. No-one can beat that kind of fuckery.
And the pattern, with discrepancies always advantageous to the favoured “establishment” candidate, repeats across Vermont (+26% for Biden), Massachusetts( +16% for Biden) South Carolina (+8.5% for Biden) and New Hampshire (+12% for Buttigeig)…
Interestingly, TDMS had previously looked at the exit poll results in 2016 and stacked them against published results. Guess what? While almost all of the Republican Primary results from that year fell within established margins of error for such polling, the Democratic Primary results were all out of whack.
Anyway. Here’s what the The United States Agency of International Development (USAID), has to say about such exit polls –
Detecting fraud: Exit polls provide data that is generally indicative of how people voted. A discrepancy between the aggregated choices reported by voters and the official results may suggest, but not prove, that results have been tampered with.
So yeah. I guess people will argue what they will argue or dismiss based on their preferred candidate, while some will just casually reckon to “fuck election integrity”.
Meanwhile, CODEPINK and The Grayzone are calling on the Organisation of American States (OAS) to provide emergency international election observers. Laughable, right? I mean, what in God’s name would the self proclaimed “home of democracy” be needing with election observers?
Certainly, by November, no observers will be required when, in the words of Chris Hedges, the voters are to vote for –
The consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden.
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