In response to an FT article by Ed Luce on 8th June 2016, entitled ‘Clinton savours her first lady milestone’,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/72c1c40a-2d2e-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc.html#ixzz4Ay3I9HfG
Also an article the same day by Courtney Weaver, Sam Fleming and Gregory Meyer entitled ‘Clinton claims historic Democratic nomination’
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32c6e5f6-2d0b-11e6-a18d-a96ab29e3c95.html#ixzz4AyPGnXCZ
“Hillary Clinton, the perennial “inevitable” candidate, has finally lived up to her moniker. A century after the US gave women the vote, and eight years after her first attempt, Mrs. Clinton has become the first female nominee in the nation’s history. As Wednesday’s New York Post put it, the former First Lady is now simply “the first lady”. It was a moment to savour” - Ed Luce
I suggest that Mrs. Clinton has indeed lived up to her moniker, but not that particular one. Her opponent, let’s give him a name too – let’s call him ‘Wiggy McShout’, calls her ‘Crooked Hillary’. He’s only partially correct – there is something far bigger than Hillary Clinton that is crooked here: The political system itself is crooked, and so is the media. If you have any journalistic integrity Mr Luce, before you get all gooey eyed about “the first lady”, you should be very concerned about this:
1. On February 20th the Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Wasserman Schultz, told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC the following:
“The way the media is reporting this is incorrect”……there are not pledged delegates or super-delegates earned at any of these caucus contests…Super-delegates are…free to decide anytime up until July…so combining them at each phase of this contest is not an accurate picture of how this works”
In other words, she spelled out that super-delegates can change their mind at any time - one reason they can’t be reported as being conclusively attached to any particular candidate: Finally she stated:
“It’s really important to report these [super-delegates] in a completely different way,”
2. In early May, the Communications Director of the DNC, Luis Miranda, made much the same points on CNN. He told Jake Tapper:
“Any night that you have a primary or caucus, and the media lumps the super delegates in—that they basically polled by calling them up and saying who are you supporting—they don’t vote until the convention. And so, they shouldn’t be included in any count.”
3. Recent polls had shown Sanders overtaking Clinton. E.G. On May 31st the Marist Poll for NBC and the WSJ had Sanders ahead in California:
Democrats 57-40 in favor of Sanders
Independents 68-26 in favor of Sanders
4. Despite these warnings, on Monday 6th, the day before primaries, the Associated Press released a graphic announcing that the contest was over in Hillary Clinton’s favor, on the basis of a secret poll of projected super delegate votes
5. The URL of the graphic that was released by AP was this:
a.hrc.onl/imageman/2016_Q2Email/20160605_hfa_graphic/secret-win-V2-060416c_02.png
My conclusions are these:
a) Unless AP have a reporter called Secret Win, it would appear that they knew about the ‘secret win’ on Saturday 4th, and held it until Monday 6th, the day before the primary, to release.
b) It would take a very poor attorney not to make a convincing argument for voter tampering, and/or election fraud. That will probably not happen for the same reason as these things occur in the first place: Because the political system in the US is as warped as a bottle of French fries, as fit for purpose as a bag of wine, and as authentic as a nine dollar note.
c) If anyone is still wondering why people are angry with the establishment, why voters are turning to ‘populists’ on the left and the right, they are either totally disengaged, unfeasibly stupid, as bent as Hillary Clinton, or on very strong medication.