Not Rigged? Really?

A friend of mine who's supporting Hillary Clinton actually wrote on Facebook that anyone who thinks is Hillary is set to win the Democratic presidential nomination because the system is rigged is wrong, and she brought up as evidence the fact that Hillary lost to Obama in 2008 despite having the party establishment backing her then.  Bernie Sanders isn't winning, my friend says, because he simply hasn't been able to make the connection Obama made in 2008 and hasn't done enough to reach out to a majority of voters.  "It's not rigged, it's numbers," my friend says of Hillary, "and if she wins it's because she earned it."

Uh . . . huh.  This theory doesn't take into consideration, of course, the fact that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz assumed her current position in 2011 and set about making sure Hillary wouldn't lose the presidential nomination a second time.  Debbie scared away potential opponents to Hillary's nomination and brought the hammer down on those who dared to oppose Hillary.  Martin O'Malley couldn't get ten debates from Deb any more than he could get thirty seconds from Lester Holt.  Bernie Sanders today can't get enough representation on the committees at the convention so he can be heard on his issues, such as income inequality.  Lincoln Chafee?  Jim Webb?   They weren't also-rans, they were never-rans!  Even if they were never going to win, they hardly got much of a chance to try.

I remain convinced that Wasserman Schultz particularly had it in for O'Malley, who by all accounts was the strongest Democrat to go against Hillary (not counting Sanders, who was an independent and has only been a Democrat since just before he declared his presidential candidacy).  She seemed to take pleasure in sabotaging O'Malley, and everyone remembers the angry look she gave him in Minneapolis when he called for the Democratic National Committee to have more presidential debates - which it did, only after O'Malley dropped out.  I even believe - this is my own thought, I have nothing to go back on - that Wasserman Schultz, who was twenty years old when Gary Hart got embroiled in a sex scandal that derailed his 1988 presidential candidacy and left many women thinking he was a jerk (he was, but that's a different post), came to detest Hart herself and had it in for O'Malley merely because she hated Hart and because he was a Hart protégé.

If Hillary is the nominee and wins in November, Wasserman Schultz will be seen as a genius for putting her in the White House. Remember, though, folks, Debbie's genius is the same genius that got almost every Tea Party governor up for re-election re-elected in 2014, lost the Senate to the Republicans that same year, and relegated one-time rising stars in the Democratic Party to the dustbin of history like so many one-hit-wonders on the pop charts.  And if Hillary loses to Donald Trump, well, then, all of Debbie's rigging will rig the Democratic Party into a richly deserved death spiral.

Oh, but if Trump wins, it'll be because of numbers!       

I got an e-mail from Wasserman Schultz wishing me a happy Mother's Day.  Of course, I was aware that she's a mother.