2016: The Year the Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged | The Daily Sheeple

2016: The Year the Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged

Op-Ed by Nick Bernabe

“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.” – Former President Jimmy Carter

Denver, CO — The 2016 election has been a wild ride, with two insurgent grassroots campaigns literally giving the political establishment a run for its money. But as the events of this presidential primary season play out, it’s becoming clear the U.S. election — and even more so, the presidential race — is a big scam being perpetrated on the American people.

Events from the last week have exposed the system as an illusion of choice and a farce. They have reinforced at least one study showing the U.S. is an oligarchy rather than a democratic republic.

The Wyoming democratic caucus took place on Saturday, purportedly to allow voters to have their voices heard in the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders lost the Wyoming caucus by winning it with a 12 percent margin.

Wait, what?

Cont..... 

Latest in the Supreme Court Drama - Electoral Vote

Latest In The Supreme Court Drama

Latest in the Supreme Court Soap Opera

America's favorite chess game, the one where the winner's trophy is a seat on the Supreme Court, is in full swing. And so, nearly every day, there are new moves and countermoves.

On Sunday, it was the GOP's turn. Congress is in recess for a few weeks, at least unofficially. Officially, a few Republican senators have stayed behind to gavel the chamber into session for a few minutes, conduct no business, and then gavel out. This will stop the President from being able to ram Merrick Garland through as a recess appointment.

Also on Sunday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was on "State of the Union," and he declared that there would be no "lame duck" approval of Garland, regardless of who wins the election. This promise is not worth the paper it's written on—McConnell could easily find half a dozen plausible explanations for "changing his mind" in November. For example, "We waited for the American people to speak, and they have chosen a Democratic president, so we presume that they also want a center-left nominee. We shall proceed." McConnell's "promise" is, at the moment, entirely about stopping President Obama from threatening to withdraw the nomination pre-election if Garland's not voted upon promptly. Your move, Barack.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has come up with a list of four plausible scenarios in which Garland does get his hearing and vote. They are:

• It becomes clear that independents are unhappy with the GOP's obstructionism, and that they plan to punish the party at the polls.
• Republicans meet with Garland and decide he's not so bad.
• Hillary Clinton is elected, and the GOP decides Garland is better than the sandal-wearing, granola-eating, Prius-driving, Sanders-loving leftist that she will probably nominate. As noted above, Mitch McConnell says this scenario is off the table, but don't believe him.
• Another vacancy opens up on the Court—for example, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies or is forced to resign due to ill health—and Garland thus becomes a moderate replacing a liberal instead of a moderate replacing a conservative.

In any case, tune in next time for another exciting episode of "As the Court Turns." 

ElectoralVote

ElectoralVote 

The Republicans Have Two Weeks to Stop Trump

On March 15, five states vote. Florida and Ohio hold winner-take-all primaries. Illinois and Missouri give part of their delegates to whomever wins the statewide vote, and the rest to the winner of each Congressional district. North Carolina has a primary where the delegates are allocated in proportion to the vote. If Donald Trump sweeps the four sweepable states and 60% of North Carolina, he will have at least 630 delegates, plus what he picks up this Saturday (four states), next Tuesday (four more states) and Puerto Rico, Guam, and D.C. At that point he will be unstoppable. For the Republican leadership, which desperately wants to make Trump magically vanish, it is now or never. Ben Carson's sort of dropping out helps, but there are still three non-Trump candidates left: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Gov. John Kasich (R-OH). The party needs two of them to fall on their swords, and right now (well, after tomorrow's debate would also be OK).

None of those three look at all strong. Rubio had a disappointing night on Tuesday, winning only the Minnesota caucuses. Cruz won three states, but he put so much time, effort, and resources into the South, that only three states is a huge disappointment. Kasich has yet to win a state. If Rubio and Kasich win their home states on March 15, that could breathe new life into the effort to stop Trump, but only barely. Radio host Glenn Beck has proposed a Cruz/Rubio ticket to end the bickering between the candidates.

At this point there are probably two outcomes to the Republican race: (1) Trump wins a majority of the delegates or (2) Trump wins a plurality but not a majority. From the numbers above, you can see that Trump doesn't quite have half the delegates. If that situation continues and Trump ends up with, say, 48%, Rubio and Cruz each end up with 25% and Kasich has the rest, there could be a brokered convention and the Republican Party could still stop Trump. But that is still a longshot.

In a very real sense, 2016 is the mirror image of 2012. Then, a whole squadron of conservative insurgent candidates went up against the unpopular Mitt Romney, but the conservative vote was so badly fragmented that the establishment candidate, Romney, won. This time we have multiple establishment candidates splitting the vote and letting the one insurgent win. The Republican leaders are no doubt thinking: "Clever, those Democrats. They have 717 superdelegates the party can control. We have only 168. Damn. Next time we'll have more." (V)