Anatomy of Democrats' Meaningless Statements

This recent piece of fluff written by current Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Tom Perez perfectly sums up how the Democratic Party still resists change while pretending to stand up for progressive values. They've done a pretty good job at mastering doublespeak, on the one hand saying the words that make people feel comfortable while on the other doing so in a way that is so vague that it is meaningless. Certainly, continuing actions by the Democrats speak louder than words: the DNC has recently purged progressives from top leadership roles, Democratic leaders in Congress have supported Donald Trump's plans for increased war and military spending and were even urging Trump to change the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, all while resisting Bernie Sanders' calls for single payer medicare for all, tuition-free college, and other domestic programs.

The CNN article above continues the trend of saying words that sound nice on the surface but are not backed up by anything when you read into it. Let's go through and see exactly how weak and uninspiring this article really is.

...we must focus on ensuring that voters across the nation trust our party...

...rebuilding trust with those who share our progressive vision for America and by addressing concerns many have raised in recent years...

Notice not once in these opening paragraphs do they acknowledge what the complaints actually are. The accusations -- first released by Wikileaks more than a year ago and later confirmed by several sources, most recently Donna Brazile in her book -- were that the primary was rigged by allowing Hillary Clinton and her campaign to control the Democratic party and effectively lock out challengers. That arcane election laws made it difficult or impossible for voters to register in time to participate in closed primaries. That state party funding was siphoned to Clinton's campaign rather than supporting down-ballot candidates.

An "apology" is not an apology if you can't own up to what you did wrong. These words are meaningless.

Democrats can win big if we're united, and we know that can only happen by healing divisions that still linger from last year's bruising presidential nominating contest. 

...

Republicans are leading a coordinated, nationwide effort of voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering...

Also notice that jab about remaining "united" at the end there, followed by a quick segue into the bad things Republicans are doing. Again, rather than admitting wrongdoing, they're talking down to progressives and treating their legitimate grievances as overreaction. "You have complaints, but does that really matter when Republicans are also bad?". It's lesser-evil-ism all over again. Yes, Republicans are doing bad things, but what are YOU going to do to fix it? Trading one evil for another isn't much of a win.

We believe Democrats can win everywhere if we organize and lead with our values.

Again, no apology, more generic words about unity. They're more interested in winning elections to retain power rather than standing up for what's right, and implying if they don't win, it's because *YOU* didn't organize and work hard enough for them. They push any blame onto progressives rather than acting like leaders and owning up to problems.

We made historic investments in Virginia, New Jersey, and in mayoral and legislative races that helped pay big dividends with our major victories last month

What they leave out is that Democrats have continued for the past year to ignore progressive candidates and races. Some of those wins were due to DSA support, not the Democratic Party, but they are of course perfectly happy to take credit for the wins (this is one of many reasons I encourage DSA members to put that effort into building the Green Party, not giving Democrats a free ride!). Democrats still support establishment candidates and races. Of course they do. This isn't new and not unexpected. What's needed is evidence that they will support progressive candidates, which they're not providing.

We will not win the future by re-litigating the past. But we do have to learn from our past mistakes.

Up to this point they still have not owned up to any wrongdoing or given specifics. And "re-litigating the past" is another jab at progressives that have still not received answers for the problems with the 2016 elections. Of course they want to move on from the past and cover it up.

But maybe I'm being too harsh. Let's see if the second half of the article has more specifics, now that they want to talk about particular proposals.

No party officer should be allowed to support, endorse or favor any candidate in the primary process.

Good sentiment, but how do you ensure this? No specifics. If they can't even discipline the last DNC chair that was strongly biased -- in fact, they defended her as Clinton made her an honorary chair of her campaign once she resigned from DNC chair -- what evidence do we have that it will change? Also, while it sort of implies that past officers weren't neutral, it does not come out and say it or apologize. This is a sentence specifically constructed as a sort of a "dog whistle" politics, designed to get a message to progressives without admitting any problems for people that don't know the story. It's a way of covering up what happened from the general public without being too obvious.

The debate schedule is decided in advance, instead of negotiating it after all our candidates have entered the race.

The debates were mostly scheduled in advance in 2016 already, problem was Clinton's campaign was allowed to direct DNC decisions way back in 2015 and so Clinton was the one deciding the debate schedule in advance! So this proposal is completely worthless and doesn't fix anything.

Any and all joint fundraising agreements will be transparent and available to all official campaigns.

This is implicitly referring to the joint agreement with the Clinton campaign that allowed her campaign to secretly work with DNC and appoint her campaign staff to DNC leadership positions. Again, not admitting that or apologizing.

However, the deep root of the problem here isn't transparency -- though transparency is of course very important for any democratic organization -- but rather the content of those agreements. The DNC used this agreement to siphon money through state parties to Clinton's campaign, which made it easier for DNC to collect money around campaign finance laws. It broke the spirit of the law if not the letter of the law. Nothing here admits to that or describes how they are against it. So I read it as "I guess we'd be OK with making agreements with ANY candidate willing to help skirt campaign finance laws".

Notice also they say the agreements are available to all "official campaigns". What is an "official" campaign? That's a weasel word there. DNC can define what they mean by "official", and they can make it so that Bernie's campaign doesn't count as "official" if they want to. But even if they don't directly exclude Bernie, it only says such agreements will be transparent and available to campaigns, not the general public.

If they really wanted transparency, they'd put all of this out in the public eye. But that's not what they want. My guess is that they'll set a rule that the DNC only recognizes a campaign as "official" if you sign non-disclosure agreements and what not, so they can use legal pressure to keep details of agreements secret in future. It's an attempt at strong-arming candidates and campaigns, not really about being transparent.

we must work with states to implement policies that make it easier to vote, including vote-by-mail laws, automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, expanded access to the polls and more robust voter protection efforts

These are good steps mostly, but the elephant in the room is the closed primary process itself. Having a commitment to open primaries would be better. A commitment to ranked choice voting or proportional representation would be even better.

But it's also vague. What is "more robust voter protection efforts"? They don't have any specific ideas or stories to share?

it's critical that the Unity Reform Commission provide recommendations that acknowledge the grass-roots benefit of the caucus process while also finding ways for those who have been excluded on caucus nights to have their votes counted

What does this even mean? What do they propose to do to fix it? If they can't articulate a plan here, I very much doubt they have one. A statement just for show. Likely nothing will change.

The real solution is to establish voting holidays and ranked choice voting so everyone has a chance to vote and their vote actually matters in the process. This is what Greens support.

provide for a significant reduction in the number of unpledged delegates

So in other words, they'll reduce it a bit to seem like they're doing something, but they will ultimately retain superdelegates that are unbound to votes and can vote as they please. Without a strong commitment to grassroots democracy and complete elimination of superdelegates, this is a worthless gesture. It says they still want to retain top-down control over the party as much as possible.

Greens do not have superdelegates, we believe in participatory democracy, not top-down party leadership dictating views. Why is it so hard for Democrats to say that? We know why, which is why this action means nothing. They haven't change their opinion, just trying to hide it better.

If we want Democrats to win and stay in power, we have to reform our party in ways that rebuild it from the ground up. A unified Democratic Party is a party that understands that every ZIP code counts and there's no such thing as an off-year. We've already begun making new investments in our state parties and down-ballot races

Oh, is that all of their policy proposals already? That was pretty weak and non-specific. They're just back to repeating themselves on talking points now. Yet again, pushing "unified" without addressing the concerns is an insult to progressives. Also again, investing in state parties and down-ballot races is meaningless, of course they're going to do that for establishment candidates they back, what we want to see is reform that doesn't shut progressives out of the process.

we changed our rules in October to ban corporate donations from political action committees whose goals conflict with our platform

So they still accept super PAC money, just as long as it matches their platform. What's in the platform? Read it yourself. But I can tell you what's missing from the platform: most progressive requirements, such as single payer healthcare, tuition-free college and student debt relief, ending the wars and reducing defense spending. Even when they sort of adopt progressive principles like a living wage, they do what they're doing in Pittsburgh -- slowly phase in $15/hr over the next *7* years. Families can't wait 7 years for better wages, and by then, inflation will make $15 worth less and still be a poverty wage. Democrats platform puts rights of business and corporations over people. Only accepting money from people they agree with will only exacerbate that problem, not fix it.

Plus, from their very own platform: "Big money is drowning out the voices of everyday Americans, and we must have the necessary tools to fight back and safeguard our electoral and political integrity.... We need to end secret, unaccountable money in politics by requiring, through executive order or legislation, significantly more disclosure and transparency—by outside groups, federal contractors, and public corporations to their shareholders. We need to amplify the voices of the American people through a small donor matching public financing system. We need to overhaul and strengthen the Federal Election Commission so that there is real enforcement of campaign finance laws. And we need to fight to eliminate super PACs and outside spending abuses."

I don't have a lot of hope they will even honor this rule when their platform says they want to eliminate big money and super PACs, and yet never talk about that. Their platform is just words to them, not a code of conduct to live by. Actions speaker louder than words. They're not even trying to work toward these goals within their own party, what evidence do we have they'd actually push for it in government?

Contrast with the Green Party, which already today requires that ALL of its candidates refuse all corporate and super PAC money. We walk the walk because we believe strongly in it.

The DNC has come a long way since the 2016 election, but we know we have much further to go to earn the trust of voters and bring more people into the electoral process. We have our values and the support of the vast majority of the American people by our side. And when we lead with those values, we win.

Actually nearly half of all Americans are registered independents. Independents make the majority of Americans. They're fed up with the two party system. If you really wanted to earn the trust of voters, you'd talk about why the Democratic party has lost millions of voters, why the independents are growing, and what you'd do to win them back. But not a peep.

But aside from that, what has the DNC done to earn the description of "come a long way"? They certainly didn't provide any specific policies or evidence in this article. They didn't even do a great job explaining their values, even though they supposedly "lead" with those values.

Hopefully this deconstruction of their statement has been helpful. Democrats continue to play this game, saying just enough to convince people to stay in the party but never producing real meaningful change. Democrats hate their progressive base, but sort of know they need them to win, so use this doublespeak to keep the party together. But they have no interest in becoming progressive, or letting progressives win. Their goal is to retain control of the Democratic party as a major political party, and control as much as government as possible to enrich their checkbooks.

The Green Party meanwhile has been a progressive party since its very inception. So why are you donating your money, time, and effort to a party that has done everything it can to lessen your voice while still demanding your vote? I invite you to put that energy toward building the Green Party instead. We win when we have candidates, we just need more to join the cause and run for office as a Green. I've spoken with many voters that are Democrats only because they don't feel they have an option yet, but spoke highly of Greens and said they'd switch in a heartbeat if Greens ran more candidates.

We have the support of many Americans behind us, we just need to continue to grow. Remember that statistics about nearly half of voters being independents: there are way more of us than corporate establishment Democrats. They control the party structure and can squelch progressive voices within their party organization easily and legally. But they cannot stop progressives coming together outside the system. They cannot stop a strong Green Party. A strong Green coalition could easily overtake the Democratic party in terms of size, because their membership is 22% of voters and falling. That's not an impossible climb to reach 10-15% of voters and challenge the size of Democrats if we keep spreading the message and stop falling for Democrats' tactics designed to "keep us in line" rather than reform. At that point, with a strong Green challenger, Democrats MUST reform or be replaced. Working outside the system rather than in it is, in my opinion, the best and only way forward.

DNC Revelations

There have been some interesting revelations this past week regarding the Democratic Party. ... sort of.

In reality, Donna Brazile's allegations regarding DNC corruption & the Clinton campaign's takeover of the party are nothing new to Bernie Sanders fans. I even wrote a blog post last year arguing Bernie should join the Greens after suspicious voting problems surfaced in the primaries. There were reports more than a year ago of voter purges (recently confirmed by the NYC board of elections). Now, Brazile is confirming that the DNC did in fact have a bias toward Clinton -- because Clinton campaign and the DNC signed a contract allowing the campaign to effectively control all DNC decisions!

It feels to me a bit like posturing. Perhaps Brazile and some of her allies want to have the "tell all" in order to either get their 15 minutes of limelight as they retire. But I lean toward thinking that Brazile and others know that the DNC is on a bad path, voters are angry, and they don't want to receive the full blame. Brazile is probably hopeful she can retain her cushy job in the DNC by being the "whistleblower", for example; I have not seen any story so far mention that she was recently appointed to the DNC's rules committee, meaning she is one of the members that sets the rules for the 2020 primaries. As far as I know she has't resigned from the post, and it would now look super suspicious if Tom Perez fired her after these allegations came out, so she probably feels fairly "safe" in her position of power within the party now. Voters are angry, fundraising is way down, the party is doing terribly, and she doesn't want the blame, she wants to sneak in as a "well I never supported the corruption, I'm the whistleblower!". Don't fall for it, she hasn't changed and magically become more progressive, she's fighting to save her source of income.

So that said, what is the next step from this revelation?

I think many will likely use this as an opportunity to "rally the troops" to take over the DNC with more progressives. That is, Justice Democrats or similar organizations will say "we have the corporate DNC on the ropes, support us and we'll win and take over the party!". DON'T LISTEN TO THEM. This doesn't change anything, it just further exposes how fundamentally corrupt the DNC organization is and how they will never change.

The DNC chair is still a corporatist. He appointed corporate lobbyists to most positions of power and purged the progressives. They still back corporate-funded candidates over grassroots-funded progressives. They still have superdelegates to control who wins the party nomination. Party primaries are still done under party rules, meaning they don't legally have to uphold any sort of fair nomination process for any level of office -- and Brazile and others involved in this scandal are working right now to set the primary and debate rules for 2020! Do you think they'll make rules that favor a progressive winning? (Look at the DNC's recent resolution that specifically said Bernie and other independents should join the Democratic party -- they know he won't, but they will use it say he isn't qualified to run for office in 2020, mark my words) And they're working harder than ever to shift their platform to the right and court more right-wing voters and, in particular, rich donors. With the GOP self-destructing under Trump, they want to step in and basically be the "new" right-wing party.

A few Democrat officials will be thrown under the bus, fired from their jobs as a sacrifice to "save" the party in its current form, but make no mistake: the corporate influence is not gone. Just because the influence has potentially turned against Clinton doesn't mean it decided to give up and go home. Power gives up nothing when it doesn't have to. This just means the power and influence has decided Clinton is a liability, and is looking at other candidates and leaders for future elections, and you can bet those new leaders won't be progressive. Oh they might appoint a mild progressive to some ceremonial position with no power (as they did to Keith Ellison), but there is no way corporate donors will let a real progressive that threatens their influence on the party into any position of power within the party.

These allegations show how deep the corruption runs. Those that run the DNC let Clinton basically have the party so they could make more money from her. They filled up the DNC budget with "consultants" that got big paychecks that didn't pay off when Clinton lost an election that should have been easily winnable. That's why this is coming out. Not because they're changing strategy, but simply that they're changing the face of the party.

We cannot fight corporate Democrats on their terms. When we play their game and run in Democratic primaries, we lose, often in that election but even if a progressive sometimes wins, we lose the long game. They can suppress primaries, as we've seen. They can work against progressives. And in the off chance a progressive wins a race, they can use the party machinery to crush dissent and make the progressives "compromise" or smear them. Even with progressives within the Democratic party, they're fighting a corporate platform trying to blend into the party instead of proudly pushing for a true left-wing agenda with a party that supports them.

We must fight on OUR terms. We do that with a two-pronged approach:

1. Join the Green Party. Don't compromise on ideals. Greens have a strongly progressive platform, much more progressive than even Bernie Sanders. Greens are more accurately referred to as "eco-socialist". We must not settle for compromise with Democrats; we must take our agenda straight to the Americans people and convince them of the need for a strongly socialist platform. We must not let Democrats unilaterally set what the "moderate" or "centrist" or "compromise" viewpoint is; who appointed them in charge of defining those terms, defining what Americans want? I think most Americans actually want a Green agenda if they only knew what it was! I think the Green platform *is* the centrist, *is* the compromise agenda. The Democrats are a largely right-wing platform, moving further and further away from Americans' ideals every year, and it's time to start treating it that way. Joining the Green Party, supporting Green candidates, and running for office as a Green gets you a platform to talk about a real progressive eco-socialist agenda instead. You can proudly speak your mind knowing the party is behind you, rather than angry.

2. Many objections to Greens boil down to "the system is rigged against them, so we have to run as a Democrat". Think about that for a second: the system is so rigged that no other candidates even have a chance, and yet you think Democratic primaries are not rigged and can be won by the opposition? Those two statements are fundamentally opposed, and I encourage you to reflect on that strategy and ask if primary opponents will really work better long run than running in general election.

I personally believe that, while there is definitely corruption within the major parties and their processes such as their primaries, our election and justice system on the whole still work reasonably well. Most Americans have a sense of fairness and do not share the attitude of party leaders. Most elections (even primaries) went smoothly, it was only some districts that had problems. While court is complex and costly and needs reform, it does still work, and was the preferred method of getting justice for activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr.

So I say we run candidates as much as possible. When corruption and problems surface, we attack them in court. We can win court battles to make a more fair system. Jill Stein, the 2016 Green presidential nominee, already did this in Pennsylvania: her lawsuit last year got a state law struck down that required any candidates not in the two major parties to go through extra hoops to get on the ballot that Republicans and Democrats didn't have to do. For example, Greens would need thousands of signatures to be on the ballot, but Republicans and Democrats only would need 500. How is that fair? It wasn't, and a court struck down that law. We won, which is why we're seeing more Greens this year running for office, and I hope to see even more in future years.

While the presidential elections are high profile and so the most complex and corrupted (and so need a lot of work!), we're seeing a lot of progress at the local and state level. So we need to be running more candidates at those levels, and filing lawsuits as necessary to continue to pave the way for future elections. Those campaigns, even when they don't win, help educate voters and the general public about these sorts of issues, so it's even more critical to run for office -- hopefully you win, but even if you don't, it's a very important voter education task that needs done anyway.

Now I'm saying Green here as it is the largest party that I feel shares my values, but we see others popping up that may also work. Socialist Alternative, Progressive Independent Party, "Draft Bernie" (not sure if they made a better name yet, People's Party?). Choose whatever party best interests you. I encourage you to join the Greens because we're growing and I think have the most momentum, but do what makes sense for you and your area. Let's also get all of these parties together to talk how we can form a coalition.

Third parties are the only way to truly break the spell of corporate rigged elections and capitalism. If we want fair elections, grassroots democracy, and a more socialist economy, we MUST fight in a new party, because the two major ones will always be against us. Fighting from within puts us at a disadvantage. While fighting as a third party is also difficult and uphill, victories we gain will be long-lasting victories that change the national discussion on our own terms, which is really what our ultimate goal is. It is worth the fight. I hope you'll join us.

Nearly a Year

So it's been nearly a year since the 2016 election, and about the same since my last post (which was thoughts on improving our election system as a bit of a retrospective on voting issues that led to Trump becoming president).

The nearly year of Trump as president has been interesting. It's difficult to sum up a year in a single blog post, but let's review a few of the most important events that stand out in my memory at this moment.

The year started with some mass mobilization for demonstrations and protests that in my view quickly fell apart. I haven't heard much from the Womens' March, or Science March, or any other group since then, which has been disappointing. It shows the events were knee-jerk rather than pushing for a real movement. Honestly, I wonder if the events were Democratic Party supported more to suppress coverage of progressive movements more so than for any purpose. I personally attended both the Womens' March and the Science March in Pittsburgh, and both events disappointed me. Very short, quick marches, with a few guest speakers that railed against Trump and said how important it was to elect Democrats. They were really campaign rallies. There was no discussion on keeping the movement going, on how to continue action, no calls for more people to run for office, certainly no discussion on the flaws of the 2016 Democratic campaign. I've still not seen a "post-mortem" for the Clinton campaign from Democrats, much less anyone at these type of events addressing the real issue, that the two-party duopoly is what gave us Trump (since it also gave the weak, corrupt candidate Clinton as the "opposition"). We have to break the two-party system, get big donor money out of politics, if we want to prevent this scenario again, but few "leaders" talk about it.

Trump has enriched his own pockets through his businesses that he has still never divested from. He and the GOP have been pushing for repealing the ACA ("ObamaCare"), which so far has been unsuccessful, but they're now trying to essentially defund large parts of it in their new budget and tax reform policy. The tax reform proposal is essentially a big giveaway to the ultra rich at the expense of social programs and healthcare funding. And Trump is playing a bit of a game of "chicken" with North Korea, pushing us to the brink of war in an effort to get a "better deal". While there has been pushback on it at the grassroots level, again I have not seen a very strong Democratic response to the proposals -- some Democrats have even voted FOR some of the GOP plans and Trump nominees, in what has been a very ineffective "resistance". In fact, Democratic politicians seem to be waxing nostalgic for Republican politicians of old such as George W. Bush rather than embracing progressives and Bernie Sanders. We also can't forget about the Democrats' pushing us to the brink of war with Russia too, with their blame of Russia for "hacking" the elections in favor of Trump as an "act of war". (Notice that this rhetoric has recently died down drastically as evidence came out that Russian oligarch businessmen were actually engaged in pay-for-play with Obama and Clinton to obtain a nuclear deal with the US starting in 2009, as reported by the New York Times. Sounds like it's becoming the pot calling the kettle black.)

While I'm not sure I'd call myself "surprised", the fact that a year after the election I'm still seeing attacks on Bernie Sanders and his policy disturbs me. DNC Chair Tom Perez (which itself was a big fight against Bernie-backed Keith Ellison, that had its own controverseries) recently purged progressives -- those that backed Bernie or Ellison -- from DNC leadership roles. He appointed Donna Brazile, who was caught aiding the Clinton campaign during the primaries and had to resign her position at CNN because of it, to the DNC Rules Committee which sets primary rules for 2020. Previous DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, who had to resign after emails were leaked showing her collusion with the Clinton campaign, is still a top Democrat running for re-election. All evidence points to the fact that the Democratic Party is preparing to defend itself from a progressive challenge, more so than combat the Republicans.

I think it stems from Democrats relying on the two-party system. They don't feel like they need to try, because liberals will vote for them if only to stop GOP from continuing power. They want to have their cake and eat it too, by keeping all of the corrupting donor money that influences their policies for corporations rather than the people, while still winning elections because you "have no other choice".

The year has convinced me that we will only get progressive reform in this country with a strong third-party push. Republicans and Democrats have absolutely no incentive to change when they are fine with the status quo -- they keep winning your votes because you think you have no choice, while they stay in power due to gerrymandering, and keep collecting all of that private donor money. We can march and protest and complain all we want, but they have no reason to take the American people seriously when they know at the end of the day most will continue to hold their nose and vote for the establishment.

We have to have a strong third-party. It's counter-productive to continue supporting the establishment. Either that third-party must become a major party, or it will grow to exert enough pressure that the Democrats and Republicans finally take the threat seriously and do it themselves to prevent that third-party takeover.

To build that third-party, it is critical that we talk with activists and voters more. Educate on American and world history, the history of the labor movement, progressivism, and socialism, and how third parties have been instrumental to many of the biggest leaps forward in American history. Find grassroots leaders dedicated to growing a third-party at the local level, for if we can win localities and begin implementing progressive policy,

My goal moving forward, more so than direct activism or protests, is this education. I believe we have to have educated voters united in a new grassroots third-party before activism or electoral politics can be effective at bringing change. Everything else is "jumping the gun" in some sense; if party leaders don't acknowledge your protests, nothing will change, and like I said, many of the protests I've been to recently have utterly failed at voter education or encouraging people to run for office, and so have been completely wasted efforts. We have to make education and networking a priority, think long-term, rather than knee-jerk reactions that don't accomplish anything and even sometimes are counter-productive.

I have been reading a lot recently, and have really enjoyed learning about history of politics and political philosophy. So I plan on writing future blog posts about recommended reading for progressives based on the things that I've found enjoyable and informative. Watch for those posts coming up! Please subscribe and check for updates. I'll be announcing these posts on Twitter @ProgressivePgh.

Democratic Party Corruption and Unfair Tactics

There is mounting evidence that the Democratic Party of today, and its de facto leader Hillary Clinton, is overrun with corporate influence and greed, and nothing like the Democratic Party that many are still loyal to. The Democratic National Convention has been an amazing farce; while they've tried to put on a show that makes the DNC appear unified and positive, there is a deep amount of cynicism and division behind the scenes that rivals the Republican convention.

From Wikileaks and other sources, we have learned the following:

1. The DNC, in violation of its own rules, worked behind the scenes to form a narrative against Bernie Sanders in the media, implicitly supporting Clinton. Other emails show DNC had "infiltrated" Bernie's campaign and effectively spied on their own candidate, as well as maintained close ties to the media and relied on the media to disseminate their own fabricated stories. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has stepped down as DNC chair, which is an implict admission of guilt or at least incompetence. DWS was then immediately made honorary chair of Clinton's campaign as a reward -- no apology or other penalty required. Considering the appointment, one can assume Clinton's campaign was complicit and approved of such actions. The replacement chairwoman was also implicated in the leaked emails as having an anti-Bernie bias.
2. The DNC sold access to high level politicians to top donors. Effectively, donors that paid more were able to spend time with the president and other politicians like Hillary Clinton. The quote from the article that gets me is at the end: "John Cordisco, the chairman of the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Democratic Committee, said that as long as fundraising is an element of the political process, these kinds of transactions will also be present." This is again essentially an admission of guilt, and was meant to be a defense of the practice. Hey, we've been doing it this way for a long time, why stop now? The reason is, money alone should not influence policy. The rich should not have more sway in our system simply because they can throw money around as political donations.
3. The Clinton Foundation, a non profit, appears to have been used to channel money to various State Department officials while Clinton was Secretary of State. It's entirely possible these alleged actions were a huge conflict of interest (ethics violation), or even illegal money laundering, but no publicly known investigation or indictment has occurred yet to my knowledge. Aside from money being sent to various people through the foundation in fishy ways, it is well known and confirmed that some large donors to the Clinton Foundation were later appointed to political positions despite not having any experience or expertise in the subject; the best example is a big donor that was appointed to an important influential intelligence board shortly after a large donation, despite having no national security expertise or experience. The donor resigned when questions were asked. This seems to be a clear example of political favors for money.
4. As Hillary Clinton's campaign hit Bernie hard for not helping "down-ticket candidates" (which he did end up helping quite a few progressive candidates that won their primaries, more pending), Clinton campaign used a funding loophole to channel money to the campaign through state party donations. This allowed Clinton's campaign to raise much more money than typically allowed by federal election law, which left almost no money for state parties or down-ticket candidates. This also happened early in the primary; note that the DNC did not offer to make a similar funding agreement with the Sanders campaign.
5. Bernie delegates were stripped of their credentials (particularly for displaying Bernie signs, or protest signs such as anti-TPP after the nomination vote) and prevented from being seated for the nomination floor vote, in an effort to make the party look unified and minimize protests. Nina Turner, a long time surrogate for Bernie Sanders, was asked to officially nominate Sanders. Last minute, Turner was turned away from the stage and had her credentials revoked, reportedly because Turner refused to endorse Clinton.
6. Clinton delegates (very likely on their own, not necessarily endorsed by Clinton campaign) were rude and possibly committed several instances of assault on Bernie delegates. While not a specific transgression of Clinton or the DNC, this sort of behavior by Clinton delegates is indicative of the tone set at the convention: Bernie delegates were never welcome from the beginning.
7. Bernie delegates then walked out of the convention in protest, leaving a large amount of empty seats. The DNC then began hiring paid actors to come in and pretend to be Bernie delegates, to fill chairs and make the party seem unified.
8. Meanwhile, outside the DNC, protests occurred. Peaceful protesters were arrested and pepper sprayed. Some protesters staged a sit in of the media room, and were locked in by police. Most media ignored the protests and did not cover. Twitter and Periscope were used to spread information. Jill Stein was there leading several protests and marches.

Remember that none of this means that I support Trump or the Republican Party. The GOP is at least as bad as the Democrats for many of the same reasons. But that is exactly the problem -- they are both corrupt parties, focused more on pleasing their rich corporate donors than doing good.

It's time we say goodbye to both major parties. I will be voting Green. I hope you will join me, but if you disagree with Green policy, I hope you will consider another party like the Libertarians. Do not give the major parties your vote. They do not deserve it.

Don't let anyone convince you a third party vote is a "wasted" vote. Truly, the only wasted vote is a vote cast for someone you do not believe in. I don't believe in Trump or Clinton. I will vote my conscience for the candidate that I believe will do the most good. I believe Jill Stein and the Green party are the best option to fight corporate greed and restore a functional democracy.

But more than this election, we need to focus on long term efforts. We need a better more democratic campaign and electoral system. To do this, we need money out of politics (join PA United to Amend, or a similar organization in your state, to push for a constitutional amendment at the state level!), and to promote better voting methods such as Score Voting or Ranked Voting. We need to mobilize and run for local office. If we all run for local office over the next few years, then we win from the grassroots up.