Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
Did you know that if a given political party already has an incumbent in a particular political post, it\u2019s standard practice in the United States for a political party to prohibit its voter-list to be purchased by anyone who\u2019s not an incumbent office-holder in that party \u2014 including by someone who wishes to challenge or contest within that party the incumbent, in a primary election?<\/span><\/p>\n Only incumbents have access to that crucial list \u2014 crucial for any candidate in a primary election (unless there is no incumbent who is of that party).<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s an example:<\/span><\/p>\n Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a long-time unquestioningly loyal operative of Hillary Clinton, was selected by the Democratic President Barack Obama (though she had condemned Obama while he was running against Clinton in 2008) to run the Democratic National Committee, so that Obama\u2019s Administration will be continued with little change by his (chosen) successor (just a change of the President\u2019s name, and only a bit more of a neo-conservative on her foreign policies than he was). However, Ms. DWS has a very low approval-rating from her constituents, and a Bernie Sanders supporter wants to contest against her in a Democratic primary. But,\u00a0he says:<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Last week, I\u00a0called the Florida Democratic Party to request access to the voter file\u00a0database and\u00a0software known as VAN that is routinely used by Democratic\u00a0candidates across the country.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I\u00a0was told that our campaign would be denied access to this database\u00a0because I am running\u00a0against an incumbent Democrat, Debbie Wasserman\u00a0Schultz. I was also told that any\u00a0Democratic candidate running against\u00a0an incumbent Democrat would be denied access.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n A reader-comment there was:<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve learned that\u00a0this is standard practice in most states, to block challengers from the\u00a0same party\u00a0going up against incumbents.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s bullshit. I\u2019ve asked people to give me some good reasoning why this is a standard\u00a0practice, and *crickets*.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n In other words: Politicians campaign hypocritically saying they favor \u2019term-limits\u2019 but universally support the real <\/i>\u00a0reason (which isn\u2019t the lack of term-limits; it\u2019s the lack of fairness<\/i>, such as this) why even the most vile incumbents get re-\u2018elected\u2019 time and again: this thuggish custom of the Democratic and Republican political Parties, which blocks challengers from having access to the most crucial tool for becoming a Party\u2019s nominee: the list of that Party\u2019s registered voters. Only the existing incumbent can buy that list. (Of course, if the \u2018opposite\u2019<\/i> Party has the incumbent in the contest, then the DNC\/RNC will sell the person that list in order to yank the seat to their Party. The most-rigged part of American \u2018democracy\u2019 might be primary elections, not<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>general elections \u2014 which is what politicians most discuss in public as being rigged, such as especially both of GWB\u2019s Presidential \u2018wins\u2019, which were exceptionally scandalous.)<\/span><\/p>\n Among the many ways in which the United States is not a democracy, the operation of primaries by Parties which actually represent their incumbents and not at all the public, is an important one. And the incumbent politicians never publicize it. Only a few aspiring challengers \u2018complain\u2019 about it \u2014 and the public never likes a ‘complainer.’ <\/span><\/p>\n What this means is that, if an incumbent serves well the donors who financed his\/her campaign, then that person will almost certainly not be effectively challenged in a primary by someone else from that party, because that prospective challenger won\u2019t even have access to the list of registered voted in that party. The only significant chance that the incumbent will be replaced (unless he\/she quits and, say, becomes a lobbyist for those donors) is if the \u2018opposite\u2019 party can find a suitable person to run against him\/her (by serving donors to the \u2018other\u2019 party \u2014 which donors might also be donors to both parties).<\/span><\/p>\n In other words: the political Establishment consists of the aristocracy and its servants \u2014 within both parties. Both parties serve the aristocrats, sometimes even the same aristocrats, but, in other matters, serve the agenda that\u2019s shared among the richest people in both parties.<\/span><\/p>\n The only scientific study that has been done of the net results from such a system was described and linked-to here<\/span><\/a>. It found that in the U.S., the aristocracy rule; the public do not. And here<\/span><\/a> is a recent former U.S. President saying that his own experience and analysis of the U.S. political system is in accord with those findings.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse Did you know that if a given political party already has an incumbent in a particular political post, it\u2019s standard practice in the United States for a political party to prohibit its voter-list to be purchased by anyone who\u2019s not an incumbent office-holder in that party \u2014 including by someone who wishes to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":231637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[905,968,951,971,974,954,14850,4203,949,6257],"class_list":{"0":"post-231977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-aristocracy","9":"tag-bernie","10":"tag-clinton","11":"tag-cruz","12":"tag-democracy","13":"tag-hillary","14":"tag-kassich","15":"tag-oligarchy","16":"tag-sanders","17":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}