I’m surprised this story got so little attention from Freepers.
I don’t know all the details of the claim but from what I do know, this was a bad ruling.
I could be off point, but the plaintiffs claimed the DNC defrauded them out of money. The DNC kept telling people that they were “neutral” as to who would win the primary. They made this claim many times while they raised money from Bernie supporters. It is now known that the DNC was not impartial but they actively worked to get Hillary the nomination. The Bernie supporters who donated to the DNC feel they are defrauded. I agree.
The article says that the judge ruled it is “impossible to know who was defrauded”. But that is preposterous. Anyone who gave money to the DNC and to Bernie and not to Hillary would qualify.
There is another hiccup though. The DNC primary is a rigged process. Both major parties have superdelegates but the Democrats have way more than the GOP. And the D party has a proportional distribution of state delegates, no winner take all. This creates a situation where the party bosses basically determine the outcome. The actual primary votes are in most cases just a pretense at a democratic process. We all know how politics work. The high ranking people pressure the low ranking people to do their bidding. They tell people “if you don’t vote our way you will lose your committee assignments, we won’t send people to support your fundraising events, we won’t help with your get out the vote effort, and we may even run a challenger against you next election”. And Hillary had a big head start on raising money, she sucked the air out from most challengers. And most of the party insiders wanted her. So she got nearly all of the Super Delegate votes.
In a 2 person race, if one person gets the Super Delegate votes they will win the nomination. It is mathematically impossible to lose because of the proportional distribution of state delegates. Bernie could have won every state as big as he won Washington (Bernie got almost 75% of the D primary votes). But because it is not winner take all, Hillary still got 25% of the delegates. With all the Super Delegate votes in her pocket she could lose every primary and still win.
So I can definitely see why the Bernie supporters think they were defrauded. They were flat lied to by the DNC to induce a donation. In my mind this is plain as day. But they were also working against a rigged primary. There was no way Bernie would win under a proportional distribution system with Super Delegates breaking for Hillary. And as members of the party, they should have known this.
I can’t help but think this whole episode is emblematic of the Dem party and Dem political leaders. They are the most phony, insincere demagogues in history. Everything from the left is about appearances, not substance. They even designed their primary system to give the appearance of populism knowing full well that most of the time it doesn’t matter how the states vote, the bosses will decide the winner. Anyone who remains a member of the Dem party is a willing dupe, a sucker.
This is the issue in a nutshell. There will still be a lot of people who will vote for the democrat candidate because they feel they will be better then the republican, but winning an election requires a lot of effort by people calling on the phone, knocking on doors, etc. The enthusiasm a candidate generates starts right there.
This is really a demoralizing stake through the heart of the democrat party. A good quality green party candidate, with a party process that accepts input from the rank and file, can cut off a large section of the democrats.