The Super Tuesdays and Joe Biden's fraudulent coronation
Written by: Daniel Xie
The Super Tuesdays of the 2020 election, which allowed Biden to solidify his lead over Sanders, were marred by significant instances of voter suppression. This was presumably carried out by the DNC to ensure a Biden victory, or ensure a higher margin of victory for Biden in order to prevent Bernie Sanders from amassing a significant number of delegates.
During Super Tuesday I, in Dallas County, where Biden won the early vote, the county demanded a recount of backup paper ballots that were not counted for whatever reason. Texas, where Bernie had the lead both in the leadup to Super Tuesday and in the exit polls, resulted in a win for Biden. There were various factors contributing to Biden’s victory, such as the gerrymandering of districts in Texas to make it hard for Blacks and Latinos to vote, on whom Sanders has focused much of their outreach on. The possibility that the DNC simply failed to count the ballot to ensure a Biden victory, when framed in the context of their earlier dirty tricks in 2016 and 2020 directed against Sanders, should not be overlooked, especially given United Nations statements that high exit poll discrepancies exceeding 4 per cent constitutes election fraud.
During Super Tuesday II voter disenfranchisement manifested through large vote lines preventing many from voting on time in Michigan, as a result of it’s same-day registration rules. Even as the race was called for Joe Biden in Michigan (where he was initially tied with Bernie), thousands of voters were unable to vote. The victory of Joe Biden, even as long lines still assembled behind the polling stations, raises the question of just how different things would have been if more people were allowed the opportunity to register to vote.
Many young voters in Michigan were significantly impacted by the long voting times, with college students in East Lansing reporting that they waited up to four hours to vote; in many polling stations, the last voter left at 11 PM, long after Joe Biden was declared the victor of the Michigan primary. Some disappointed voters even left before they were able to vote due to the long vote times. Bernie campaign coordinator Abshir Omar stated that a Michigan State university student walked out after an hour of waiting, due to being disgusted by the long wait times.
Voter disenfranchisement continued well into Super Tuesday III, which saw Biden pick up Arizona, Florida, and Illinois. During the time that the Super Tuesday III primaries occured, the Coronavirus outbreak in America was in full swing, and as such, most people wanted to stay home in self-isolation. These primaries should’ve been delayed until a time when the death toll and number of infected starts to drop. Already, public health officials have warned against organizing large gatherings of 50 people or more due to the health concerns they have, while other states, such as Maryland and Ohio have cancelled their primaries because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Yet, the DNC chose not to cancel, or push for the postponement of the primaries, instead taking advantage of the fact that the Coronavirus means both that;
Less people will come out to vote, and
There would need to be a greater attention to hygiene and cleanliness in public spaces.
According to Chapo Trap House podcaster Virgil Texas, on Mar. 14, Arizona’s Maricopa county eliminated over a third of voting locations due to issues of cleanliness. This left only 151 polling sites open for Super Tuesday III. With 50 per cent of the population having not voted in the Super Tuesday III primaries, in part due to quarantine; voter turnout was consequently lower, a factor that favors Biden over Bernie. As reported by Sanders political coordinator Abshir Omar, the Coronavirus outbreak has prevented low income neighborhoods and marginalized communities such as Latino neighborhoods in Illinois from being able to vote.
Many in these communities didn’t want to risk standing in poorly ventilated locations, just so they could vote or risk making contact with presumably infected individuals. By contrast, according to a reply to Omar on twitter; whiter and more affluent neighborhoods, had visible precautionary measures that were taken to reduce the risk of illnesses. this structural disenfranchisement where wealthier neighborhoods are more prepared to deal with the COVID-19 would give Biden an advantage; in that more affluent neighborhoods where the population would be less likely to lean Bernie are better prepared to handle large numbers of voters and thus limit the threat of COVID-19 transmission. The voting situation for Illinois is further worsened by certain precincts never receiving supplies at all such as precinct 33, consequently locking out many from being able to vote in the first place.
While cutting off dirty polling stations may be understandable in the face of a monumental health crisis, a better option exists in the form of delaying the primaries until the crisis is resolved. Yet the DNC chose not to do so, perhaps wanting to maintain and reinforce Biden’s momentum in the polls before anything changes in Bernie’s favor. The DNC is willing to use the Coronavirus outbreak to engineer a means for their candidate can secure victory.
They must also be held accountable for creating a situation where seniors and people with weak immune systems can be easily infected by a virus. All this because they wanted Biden to be “coronated” as soon as possible. Any deaths from COVID-19 that happen as a result of this blatant political maneuver are thus on their hands.
The possibility that the DNC is seeking to exploit the Coronavirus as a means to coronate Biden, can be further seen in a report by the Guardian. It notes that the DNC has gone as far as to threaten states that postpone primaries past Jun. 9, by placing restrictions on the number of delegates which states can send to the August convention. The states will be punished by the DNC through having their voices marginalized. If Bernie wins states that postpone primaries past Jun. 9, expect the DNC to make good on this threat by restricting pro-Bernie delegates from attending the convention that came out of postponed primaries.
The Super Tuesdays of 2020 was not the first time that the DNC, in order to suppress a Sanders victory, resorted to dirty tactics to ensure the triumph of an establishment candidate. In 2016, the DNC deployed various dirty tricks. These included;
Deciding ties in caucuses through coin tosses and;
Allowing most of the superdelegates to pledge themselves to Hillary Clinton from the beginning, so she could start off the election with a commanding delegate lead
Earlier in 2020, during the Iowa caucus, a software failure in the app used to calculate the results in Iowa caused a delay in the release of the results. This has been believed by many leftists and Bernie supporters, with strong supporting evidence, to have been a calculated effort by Shadow Inc, to prop up Pete Buttigieg. Shadow Inc. is staffed by many Obama and Hillary campaign veterans and funded by centrist SuperPACs,
A similar incident occured in Missouri during Super Tuesday II, where a precinct that had a strong turnout for Bernie in 2016 had all its voting machines and paper ballot collection machines, as well as tablets, all malfunction.
Overall, what these instances of voter suppression by the DNC, show is that the DNC would rather maintain the dominance of the neoliberal establishment within the democratic party and their corporate donors by any means necessary, regardless of the consequences. This course of action has been taken, despite every poll showing Bernie to be the only candidate with a shot at beating Trump. Should they succeed once again as they did in 2016, they will both alienate a large chunk of their progressive base, while paving the way to another Trump presidency.
If Biden wins, expect a low turnout and for Trump to once again paint himself as a populist. He will pretend to stand up against the sociopolitical establishment, regardless of any policies he has taken in office in favour of said establishment.
We have seen this happen in 2016 when Trump portrayed himself as a peace candidate, taking advantage of the anti-Russian paranoia dominating the democratic establishment and Hillary’s hawkishness. After his election victory, he proceeded to support the US-backed coup attempts in Venezuela and Bolivia (the latter which was successful), while withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.
During the Coronavirus outbreak, we are seeing Trump agree to left leaning policies to maintain stability and order, even if he never believed in them in the first place and would reverse them as soon as possible. This is evident in his freezing of foreclosures and mortgage payments as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak; something Obama never did when the housing market burst in America put many at risk of eviction.
Throughout this election, establishment democrats have adopted the phrase of “returning to normalcy” after four years of Trump. Yet, by committing mass voter disenfranchisement, election fraud, and putting the lives of voters on the line by holding elections during a pandemic; they will only suppress the one viable challenger to Trumpian politics. This will guarantee four more years of the Trumpian policies which they supposedly seek to overturn.