If you follow me on Twitter and were following me during the Democratic debate at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee on Thursday, you read what no mass media has covered, namely that the Hilary Cheat Machine had stacked the deck. It was easy, just 15 minutes after the debate began to see that on the particular liberal campus where in all likelihood not more than 20% of the Democrats can even stand the thought of Clinton, the auditorium was filled with Clinton shills who boisterously and enthusiastically applauded her every slimy attack on Bernie and her misleading statement. A couple hours before the debate started, a friend of mine in Milwaukee gave me a heads up about what was coming... and I tweeted that too:And now I see a Daily Kos diarist in Wisconsin noticed the same thing and blogged about it in real time. "I LIVE in the Milwaukee area," she wrote, "so you’d think I could manage to wrangle a ticket to tonight’s debate, right? Wrong! The closest I could come was the chance of 'winning' a ticket via the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s donation request email. I entered for my change of winning the ONE ticket they offered. Never heard from them. I guess I lost. Maybe I should have donated a pile of money to boost my odds." Yep, that would have done it. The DNC and state parties make sure that it's big donors who get the seats. And it was at her alma mater.
So….who WAS in the audience? Beats me. Certainly not activists or ordinary citizens. I suspect they were State Party loyalists and hangers-on. Martha Lanning, chair of the Wis Dems, like other members of the establishment, has already endorsed HRC. Otherwise, it was 25 lucky UWM students and 1 lucky winner of the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s email donation contest.The game was rigged, my friends. Just like the rest of our Democracy has been.Felling the Bern at home rather than sitting at the Debate.Check out that "university audience." Bwahahahaha!!It isn’t even a "Milwaukee audience" since all the faces I see are white and Milwaukee is majority non-white.... I’m not the only one who noticed the audience.As the candidates took their podiums, it was clear that the audience was packed with Hillary supporters. Bernie managed occasionally to spark some applause, but, relative to Hillary’s, it was infrequent, muted, and mixed with jeers. (There’s an interesting story to be written about how these audiences are assembled, and whatever happened to no-applause debates in which audience members are ordered, on penalty of ejection, to remain silent.)[M]y main concern involved the audience not being reflective of the diversity either of the university or even the city where the debate was held. Milwaukee is “majority minority” and the nearly all-white, older audience didn’t reflect any of that.Why bother having debates in various locations if audiences don’t reflect those local communities. If you’re going to hand pick audiences, then set a standard location to hold all the debates.
Hillary lost anyway, as badly as she deserved to. Want to help elect Bernie and congressional candidates who have endorsed him and are running on his issues?
