DNC Lawyers Argue 1st Amendment Right to Rig the Primaries

Via RealProgressives

After the revelations from the lawyers for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the last phase of court proceedings last summer, where they argued the DNC was a private corporation and could therefore choose whichever candidate they wanted, that there was no such thing as a Democrat, and that donors knew all of this already when they donated to Bernie Sanders, it's honestly no surprise that they would go to even more desperate lengths the second time around.

Now that the DNC lawsuit has gone into its appeal stage, the law team for the DNC is showing itself capable of leaping from even higher windows in an attempt to escape the heat. Make no mistake, even if the DNC wins this case, they have ultimately lost the trust of voters. That is at least one really good reason why the DNC never wanted this case to see the light of day, and fought to have it dismissed from the beginning.

How can anyone feel as if their opinions matter at all, when they are shown to play absolutely no part in anything involving the Democratic Party or their sham of a primary election? Will people be happy simply leaving a private corporation in charge of the entire political process for them? Clearly that would be beneficial to DNC incorporated, and solely in their own best interest. But what would happen to the democratic process if the DNC's defense were simply accepted by voters?

It would totally disappear in favor of lucrative backroom deals.

That's what has been happening, and continues to happen.

That's the DNC status quo.

In a statement issued by the DNC legal defense on Friday, they seem to be arguing not only that the DNC willingly broke its own charter by failing to maintain objectivity, but that they have a first amendment right to do so, arguing that the case against them was:

"...an improper attempt to forge the federal courts into a political weapon to be used by individuals who are unhappy with how a political party selected its candidate in a presidential campaign."

Notice the important words "selected" and "its" in that statement.

That's a pretty ironic statement, considering the rigging of the primaries was an improper attempt to forge the DNC as a political weapon to be used by more prominent individuals unhappy about how a grassroots organization chose its candidate during a presidential primary. Considering the DNC stated fairly early on that the superdelegate system was put in place to stop grassroots movements from gaining a foothold and protect the establishment over the people, this shouldn't come as a shock.

But what is really surprising is now they seem to be saying they actually have a first amendment right to rig the primaries, as their legal team continued to argue:

"The government may not, consistent with the First Amendment, tell a political party how to conduct its own internal affairs (where such conduct violates no law), especially as relates to choosing its nominee,"

Even though the DNC defense argues that the entire case brought against them is based on the violation of their own charter, and according to their own admission that charter is "merely a suggestion" without any legal merit, the case that remains is whether a corporation has the right to lie to people, in order to increase its own profit margin. The fact that this particular corporation owns half of the political process in the United States is just another sickening facet of a problem that is eating away at the national political discourse.

If the plaintiffs are found guilty, the precedent will be set that it is illegal for a corporation to lie to the public simply to enrich itself.

If the case is dismissed, or decided in favor of the DNC, then the precedent will be set that it is perfectly OK for a corporation to completely mislead the public in order to gain their trust and their money, so long as they don't do it in any sort of legally binding manner.