So what do I mean when I say the system is "rigged"?

I seem to run into a lot of misunderstandings in discussing the 2016 election with people, especially when I talk about how the system and the democratic primary are "rigged." This seems to come from a certain definition of rigging that involves explicit cheating. While there is some evidence of that in the democratic primary, it's only a part of the story, and my definition of rigged is much broader than that.

If I had to give a spoiler free TLDR of what I'm about to say, it will be this. You don't need to break the rules to rig an election or a country. You just need to write the rules in such a way that you produce a desired outcome. Most people who argue with me about the system being rigged tend to think I'm talking about explicit rule breaking. All in all, there is no smoking gun indicating any of that. But there doesn't have to be. All I'm really interested in showing is that the process itself, by design, skews results.

A bit of ground work

A lot of what I discuss on this blog comes down to what is known as conflict theory. It's a sociological lens through which to view the world, and it tries to analyze power relationships between different groups in society. Some argue that using these lenses can lead to confirmation bias, and that is true if used in excess. It's actually a huge problem I have with feminism in the 2016 election, for example. Everyone looks for sexism, so they see it. Okay, fair enough.

But does that mean it's worthless? No. Conflict theory produces a worldview that when used responsibly really shows a lot about reality in my opinion. It's not the only lens. I'm not saying you should only look at the world in this way, but I think it's useful at the very least to give it a try. It really exposes a lot of hypocrisy and double standards in a lot of things, and really can make people privy to information they otherwise would overlook.

How society looks to a conflict theorist

Conflict theory looks at power relations in society, and how the rich gain and maintain power. In their view, the rich control society and use it to take advantage of the poor. Applying knowledge gained from political science, many systems don't have explicit in your face power structures that oppress people. Things are more subtle. Many authoritarian states, like Russia, for example, actually have elections. It's just that these elections are rigged and voters have few actual choices in electing people. The system, on the surface, looks legitimate and fair, but looking into the details of the inner mechanisms, we can see that the system is actually controlled by a small group of people with interests in the status quo.

Looking at the United States, I've realized we operate in similar ways. Power isn't flaunted in peoples' faces. We're a free country. You can do whatever you want. We have elections, we have democracy. But when you look in the nitty gritty, you will find academics claiming we are an oligarchy. Many private citizens have little to no power, but the elites wield a lot of power.

Our political system

A lot of conflict theorist types will look at our democracy in similar ways. Noam Chomsky would say that our political system exists to prop up the rich. He talks a lot about the overton window, that is, issues that are up for discussion and how they can be debated and what the solutions are (although he doesn't use that word). He will point out that our "spectrum of debate" is limited, and that our choices are limited, and that the elites keep people passive by having a lot of debate within that spectrum, but at the same time suppressing debate outside of it. Put in other terms, we have a system in which the republicans and democrats debate on a range of issues. The republicans try to cut welfare, and the democrats push for what they always push for, incremental solutions. This spectacle of the debate keeps people distracted, it keeps them passive, and it keeps them arguing amongst themselves within the acceptable boundaries of debate.

But imagine you have a candidate like, say, Bernie Sanders who comes along and says that we need to do better, that we need more radical solutions? Well, they get ignored. They get pushed out of the system. What we saw this primary was essentially the democratic establishment pushing back against a candidate who was more left wing than them, and shutting them down. And what do they use to make people fall in line? The threat of the republicans. They tell you that you have to fall in line or the republicans will win. They distract you by talking about Trump and talking about how bad the republicans are. This settles the masses down who like Sanders, and redirects their focus away from Sanders and his message for greater change, and more toward beating the GOP. Then the democrats get in, they win, they do the same thing they always do, and the cycle continues. They are keeping Americans on a treadmill of arguing over the same old stuff, suppressing any attempt to change outside of the acceptable spectrum of debate. Progressives are ultimately put on the defense, needing to work with the democrats just to defend what we have from the republicans, and not being able to advance at all.

Now, to provide a stronger argument, let's look at what happens when you are an outsider who wants to change the system. Someone with my political views could either run as a democrat or a third party. If I run as a third party, I will probably get harassed like Ralph Nader did. But even putting that aside, will anyone vote for me? No. Most people won't be aware I exist because the media won't cover me. I'll cover that later. I won't make it to the debates because I need 15% in the polls to do so. I won't even make it on the ballot unless I get enough signatures. Who made up these rules, you ask? Republicans and democrats, the same people trying to keep everyone else out. And if I do somehow make it into the debates, on the ballots, and have a well run campaign and a platform that's worth electing...can I still win? Probably not. Because now the democrats will tell everyone a vote for me is a vote for Trump or whatever republican is running. People will be attacked, they will be guilted, they will be bullied into supporting the democrats, and I'll never get the support to win. And if I make them lose by splitting the vote, I'll be regarded as a pariah. The machinery, the system, the rules, are RIGGED in the favor of the parties that exist and AGAINST other options. This has nothing to do with election fraud, it's the SYSTEM that is stacked.

Now, what happens if I run within the party? Well, look at what Sanders did. He was criticized for not being a real democrat. His views weren't welcome because he didn't tow the party line. He wasn't an insider. He didn't support down ticket candidates. He didn't spend years building up the party. All arguments used against him. Parties make you sign loyalty pledges. They limit your ability to be independent in endorsing who you want, in saying what you want to say. You end up having to conform, to play their game to get nominated on a major party. You likely can't get anywhere without compromising your values. They won't support you, and the superdelegates won't vote for you. Again, this is a RIGGED system. It's not explicitly breaking the rules, it's the way the rules are set up to favor the establishment and the status quo. People might argue this is fair because the democrats are a private organization, but is it fair a private organization with its own biases and priorities and nepotism acts as gatekeepers to running for public office? This is how you end up with oligarchy, not real democracy.

The mass media

I didn't discuss the media earlier because I wanted to discuss it separately, but Chomsky discussed the media a lot too. He saw the mass media as propaganda, and put forward his propaganda model for discussing it. The media is owned by a few people, the owners can shape what the media covers, how it covers it, and for how long. It can spin and promote the stories as it likes, and ignores stories it doesn't like. It can make someone look like a hero or dog crap based on how it decides to cover something, or it can choose not to cover anything at all, leaving the public in the dark. As I said, the owners can shape it. The profit motive shapes it. Advertisers can shape it since they financially support the stations and can choose to withdraw that support if they want. Media outlets develop relationships with other stakeholders, and these stakeholders can influence the media. We saw the DNC doing just think in a lot of ways in the leaked emails.

The media influences millions of people. Large swaths of Americans get their news from sources like MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and other sources. And these guys are influenced dramatically by these sources. We like to talk about how Fox News is brainwashing older people, but what about stuff like CNN, MSNBC, etc? Don't they influence people too? And when these media outlets don't cover, for example, Bernie Sanders, or cover him in relatively unflattering ways, as I've seen a lot of, then isn't the media biasing how he is perceived? Same with the debates. There was a lot of controversy on the democratic side about how many debates there were going to be (only 6 originally, which minimizes coverage of lesser known candidates), when they were (on weekends, when sports were on, which reduced viewership), and the content. Some candidates complained about not having equal air time. One didn't even make it on the debate stage. And as the Young Turks will point out, sometimes the way media anchors ask questions can be biased.

As such, once again, we don't see a situation where some party explicitly broke rules or did anything illegal. You don't need full on vote rigging to have a fair system. The most powerful kinds of rigging are done behind the scenes. You don't need to break the rules to rig the system, rather, you can write the rules and then say, look, the game is fair, this is how it's played, Clinton won fair and square, didn't she? The problem isn't the players as much as it is the game. Although the players are writing the rules of the game in ways that benefit them and ensure they win.

Money in politics

As we know, this was a huge problem Sanders talked about a lot. He wanted to get money out of politics. Here's the thing. In order to run for office, you need money. In order to get money, you need people to donate to you. In rare situations where people are fired up, you can have situations like Sanders had where thousands, if not millions of people contribute small dollar donations to you. But for most people, you need money from businesses, corporations, special interests. They run ads for you, they contribute to your campaign. And when you win, they expect stuff in return. Legislation that helps them, or disrupts their competition. Tax breaks, subsidies, you name it. And if you don't give it to them, if you bite the hand that feeds you, then guess what, they stop donating to you. You lose funding. You have trouble getting reelected. In the worst case scenario these same interests may even back your competition so they can win and kick you out of office. Many people who "play the game", if they ever lose their seat, it seems they're guaranteed a job elsewhere, like a lobbyist or a consultant or something. It also applies to party officials apparently, because as we know, when DWS resigned from the DNC chair, the Clinton campaign hired her hours later. She wasn't out of the job long. She was taken care of. She was in the in group. Knowing people has perks. But all in all, this kind of behavior gives us a system dominated by special interests and nepotism, and not the public good. If you don't play this game and scratch everyone else's back, they don't scratch yours and you're out of the job.

Bringing it all together

If we want to bring all of this information together into a summary, into a narrative here, I'll say this. There is little evidence of cheating in the primary, outside of some allegations of election fraud which I covered before and linked above. I believed the process was bad because that PDF came out, and before even the email leaks came out. The fact is, if you want to exercise power, you don't do it bluntly, out in the open, you do it in the shadows, you hide it, you legitimize it. You make it look fair.

We have a system in which we have two parties, debating within a fairly narrow spectrum of debate, and shutting down opposition that arises outside of it. Third party efforts to gain power rarely succeed, because the rules are written to favor the two parties already in existence. I'm not necessarily talking about the Constitution, where the existence of parties seemed to be an undesired side effect, I'm talking about how difficult it is to get on the ballot, to debate the major parties, to get fair media coverage, and to win people over to topple them. I'm talking about how hard it is for the independent minded to succeed within the parties, which have their own party line, their own ideology, their own priorities, and seem to largely work on the basis of nepotism. I'm talking about how the media has relationships with these parties, as well as other elites in society, and produce narratives that influence how the public perceives the political situation in the country on a massive scale, and that this also ensures that the public's opinions generally stay within the "acceptable" boundaries of debate. We also have a system in which political candidates are largely dependent on political donations to be able to fund their campaigns, and that the elites of society tend to contribute to these campaigns, essentially buying politicians in the form of legalized bribery.

Long story short, you don't need to break the rules to rig a political system. You just need to write them. And certain groups influence the system to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else. This is what's happening in America's political system.

When I tell people the system is rigged, I'm not necessarily talking about election fraud, although this year that is part of the story. I'm talking primarily about these more back room subtle forms of power in which gate keepers like the media, the political parties, and other special interests control who has access to the levers of power in our society. You cannot realistically run for office in many cases without the blessing of these organizations, and if you try, the odds are, you will lose. You might see rare exceptions such as someone like Bernie Sanders becoming a senator as an independent, but that's what makes people like Sanders so special. They're the exception to the rule, not the rule themselves, and even for him, the rules have come crashing down as he tried to run for president. He had to join the democratic party, the democratic party and the media displayed subtle forms of bias against him, and he lost. I'm not even touching the potential of election fraud. This comes before we even get to election fraud. And as far as the DNC leaks are concerned, that just confirms what I could have told you from the beginning in my opinion.

Our system is rigged in subtle ways. Honest politicians who think outside of the mainstream and are not beholden to special interests are hard to come by because our system ensures confirmity to these interests. That's how the system is rigged. That's what I'm talking about when I say the system is rigged.

You can say this is a conspiracy theory, or whatever. I don't think it is, I think it's a well grounded analysis of our political system based on conflict theory, and I think I've done a good job backing it up here. But if you disagree, hey, take it or leave it. I understand that people can view the system in other ways. I'm not saying my perspective is the only valid one. But I do think it's A valid one and it deserves some consideration. And that's my 2 cents on the subject.