Are Elections Rigged? Yes, They're Decided in Bottled-Water-Filled Rooms.

Rigged is an archaic term. "Set up to conclude in an optimal way for my side" makes more sense. And it's not nefarious.

Party "bosses" do decide stuff. Holy rigged system, Batman!

Between "the DNC is in the can for Hillary!" to Donald Trump's "the whole system is rigged, friends!" this year has been more hysterical than Susan Sarandon's decision to vote for Jill Stein. (Oh, Susan, we hardly knew ya!) But the truth of the matter is that political party organizations are supposed to lean this way or that. They're filled with people who take this shit seriously. So don't be surprised when the DNC had its sights set on supporting Hillary Clinton. It's the Committee's job to get to work helping the expected candidate.

Then Bernie Sanders -- not even a member of the Democratic Party -- comes along and looks like the perfect progressive candidate. He was! I favored him! The DNC didn't! The people voted! And Hillary won! By a lot!

Then, and only then, did some leaked emails come out and show that in the recesses of the DNC some Hillary backers said, "How can we fuck up Bernie?" and then a few people discussed that and then some people above them said, "That's stupid." But, like so many irrelevant judgments this year, people said, "That's horrible!" Folks, it isn't.

Without the leaked emails nobody would have known about a few conversations that didn't lead to any action that, naturally, didn't affect the Democratic primary. End of story. (We wish.)

So that's my quick take on rigged elections, Democratic side of the story. As for the Republicans, they are, in fact, actually trying to rig elections and have been for quite a while. They even admit it. But that's for another post.