Donald Trump will be the next president, and that’s what the DNC wants.

Wikileaks has utterly destroyed Hillary Clinton’s chance of winning on Tuesday. It has been releasing a steady stream of leaks for the past few weeks damaging the Clinton campaign, culminating in a dump of particularly vile leaks on Thursday. These most recent leaks reveal corruption that is so depressing that anyone reading them should keep tissues nearby. However, while I encourage everyone reading this to go look at the leaks, for they are more than worthy of discussion in their own right, I want to talk about something other than the leaks.

The Democratic National Committee higher-ups, establishment Democrats and their donors all conspired against Bernie Sanders to help Hillary Clinton defeat him in the Democratic primary elections. This was suspected from the beginning, but it has since then been confirmed. (I particularly enjoy how they literally encouraged atheist-bashing him.)

This is troubling on its own, but further consider the following: that DNC members knew during the primaries that Bernie Sanders had a much better chance than Hillary Clinton of defeating Donald Trump in a general election, but they had an internal preference for Hillary Clinton anyway. How the hell does that make any sense? Some might say that they were willing to take such a risk since Clinton was still projected to beat Trump by a safe margin.

This argument fails. Ignoring for a moment the plain fact that the decision to support Clinton completely disregards the interest of the people the DNC claims to represent, it was still obvious during the primaries that there was a real possibility that Clinton could lose a significant amount of support by Election Day. Any of the plethora of the scandals muddying Clinton’s past are troubling on their own, but collectively, they paint a very sinister picture of an incredibly mendacious individual that would run an even more opaque administration than is typical of the rogue state we call the U.S.

So, now the scandals are finally adding up, and Clinton is losing her lead in the battleground states of New Hampshire and Colorado, and Trump is now leading in the others (Florida, North Carolina, Nevada). Can anyone say they are surprised? Leave it to Hillary Clinton to be the only politician with enough issues to lose to Donald Trump. At least everyone still has the chance to vote for a woman though, as if Hillary Clinton, a.k.a. Goldman Sachs Goddess, represents the improvement of women’s lives (pro-tip: SHE DOESN’T).

The only reason the DNC would push for Clinton over Sanders, then, must be that a Clinton defeat (and therefore a Trump victory) would be less damaging than a Sanders victory. On its face, this fails to make any sense if you believe that the policies of Clinton and Sanders are roughly similar.

This is not the case.

Clinton’s proposed policies are politically closer to those of Trump than to those of Bernie Sanders. As I discussed in my previous article, the only real difference between Clinton and Trump lies in their level of social policies (Trump is much higher in measures of authoritarianism); economically, they are about the same. In contrast, Bernie is much more socially libertarian and economically left-leaning than both Clinton and Trump. For online readers, click here to see a visual example of this vast difference.

Here we see the true danger Sanders posed to the Democratic Party. An actual progressive representing the Democratic Party in the highest office possible would impose an expectation on all Democrats to be similarly progressive. Such a demand would not be the case were Trump to simply become president, in which case Democrats could falsely claim that they are the alternative, build up their support and try again the next election cycle. It is a disgustingly utilitarian strategy, but it’s usually successful.

So, the next time your Facebook friends and Stanford peers complain about President Trump and the uneducated white working-class subhumans who voted for him out of desperation, remember that the DNC preferred Trump becoming president over Bernie Sanders. If you supported Sanders during the primaries, be aware that Clinton is far from a match for your political leanings. If you are a Democrat, feel free to vote for Hillary Clinton (despite her extensive list of faults that would normally disqualify a person from holding public office) on Tuesday, but simultaneously realize that you should be mad as hell at the people who stole an opportunity for progress from you. The DNC stole your choice. There should be riots over this.

Donald Trump will be the next president, and that’s what the DNC wants. Don’t like it? Blame the people responsible.

 

Contact Ian Knight at isknight ‘at’ stanford.edu.