Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has had enough of her party’s not-so-subtle attempt to rig its primary debates.
Gabbard is so disgusted with how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the media are working together to shut out certain candidates and promote others she thought about boycotting tonight’s presidential debate.
In particular, the Representative said she believes the DNC and corporate media are focusing on the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada to ensure second-tier candidates like her can’t gain traction that would undercut front runners like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.
Gabbard said in a statement, “They are attempting to replace the roles of voters in the early states, using polling and other arbitrary methods which are not transparent or democratic, and holding so-called debates which are not debates at all but rather commercialized reality television meant to entertain, not inform or enlighten.”
The Democrat told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in August the decision-making process of the DNC lacked transparency which creates a “lack of faith and trust” in the process. “People deserve having that transparency,” she told Carlson, “because, ultimately, it’s the people who will decide who our Democratic nominee will be.”
But Rep. Gabbard sees an even bigger problem, one that President Trump warned about in 2016. Like then candidate Donald Trump experienced early on with Republican insiders, Gabbard has come against, “a small group of really powerful political elites, the establishment, making decisions that serve their interests, and maintaining that power, while the rest of us are left outside.”
With even larger than the 2016 Republican primaries, the DNC has raised the threshold for qualifying to continue to be a part of the debates. To qualify for the next debate, candidates must have at least 165,000 unique donors, a minimum of 600 unique donors per state in at least 20 states and register at 3 percent in at least four approval polls.
Gabbard did not qualify for the third debate last month, but did qualify for tonight’s debate, the fourth in the series of presidential debates before the primary votes begin next year.
Fellow Democratic presidential hopeful, Marianne Williamson agrees with Gabbard, tweeting, “I have great respect for Tulsi for saying such inconvenient truth. She is absolutely correct.”
When the 38-year-old congresswoman failed to qualify for the third debate she made it plain she had no intention of dropping out of the race. She said, “I started hearing from a lot of people in the media when they said, ‘K, you didn’t make the third debate. Are you quitting?’ … Hell no! If any of them had been listening to what I’ve been saying about what this movement is about, about why I’m running for president, and what is at stake, they would understand why we are here and why we will never quit.”
Some of us are old enough to remember how the Republican establishment tried to shut out Ronald Reagan. History shows how well that went.
In 2016 Bernie Sanders supporters were furious when DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz froze out the highly popular Democrat candidate in favor of elite favorite Hillary Clinton. Wasserman-Schultz was ultimately forced out of the DNC after this was revealed but it appears the national committee didn’t learn its lesson.
The DNC is once again not allowing voters to pick next year’s presidential candidate, just like they did in 2016. The problem for them this time is that Tulsi Gabbard isn’t going away as quietly as Bernie Sanders did.
