Trevor Noah Confronts Debbie Wasserman Schultz About Rigging The Election Against Bernie Sanders [Video]
From the archive: published Apr 7, 2016, 10 years ago. Details may have changed since.
For those who support presidential front runner Bernie Sanders, many are upset with the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who they believe is responsible for ensuring a grassroots candidate like Sanders can never be elected. With the superdelegate system in place, which allows thousands of notable members of the Democratic party to vote for any candidate they want regardless of the will of the voters, many Democrats feel the deck is intentionally stacked against Bernie Sanders.
According to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart’s successor on the Daily Show, Trevor Noah, had Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the program and dared to confront her about the voting system, which some have called rigged.
“A lot of people feel that Bernie Sanders has been — I’m going to paraphrase, or really quote rather — Bernie is being c***blocked by the DNC,” said Trevor Noah. “Is there any merit to this?”
“You know, as powerful as that makes me feel, I’m not doing a very good job of rigging the outcome or blocking anyone from getting their message out,” said Debbie Wasserman Schultz. “The reality is that I have a job as national party chair that is one that requires a thick skin. It requires me to be able to absorb the body blows so our candidates can stay above the fray.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz also reminded Trevor Noah that the system has been largely unchanged since before she became chair of the Democratic National Committee.
“We’ve had superdelegates since I graduated in high school in 1984,” Schultz went on. “[But] it’s voters that can and should determine that outcome, and they always have.”
However, the primary election results fall just short of contradicting what Debbie Wasserman Schultz said. At the time Trevor Noah spoke to Schultz, Hillary Clinton has won 1,280 delegates by popular vote, while Bernie Sanders won 1,030. And Bernie Sanders has been winning an increasing number of states lately as more typically progressive states hold their primaries and caucuses.
Though the numbers suggest a similar number of voters want Bernie Sanders in the White House as Hillary Clinton, the superdelegate distribution is disproportionately in favor of Hillary Clinton, with 469 of them pledged to Clinton and only 31 pledged to Bernie Sanders.
“Un-pledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.”
According to Yahoo News, the campaign of Bernie Sanders actually filed a lawsuit against the DNC in 2015 for giving Hillary Clinton an unfair advantage in the election.
“The leadership of the Democratic National Committee is now actively attempting to undermine our campaign… one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in modern history,” said Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver at the time.
Do you think the DNC has unfairly stacked the odds against Bernie Sanders?
