(The Hill)Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) apologized to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for dismissing his past criticism of the primary system, as the lawmaker makes a long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I have an apology to make to @BernieSanders,” Phillips wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I had long dismissed his complaints about the rigged Democratic Party primary system.”
“But you know what? He was right. And I apologize, Bernie,” he added.
Sanders, who most recently ran for the White House in 2020, had previously scrutinized the system in states with closed primaries — or those where only registered Republicans or Democrats could participate in their respective primary. He also made comments suggesting that the Democratic Party was using a limited 2016 primary debate schedule to rig the nomination process.
rigged: manage or conduct (something) fraudulently so as to produce a result or situation that is advantageous to a particular person.
Phillips and Sanders (if he's being quoted correctly) have a different definition of "rigged" than I am familiar with. What they are calling rigged in this article, I call them rules of the contest. As long as the rules are known in advance and applied evenly to all participants the contest is not rigged.
That five states have closed primaries doesn't seem unfair to me. Most primaries are open meaning the voters who are not registered in the party can vote in the other party's primaries. Open primaries seem to be open to the possibility of mischief with non-party members crossing over to boost the chances of a weak candidate in the other party. The primaries have always been run at the state level: Some are open, some closed, some are caucuses, some states don't have any primaries at all.
I also never heard anybody I know complain that there were not enough Democratic primary debates in 2016. There were ten Democratic debates in 2016 and eleven in 2020. I doubt that very many people watched all the debates as it is.
Every contest has its rules. Is basketball rigged because a field goal the length of the court is only worth three points? Should an out-of-the-ballpark homerun be worth extra points? Should ballet-like touchdown catches be awarded additional style points?
View Video