Yes, the System is "Rigged" (Just Not the Way You Think it is)

Towards the end of his battle with Ted Cruz, Donald Trump got a lot of mileage out of the claim that the GOP nominating process is “rigged”.  So much mileage, in fact, that by the time Sen. Cruz dropped out of the race, almost 60% of registered GOP voters in one poll agreed with Trump’s contention.

So, was Trump right?  Well, yeah, sort of.

The truth is that the Republican system of primaries and caucuses for picking a presidential nominee has been “rigged” for a long, long time, only not in the way Trump convinced so many to believe.   

The system, with its early start, long gaps in between contests, and proportional awarding of delegates over a six month time frame is “rigged” to favor the candidate who is best funded and who has built the strongest campaign organization.

This is not an accident.  A big part of the GOP nominating process is designed to weed out weak and under-funded candidates, because the Party wants the most well-funded candidate with the strongest team of advisors and support organization to carry its banner into the general election campaign.

In most presidential election years, the most well-funded candidate with the strongest organization also tends to be the person who is leading in the public opinion polls during the month of December.  In fact, that has been true in every election cycle since 1952, as I’ve chronicled in the past.

This campaign season, however, diverged somewhat from that longstanding script in that Trump was far and away the leader in the December polls while Jeb! still had the most money at that time, and Ted Cruz had built the most effective organization.  By contrast, Trump had only a rudimentary shell of a campaign staff in December, and his status as a self-funder for the primary season meant he had raised almost no third party money for his campaign, and had none of the supporting Super PACs that the other candidates enjoyed.

Still, it was obvious to me in December that Trump would ultimately become the nominee because the inherent inertia of the process itself was ultimately going to work in his favor.  And it did, the long slog ultimately becoming too expensive for all of the myriad under-funded candidates to bear by the middle of March, and even Jeb! finally running out of other people’s money to waste after just a few primary states had come and gone.

Kasich and Cruz were able to hang on the longest because Kasich was just hanging around for the fun of it all and not spending much money, and Cruz had become the last best hope for all of the establishment types to deny Trump the nomination.  But even Sen. Cruz was forced to face reality after Indiana, as even his once-massive war chest had been depleted by the long, hard grind.

So, is the GOP system “rigged”?  Yeah, but the irony is that it was actually rigged in Trump’s favor.

If you want to see a truly rigged system, though, all you need to do is take a gander at the Democrats’ process, and the ways in which the DNC has tirelessly worked to ensure that this year’s nomination was Hillary Clinton’s for the taking.  Once Hillary had declared for the race, the DNC actively discouraged other viable candidates from taking up the race, thus ensuring that the future Queen would only have to run against token opposition consisting of a failed governor of Maryland named something-O’Malley, and a 74 year-old Commie who certainly would never be able to raise any money.  Oh, yeah, and former senator Jim Webb, who lasted about five minutes before throwing in the towel.

But the DNC went even further, scheduling the first several “debates” between the Queen and her motley crew of challengers at times when they knew the fewest number of people would be watching.  Because Hillary’s an awful candidate, and even her most ardent supporters know it.  Mrs. Clinton is the only candidate in memory whose polling numbers have a consistent inverse relationship to her level of public exposure, so the plan was to hide her as much as possible from the public and press until the nomination had been formally "rigged", er, secured.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the rigging:  the 74 year-old Commie caught fire among young people by telling them that he’d make college free for everyone, make healthcare free, and ensure that no one had to pay off their existing college loans, and make sure those evil rich people ended up paying for it all.  By making an array of such arithmetically-challenged promises, the Commie secured the millenial vote and was soon out-raising the Queen every month via thousands and thousands of small donations, no doubt funded partially via college loan funds diverted for political purposes.

But hey, no problem, because the Queen had already tied up the support of the majority of the Democrat “Super Delegates”, and won most of the early primaries and caucuses, thus effectively rigging her nomination regardless of what the Commie did.  Right?

Well, yes, but at a very big cost.  See, having to face an actual well-funded opponent in turn caused the Queen to divert from her hiding strategy, and she soon very predictably became over-exposed to the public.  The more TV time she received, the lower her polls sagged, and the more states the Commie began winning, to the point now that Mr. Sanders has captured 11 of the last 14 contested states.  With seven states, including California, and 712 delegates remaining to be contested in June, the Commie’s momentum shows no sign of letting up.

But still, because of the party’s proportional system of awarding delegates, and the Queen’s huge lead among the Super Delegates, the Commie has basically no chance of catching up in the race.

So, is the Democrat system “rigged”?  You bet it is, and it was rigged this way after the disastrous radical leftwing run of George McGovern in 1972 for the precise purpose of preventing another nominee exactly like the Commie.  Thus, only an indictment and subsequent perp walk can prevent the Queen from securing the Democrat nomination.  The truth is that it has been the case all along.  Everything else on that side of the ledger has been just for show.

Sorry to burst your bubble, kids, but those loans are going to have to be paid back, and by you, not some nameless, faceless evil rich guy.  That's the way life works.