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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 2/20/16

Have the Democratic Superdelegates Been Compromised?

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And many of them, particularly the lobbyists, have become unelected superdelegates, despite their blatant ties to corporate America.

Lee Fang over at The Intercept recently published a list of 15 unelected pro-Clinton superdelegates who are working as lobbyists at the same.

Here's just a few examples.

Jeff Berman is a "top lobbyist" at Bryan Cave LLP, he also formerly worked as a lobbyist for the private prison company GEO Group, and he worked with TransCanada to build support for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Bill Shaheen is married to Senator Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire, and he also runs a law firm that's lobbied on behalf of the American Council of Life Insurers, which lobbies on behalf of 300 health insurance companies that represent 90 percent of US health insurance assets.

Joanne Dowdell is the "senior vice president for global government affairs" at Fox's parent company, News Corporation, meaning that she's one of the media establishment's top lobbyists.

Jill Alper, Minyon Moore and Maria Cardona are all officials at Dewey Square Group, which is a lobbying group that worked to undermine health reform efforts back in 2009.

Dewey Square Group is also on retainer by pro-Clinton Super PACs like Priorities USA Action and David Brock's Correct the Record.

And then there's Jennifer Cunningham.

She's the managing director of SKDKnickerbocker, a political consulting firm that has worked to get tax cuts for overseas earnings, to weaken rules for for-profit colleges and to undermine Michelle Obama's nutrition guidelines for children's food products.

These aren't just lobbyists, these are Democratic superdelegates who have all lobbied for causes and issues that are antithetical to the progressive principles of the Democratic Party.

After the article was published, Lee Fang added a few more familiar names to the list: Dick Gephardt, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd and even Howard Dean are all pro-Clinton superdelegates who are doubling as corporate shills.

To be clear, the problem isn't that these superdelegates support Clinton.

The problem is that the Democrats have allowed their nomination process to be blatantly compromised by moneyed interests in the US.

To make matters worse, last week the DNC flung the flood gates open for special interests to shape the Democratic primary process by doing away with the rules that President Obama put in place to prevent lobbyists from donating to the party.

The Democratic party has been moving in the wrong direction since it decided to create superdelegates to reign in grassroots candidates back in 1980.

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Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network, live noon-3 PM ET. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle (more...)
 

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