A far-left congressional candidate in Colorado secretly recorded a meeting he had last year with House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D.-Maryland) who attempted to pressure him into dropping out of the race against the establishment candidate preferred by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. As you can see in the April 26 video below, Hoyer definitely gave off 2016 vibes of the establishment Democrats rigging the primary system in favor of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Yes, I said "see" because The Intercept entertainingly combined cartoons with the secretly recorded audio.
Lee Fang provides more details in SECRETLY TAPED AUDIO REVEALS DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP PRESSURING PROGRESSIVE TO LEAVE RACE:
STENY HOYER, the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, has for years been a prolific campaigner on behalf of current and potential members of Congress. It was no surprise, then, that December found him in Colorado, where the party has hopes of knocking off Republican incumbent Mike Coffman.
Before Donald Trump had even been inaugurated, local resistance groups began deluging Coffman’s public appearances, pressing him not to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and putting him back on his political heels. Levi Tillemann, an author, inventor, and former official with the Obama administration’s Energy Department, moved back home to make a run against Coffman.
He focused his campaign on clean elections, combatting climate change, “Medicare for All,” free community college, and confronting economic inequality and monopoly power. Another candidate for the nomination, Jason Crow, a corporate lawyer at the powerhouse Colorado firm Holland & Hart and an Army veteran, meanwhile, appeared to have the backing of the Democratic establishment, though it wasn’t explicit. In November, it became clearer, as Crow was named by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to the party’s “Red to Blue” list, which the committee specifies is not an endorsement but does carry symbolic weight.
With Hoyer in Denver, Tillemann met the minority whip at the Hilton Denver Downtown to make the case that the party should stay neutral in the primary and that he had a more plausible path to victory than the same centrism that Coffman had already beaten repeatedly.
Hoyer, however, had his own message he wanted to convey: Tillemann should drop out.
2016 Democrat primary rigging, meet 2018 Democrat primary rigging.
In a frank and wide-ranging conversation, Hoyer laid down the law for Tillemann. The decision, Tillemann was told, had been made long ago. It wasn’t personal, Hoyer insisted, and there was nothing uniquely unfair being done to Tillemann, he explained: This is how the party does it everywhere.
Tillemann had heard the argument before from D.C. insiders and local Democratic bigwigs, all of whom had discouraged him from challenging the establishment favorite. The only difference was that for this conversation, the candidate had his phone set to record.
It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business.
Hoyer bluntly told Tillemann that it wasn’t his imagination, and that mobilizing support for one Democratic candidate over another in a primary isn’t unusual. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., chair of the DCCC, has a “policy that early on, we’d try to agree on a candidate who we thought could win the general and give the candidate all the help we could give them,” Hoyer told Tillemann matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, I’m for Crow,” Hoyer explained. “I am for Crow because a judgment was made very early on. I didn’t know Crow. I didn’t participate in the decision. But a decision was made early on by the Colorado delegation,” he said, referencing the three House Democrats elected from Colorado.
Let's give Hoyer credit for at least being upfront and honest about rigging the primary system.
We should also give credit to The Intercept, despite frequent outbursts of leftwing lunacy, for creatively combining cartoons with audio. Will the audio of the secret NFL meeting in October also be set to cartoons? There are many possibilities.
Oh, and any publication out there that that might want to consider complementing their own audio recordings with illustrations, I highly recommend the services of professional cartoonist Bob Lizarraga.
