 Tulsi Gabbard may have qualified for the October debate, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she will in fact be attending it because she floated the idea of boycotting it in a video that she posted to Twitter and YouTube. This is what she had to say. I want to thank all of you so much for your support. I need to share something with you that's very important. There are so many of you who I've had the opportunity to meet in Iowa and New Hampshire who've expressed to me how frustrated you are that the DNC and the corporate media are essentially trying to usurp your role as voters in choosing who our Democratic nominee will be. I share your concerns and I'm sure that all of our supporters throughout the country do as well. Now the 2016 Democratic primary election was rigged by the DNC and their partners in the corporate media against Bernie Sanders. In this 2020 election, the DNC and the corporate media are rigging the election again, but this time it's against the American people in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. They're attempting to replace the roles of voters in the early states using polling and other arbitrary methods which are not transparent or democratic and they're holding so-called debates which really are not debates at all, but rather commercialized reality television meant to entertain rather than to inform or enlighten. In short, the DNC and the corporate media are trying to hijack the entire election process. So in order to bring attention to the serious threat to our democracy and to ensure that your voice is heard, I'm seriously considering boycotting the next debate on October 15th. I'm going to announce my decision within the next few days. I just want to say with my deepest and warmest aloha, thank you all again for your support. Now in response to that video, 2020 contender Marianne Williamson chimed in saying, I have great respect for Tulsi for saying such inconvenient truth. She is absolutely correct. Okay, so I have quite a bit to say about this. I think this is really interesting and you know, it's an interesting strategy, but I kind of want to disaggregate this and talk about this in two different sections. I want to address the merit of what she's saying and I also want to address strategically if there is any value in boycotting the debate in order to raise awareness about this issue. But first, let's talk about the merits overall. So I think that when she says that there are or implies rather that there are these institutional disadvantages, I do think that there's absolutely merit to that corporate media does choose winners and losers. I think that that's absolutely true. And anti-establishment candidates, they just don't get as much screen time in mainstream media as establishment candidates. I mean, look at John Delaney, he's been polling at less than 1%, but yet you can argue that he gets more interviews than someone like Andrew Yang, who is a mid-tier candidate. So I absolutely think that she's correct to call that out and to her complaint about a lack of transparency when it comes to the DNC's choice of polls and which polls they use to determine who qualifies for debates and who doesn't. You know, I also agree with her that the DNC should release the criteria they use to choose polls. I think that more transparency is always better. And I also have the same complaints about the debates that she does. Bernie Sanders said this, you know, in an interview with Joe Rogan, he said that these debates just aren't really formatted that well. And Bernie Sanders, in fact, just proposed a plan to ban advertising during debates hosted by corporate media. So when it comes to the feeling of her and other anti-establishment smaller candidates feeling disenfranchised, I absolutely am sympathetic towards that. I think that there's, you know, there's a lot of criticism that we all should be lobbying against the mainstream corporate media because they are, in fact, able to use the power that they have to choose winners and losers oftentimes based off of, you know, the interests of the elites, their corporate advertisers. And that's fundamentally something that is incompatible with true democracy. So we have to fight against that. So I get that. However, you know, she's right to point out that the 2016 Democratic Party primary was rigged against Bernie Sanders. No disagreement there. It was, it was. But when she says or implies rather that what's happening now in 2020 is comparable to what the DNC did back in 2016 to Bernie Sanders, I do take issue with that. Now, I understand her calling out the disadvantages institutionally, but there's this underlying implication that I got. And maybe I'm wrong that the disadvantages and biases that plague her campaign don't apply to Bernie Sanders. And I don't know if she's saying that, but if she is, I would totally disagree. They're still biased. Corporate media still doesn't like Bernie Sanders. And I also think that, you know, addressing these institutional advantages that pro establishment candidates have, it is important. But to say that the entire 2020 primary process is rigged in the same way it was in 2016, I think that that's just a bridge too far because that is a word that is really big. It's a loaded term. So you have to be very careful at what you call rigged and what you don't call rigged, because if you just casually throw around the word rigged, then people will feel more inclined to not take you seriously. It's like the boy who cried wolf, right? So I'm not going to use the word rigged unless I truly feel as if it's rigged and comparing 2016 to 2020 2020 is not rigged. And we don't want to look like we're just sore losers who cry rigged whenever something doesn't go our way. We actually want to be able to back up our rigged claim with evidence. Now when we go back to the 2016 election, the reason why we say that was rigged and can easily prove that is because, I mean, the DNC was brazen in using their institutional advantages to severely handicap Bernie Sanders campaign. I mean, Debbie Wasserman Schultz literally cut off his campaign's access to NGP van. He was one of two major candidates. She cut off his access to van and Bernie's campaign had the threat to sue to regain access. Debates were limited and scheduled on weekends before major holidays. That's certainly not an issue this time, although you can complain, you know, about the criteria to qualify. Hillary Clinton in 2016 signed a joint fundraising agreement that allowed her to control the DNC's press releases and aspects of the DNC's funding even before she won the primary. There were surrogates in the mainstream media for Hillary Clinton that didn't even disclose that they were on Hillary campaign's payroll. I mean, superdelegates were used by the media to inflate Hillary Clinton's lead. Debbie Wasserman Schultz literally had to resign and disgrace once all of this came out. So I mean, when you look at all of these details about 2016, unquestionably it was rigged. Now that doesn't mean that I'm saying that the outcome was fixed. Could Bernie Sanders still have won in 2016 in spite of the DNC's rigging? Yes. However, what the DNC did was actively try to sabotage Bernie Sanders when they claimed that they were neutral, right? There were neutral arbiters of a primary process and they were going to let voters decide that obviously wasn't the case and they tried to handicap his campaign at every chance that they got. Now you can argue about corporate media. You can argue that the DNC hasn't been transparent, but that doesn't really mean that it's on the level of rigging and I wouldn't use rigging for 2020. I think that in 2020 all the same institutional advantages that pro-establishment candidates have continue to exist, but they're not actively trying to sabotage Bernie Sanders this time or smaller candidates. But I do believe it's important that we draw attention to the way that smaller candidates, mostly anti-establishment candidates, are disenfranchised. But to call it rigged, I just feel like that's not smart because we don't want people to stop taking us seriously. When we say rigged, we really have to mean it. You can say that certain aspects are unfair. Corporate media is absolutely trying to choose winners and losers, but it's not rigged in the way that it was in 2016. And for her to kind of imply, if I'm correct, that the same institutional biases that hurt Bernie, that hurt her, don't hurt Bernie, I just think that that's unfair. I see where she's coming from. I understand why she and her supporters might feel disenfranchised, but I think you have to be a little bit more careful. Now on top of that, let's get to the strategy of this. So is boycotting a debate to draw attention to these disadvantages that smaller anti-establishment candidates face? Is that a useful strategy? I would say overall, no. And if I were Tulsi Gabbard, I would be attending that debate. I think it's more useful for her to show up and then draw attention to this issue. Now you can say that the strategy in announcing a possible boycott was successful because it got a lot of headlines. She was trending on Twitter, so mission accomplished there. But if you're actually going to boycott, I don't think that that's a smart strategy at all. I think that's a really bad strategy actually because your supporters fought to get you on that debate stage. They sent in donations, they canvassed for you and they fought for you. So for you to say I'm not going to attend in protest of what I think is unfair, which you have a point that it's unfair to an extent, I don't think that's a good strategy. Now you can say that Donald Trump, he used this strategy relatively effectively, but the difference is that Tulsi Gabbard is a small candidate and Donald Trump was polling in first place. So corporate media back in 2016 was really relying on Donald Trump to show up to these debates for ratings and he knew that. And Donald Trump, he had leverage. He was using that to his advantage. But the problem here is that Tulsi Gabbard has no leverage. They don't want her at the debate anyway. Corporate media definitely want to Donald Trump there, but the media doesn't have this love affair with Tulsi Gabbard that they did with Donald Trump. So if she doesn't show up, she's literally just giving them exactly what they want. So I don't think this is a good strategy at all. I really don't. So if she boycotts, I would be surprised because I think that this would hurt her campaign. When you are polling at 1%, then this is mostly about name recognition. This is mostly about getting the word out about your campaign. So to sit out a debate, which is crucial, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. Mike is a total loser. So don't hit the subscribe button, okay? And whatever you do, folks, do not hit the notification bell either. Mike treats me so unfairly.