The conservative media is trolling the Democrats over their likely exclusion of Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard from the upcoming Democratic candidates debates. They say that since Gabbard won a single delegate in the primary election in American Samoa (for heaven’s sake), this should get her an invitation to the next televised debate under the rules set out by the DNC. (I haven’t checked the rules, so I’m assuming they are being accurately represented. Since I don’t believe it matters what the rules say, I’m not going to take the time to check.)
DNC communications director Xochitl Hinojosa squished Tulsi’s hopes with this tweet:
Thus conservative journalists are shouting foul. There’s little question that Gabbard has been treated unfairly as the nomination quest has proceeded. Notably, CNN left Gabbard out of its pre-New Hampshire primary town hall, while inviting Deval patrick, Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer, all of whom were polling lower than Gabbard. Then the DNC changed the qualification rules in January to allow Michael/Mike Bloomberg into the debates (and boy, does he wish they hadn’t!) while Gabbard remained benched.
Never mind. This is the serious business of choosing a President, not a Parchesi tournament. As unfairly as Gabbard has been treated up to this point, the DNC putting her in a debate now would be foolish. Finally the field has been winnowed down to where a debate can be meaningful and not just a mob scene. There are two viable <cough>candidates for the nomination, and it’s time to see them face off. All Gabbard would be now is a distraction, and perhaps a damaging one: as several pundits have noted, the young, attractive Hawaiian is likely to make Sanders and Biden look even more like Statler and Waldorf of “The Muppet Show” than they do already.
Gabbard never had a realistic shot at the nomination, but now she has none whatsoever. The Democrats need to find a candidate, not salve hurt feelings or indulge in consolation prizes. If they were honest, the conservative pundits would admit that the real reason they want Tulsi on stage is that she has nothing to lose by aiming barbs at the frontrunners. That’s also a very good reason for the DNC not to want her there.
It’s not cheating. It’s competent and responsible politics.
Ethics Alarms 
I agree 100%. If Gabbard had even an extreme outside chance at being selected, I might feel differently. She does not. That means she should be the chaff, not the wheat.
Sorry, Tulsi. No chance, no debate, and you should embrace any process that makes the Democrat’s primary look less like a clown car and more like a serious process for selecting a candidate for president. That’s what ethical leadership looks like, in case you may have forgotten.
The Republicans are just trolling. It is funny trolling. If they are bending the rules, this might be a jab a Hillary Clinton who said that Bernie needs to ‘follow the rules’ because he knew what they were when he got into this and we have to follow the rules.
So out of Gabbard, Sanders, and Biden, everyone here believes that Gabbard is the worst candidate?
The DNC and their media allies are deliberately suppressing her solely because she dared to criticize Hillary Clinton. She is clearly the best candidate remaining and has been one of the better ones in the entire race.
Clearly the DNC is afraid that she will actually become exponentially more popular if she were on the debate stage with Biden and Sanders. She’s a minority, a combat veteran, photogenic, well-spoken, not a former prosecutor, and an isolationist, which basically covers all the targets that most swing state Democrats look for in a candidate.
She only “has no shot” because the Clintons make it so.
When I look at Gabbard, I see O’Rouke, Buttegeig, Warren, etc. She basically repeats the Democratic mantra with just enough moderation to make her ‘different’. I don’ see a vision for America and the people. I just see ‘Democrats in charge is good’, continue neoliberal globalist policies, and let the bureaucrats handle things. When it comes to Gabbard, O’Rourke, Buttegeig, Warren, Klobuchar, and Biden, a more accurate approach would be to run no one for President and Vice President. The Democrats should just run ‘Interagency Consensus’ as their candidate. When you look at the testimony given by the witnesses during the impeachemnt, the main argument was that the President can’t overrule the ‘Interagency Consensus”, so should be impeached. If the bureaucrats disagree with the President, the President must yield to their professional opinion. The polling showed a good 50% of Americans agreed with that. The Democrats might have a better shot at winning by running no one.
But who is the best of the three remaining?
Sadly enough, it’s the one who has the distinction of neither being a Communist nor borderline senile.
Seriously, Gabbard would destroy these two duds. It isn’t exactly rocket science to destroy a Communist and a confused, tired old man in a debate.
She might destroy them in a debate, but that doesn’t mean she can beat them in an election. Biden is in the race because he represents the DNC and the Democratic establishment. He is, essentially, ‘no one’. People know that if he were fully functioning mentally or in a coma, it would make no difference in his presidency. He has the backing of the Democratic Party and he is just a stand-in for them. Bernie Sanders is the face of the Cultural-Marxist establishment that dominates our education system. That is his base and that is why he gets votes. They want their free stuff and the communist or cultural-marxist system they were promised in college. Tulsi Gabbard is…a nobody. No one heard of her before this, she has no sweeping, popular vision. She isn’t backed by the DNC, the media, academia, or even the Justice Democrats. Democrats vote for their tribe. Gabbard doesn’t have a tribe and that is why virtually no one voted for her.