zlacker

Party declaration in the primary is public record. If you hold a politically sensitive job, and your state requires a declaration of party affiliation, you might not be able to safely vote as you please in the primary, because your employer might examine the voter rolls and use parallel constructions to fire the people with the "wrong" party affiliation.

All the adults in my family felt the fix was in for Clinton since 2008, as we assumed that she made a deal with the DNC regarding Obama's candidacy. If he lost, she would go ahead in 2012, and if he won, she'd go in 2016. So now it's 2016. I presume that the Clintons and the DNC have mutually-assured destruction levels of dirt on each other by now, so they must honor their deal. We never had any expectation whatsoever that any other candidate would get a fair shake. Nothing that has occurred since 2008 obviously contradicts the hypothesis. Secretary of state is #5 in the line of emergency presidential succession, and a perfect resume-builder for someone who didn't snag an elected office during the previous cycle.

We suspected that O'Malley was offered something in exchange for being Clinton's foil through primary season, and that he was able to bow out early, because former independent Sanders stepped in to fill his role as the token opposition, blissfully unaware as a party outsider that the fix was already in.

I am even now unconvinced that D. Trump was not a secret co-conspirator in the President Hillary Clinton plan. I'm not sure anyone expected the R party to actually select him, either.