The DNC is up to its old tricks of sidelining candidates who have policy positions that the establishment doesn’t approve of and, therefore, doesn’t want you to continue to hear.

In this video, political analyst and radio personality Kim Iversen unpacks the arbitrariness and lack of transparency behind one of the criteria the DNC is using to determine which of the candidates will be allowed on the debate stage for the third Democratic debate next month: the requirement to get 2% or more in four approved polls by August 28th.

There have been numerous polls since the last debate with results that are inconsistent with each other. Even the pollsters themselves are acknowledging that the polls aren’t terribly reliable at this point – more than a year away from the election. But only certain polls are being considered for the DNC’s purposes. In this twisted setup, Tulsi Gabbard – a candidate who is still actively gaining momentum as reflected by her having over 170,000 unique donors with approximately 50,000 of those gained since the last debate – has polled at 2% or better in 23 polls, but the DNC is only counting 2 of those (as of 8/20)*, without any meaningful explanation as to why some polls are getting the stamp of approval and others aren’t. Iversen discusses what demographics tend to get favored by the small number of polls that are being accepted and which candidates, in turn, that phenomena is favoring.

The link to the petition Iversen mentions is here for those who wish to sign.

*Note: this video was recorded on 8/18 and, at that point, Tulsi only had one qualifying poll. On 8/20, it was reported that she has now made the cut in 2 qualifying polls. But we don’t know how many more qualifying polls will come out before 8/28.