Inside the Media Bubble, No One Can Hear Us Scream

So when Trump complains about losing what he's winning, journalists never for a second consider the possibility that he's right.

"You call them 'shenanigans,'" CNN's Anderson Cooper ridiculed Trump. "Those are the rules. And didn't you know those rules?"

"I know the rules very well," Trump replied. "But I know that it's stacked against me by the establishment. I fully understand it."

"You could have had a better organization on the ground," Cooper scolded. "Your critics say it says something about your leadership ability -- for somebody who touts himself as somebody who's an organizational genius, who's created this amazing business organization --that you couldn't create an organization on the ground that could beat Ted Cruz's organization."

Inside the bubble, no one can hear us scream.

Talk about blaming the victim! Sure, Trump could have hired teams of professional politicos to navigate the peculiarities of each state's primaries. As a billionaire, he certainly could have afforded them. Why didn't he? I have no idea.

But why should he have to? Why should Trump, or any other candidate, be subject to such a strange system? Democracy should be simple and straightforward: one person, one vote. All these crazy rules -- the signatures required for ballot access, the polls used to determine who gets to debate on television, winner-take-all primaries, superdelegates, delegates secretly pledged to candidates other those they're sent to the convention to represent, the electoral college -- exist for one reason. They exist in order to dilute the influence of we the people so that They -- the ruling class -- continues to get its way.

When They win, we lose. We lose our jobs. Our standard of living. Our rights.

If you're like me -- on the left and generally unsympathetic to billionaires -- you may be tempted to join the media when they dismiss Trump as a whiner. But this is different. In business, Trump is the consummate insider. But he's a political naif. When someone as sleazy and unprincipled as Donald Trump is shocked by how dirty politics are, you have to take note.

And if they can steal elections from someone as rich as Donald Trump, there is nothing left of American democracy.