Democrats were for calling the system “rigged” before they were against it.

The word has driven the Democrats and the media nuts since the Democratic convention ended and Hillary Clinton became the official presidential nominee of her party.

“In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state, so I mean, we have our problems, too.”

Apparently the word is the domain solely of the Democrats. Since Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump began using it — in reference to the elections, the media and the economy — the Democrats have flipped their lid. They have accused Trump of fomenting distrust in government, and suggested if he doesn’t accept the election outcome that riots could result.

But Democrats have long maintained the system is rigged. And when they say the system, they mean the voting machines too. Like Trump, they are suspicious of election fraud, just not this year.

Here are a few examples of the Democrats’ fascination with charging things are rigged.

Ohio
In one of the oddest and most unhinged accusations made against the “system,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused the campaign of President George W. Bush of rigging voting machines in Ohio in 2004. He made the charge in the June 15, 2006, edition of Rolling Stone, where unhinged charges are often made.

Democrat John Kerry, now the secretary of state, targeted the state and lost by more than 118,000 votes — more than 2 percent of the vote.

Yet in January 2005, when the electoral votes were to be counted, Sen. Barbara Boxer and 31 House members voted to disregard Ohio’s electoral votes.

And in an interesting recent revelation, New Yorker magazine reported in its Dec. 21 edition that Kerry indeed shared Kennedy and Boxer’s belief that some Ohio machines had been rigged.

Wall Street, Washington and the Economy
Hillary Clinton said the economy is rigged at a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, event on July 12.

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“We’re going to make sure Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes,” Clinton said, standing with Vermont  Sen. Bernie Sanders and pandering to his supporters. “When people say the game is rigged, the best evidence is our tax code.”

Sanders, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, has often said Wall Street has rigged the economy against the little guy.

On his campaign website, Bernie explains: “The reality is that for the past 40 years, Wall Street and the billionaire class has rigged the rules to redistribute wealth and income to the wealthiest and most powerful people of this country.”

One of his Democratic allies, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, has long said both “Washington” and the economy are rigged against the common man and woman.

She said it in 2015, in an enthusiastic tweet aimed at comedian Jon Stewart.

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“Washington is rigged for the big guys – and no person has more consistently called them out for it than Jon Stewart,” Warren tweeted on Feb. 10, 2015. “Good luck, Jon!”

But Warren has since changed her tune of use of the word “rigged.” She now says the term is being used by the Republicans to accuse Democrats of voter fraud and the like.

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Warren’s hypocrisy was quickly spotted by eagle-eyed Internet users, who compared her 2015 tweet to her recent attacks on Trump’s language.

The 2016 Democratic Primary
No presidential primary process is more stacked against newcomers than the Democratic primary, which employs “super delegates” before votes are cast. About 15 percent of Democratic delegates, who can vote for whomever they choose, are super delegates.

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Sanders began to realize this too late in the process. Just before winning the Indiana Democratic primary on May 3, Sanders told a crowd in Evansville that the Democratic primary was rigged. He complained he earned 45 percent of pledged delegates but only 7 percent of super delegates.

So despite winning Indiana and 23 other states, Sanders never truly stood a chance of overtaking Clinton in the delegate count for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Florida 2000
One of the most extreme charges of “rigging” came from Hillary Clinton, while she was secretary of state.

Clinton, speaking to a Nigerian audience in 2009, suggested the 2000 election was rigged against the Democrats. It’s extremely odd for a U.S. secretary of state to undermine America’s election system on foreign soil. Yet Clinton did, with gusto.

“In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state, so I mean, we have our problems too,” Clinton said on Aug. 12, 2009. “But we have been moving to try to remedy those problems as we see them.”

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Today, in the 2016 election, the term “rigged” seems to have poll-tested appeal, otherwise the Democrats would not have used it so much as the Democratic primaries leading into July of this year.

Project Vote Smart finds Sanders used the term 40 times in his primary. Trump likes to say Sanders picked it up from him. Perhaps, but it’s the Democrats who have been using the term to hammer the “system” since long ago.

This election season, many voters certainly do feel the tangible effects of an economy that feels stacked against them. And they want change.

Change can hardly be provided by the party that has held the White House for eight years. And that is at the heart of what angers the Democrats over Trump’s use of the term. The Democrats unleashed the dragon, and the dragon thinks the system is rigged.