2020 Presidential Primaries

It worked for Trump in 2016, with less than that to start with.

The problem is that the Democrats aren't blind. They saw how the whole party got taken hostage through that, and didn't want to play the game. When you've seen the others crash, you learn to take the turn a bit differently.

Of course, to the Sanders supporters, it's "cheating" for them to have kept all the other candidates only long enough to see who had the widest appeal and then all get behind him. But to the party's voters, it was more about winning in November than anything else, and they knew that going with a radical like Sanders (even though Congress probably never would have let him put all his ideas into practice) they ran a very real risk of losing in November.

Because, let's face it, the election this year isn't about Biden. He just happens to be there. It's a referendum on Donald Trump. Just like 1980 was a referendum on Jimmy Carter, rather than a genuine tidal wave in favour of Reagan. If Trump wins in November, it's because a majority of the voters (or close to it; the experts say that you have to have at least about 47% of the popular vote to win the electoral college, even with the advantage it gives Republicans) are in favour of Trump. If Biden wins, it means that a majority of the voters are not satisfied with Trump.

I am very firmly in that last camp. I'm not quite in the "anyone but Trump" camp, because there are people who are worse (he has some of them in his adminstration...), but I'm sure in favour of anyone half reasonable who has an honest chance of unseating Trump. Especially since I vote in Michigan, where my vote counts for much more than if I was in Utah or Alabama (sure Trump states) or New York or California (sure Biden states).

Well it was cheating, but that's no longer relevant. The DNC made certain it got someone other than Bernie, so the only remaining issue has been to frame Biden as "good enough." That people will be so sick of Trump they'll vote the only other choice handed to them, and by the Democrats. It will fail them like it did John Kerry.

Explain. How it is "cheating" to work together against a candidate who isn't even a member of your party and who has a solid majority of your party's voters who don't want him?

Explain? I've been talking about it throughout this thread. I sure as shit ain't going back through it again just to explain something so you'll dismiss it. As I said, it's now irrelevant. Biden has been given the nomination, and the Democratic Party seems to think he'll win by being the alternative to Donald Trump. Good luck.

Talking about it, yes. Reiterating it constantly, even. But never explaining. Neither you nor Donald Trump can make something true just by claiming it.

For your claim to make sense, you have to be able to explain very carefully why, as I said, it is cheating for a party to come together against a candidate who isn't even a member of the party and who a solid majority of its voters don't want.

Because without such an explanation, it just sounds like a rant against the principle of democracy: "It's cheating to not have the 'right' candidate, just because a very solid majority voted for someone else."

True. Bernie, at this point, should attempt Teddy Roosevelt’s solution (which didn’t work) and create a new political party for progressives. But I think he list the momentum. He should have been organizing that over the last 4 years.

So you want me to define how it's cheating, but within the bounds of what you consider cheating. You've already dismissed the party aparatus' decision to exclude Bernie (despite him following all of the rules to qualify), and consider their actions valid. Nothing I tell you will convince you, because you're already arguing in favor of the DNC doing whatever it wants to achieve whatever goals it thinks are best.

By now? Yeah, Bernie's lost his momentum. He played nice with people who were going to stab him in the back, and even after they stabbed him in the back, he continued to play nice, and kept his word by endorsing Joe Biden. He's 10x the man Biden wished he could be, but honor, ethics, consistency, commitment to people rather than corporate profits, that doesn't matter to these Democrats. What matters is that they win, and they'll work their ass off to sell a warmongering, racist pedophile if that means winning the election, one who said to cops don't shoot to kill if they're being threatened by someone, shoot them in the knee, who helped write the 1994 crime bill that got us here, who wrote the precursor to, and then endorsed the PATRIOT Act that makes so many of Trump's horrible actions possible, and somehow they believe they'll be the ones coming out on top when all is said and done.

Bernie decided to play nice with them, and has lost much of his momentum. That doesn't mean people won't vote for a third party instead, like the Green party for example, but our political system does not tolerate third parties beyond tokenism, and so that would be crushed, too. The choice this election is either choose the anti-immigrant rapist racist with an "R," or the anti-immigrant rapist racist with a "D." Those who can't choose either will be seen as enablers of the anti-immigrant rapist racist with an "R" which should tell you how far gone our political system is, and how unlikely it is to recover. As for the people who won't vote for either, while some will lose faith, the rest of us will just work to mitigate the damage from either presidency by fostering and supporting mutual aid groups, protest groups, co-ops, and other organizations that have sprung up to address the gaping divide between what our politicians are saying and what they're actually doing for the most vulnerable. That is civic engagement, that is what is really involved in being a part of truly making a difference. Voting every two to four years? That's the easiest part.

So was it "cheating" when Bill deBlasio dropped out and endorsed Sanders?

Narrated by Peter Coyote. to all parties concerned.

Ah yes, a spectacular rebound to ... the worst level since 1940.

I honestly didn't see any under handed shenanigans this time. Bernie did well until he got to South Carolina and states that had a larger minority population. The establishment coalescing behind a candidate is very common. He lost fair and square

More than that ... any faction coalescing behind a candidate is very common. It's what happens when candidates realize "I'm not going to win, but of the candidates who have a better chance than I do, there's one who I prefer."

Firstly, fuck Bill deBlasio, and secondly, don't put "cheating" in quotes like you're humoring me. You either know what happened and are complicit with it, or you have faith in the Democratic party to do the right thing, and fuck if I can help with disabusing you of that notion.

Not going to google Bill deBlasio right now, but the rest of the sentence ... I agree.

What happened is that the majority of voters did not want Bernie Sanders to be their nominee, and said so by a landslide margin. We had five years to get to know him, and at the end of those five years, most said "no, you're not our guy."

Not shadowy bureaucrats, not the DNC (although it's worth noting that the vast majority of DNC members are there because they were elected). The voters.

So, what was it about him you didn't like?

Nope. The only way you can believe this is if you wish to believe it. You have to accept, full throated, that the DNC has not, in any way, worked to keep Sanders from being elected. You have to ignore the DNC head officials openly discussing disqualifying Sanders, you have to ignore the massive ground game he had, you have to ignore the initial anemic response to Joe Biden, you have to ignore everyone backing off when told by Obama and the DNC, you have to ignore COVID-19 making a fucking mockery of the primary itself, and even then Sanders was still only a couple of hundred delegate votes behind Biden. You have to ignore all of these things and accept that Joe Biden must be the popular choice, because you can't even begin to conceive of a DNC that behaves worse than the GOP. As much as Trump is a shit heel a scumbag, an asshole and a fool, the GOP couldn't manage to keep him down. They take full responsibility for Trump, as a result.

The DNC will take full responsibility for Joe Biden, not that it matters. Joe Biden could rape someone on 5th avenue and the Democrats would still vote for him if told to do so, that is the danger of "blue no matter who," and you are every bit as culpable and corrupt as any Trumper, who would follow Trump into hell because he has an "R" next to his name.

Bernie Sanders is extremely good at "admiring the problem." I want a president who I believe has a chance of actually fixing some problems.

If you think Joe Biden, the man who created so many of the problems that we see will now fix those same problems, holy shit do I have a bridge to sell you.

By proposing changes? By filling a cabinet with people who have the expertise to carry out those changes? By approving or vetoing legislation that would fix the problems?

The office of the president was never meant to allow for the president to "fix", or break for that matter, anything. This is the problem. All three branches, rather than doing what they were intended to do, have been having a power grab for the last 4 decades.

So, it's not that the voters didn't want Bernie. it's that they thought Republicans would win the election if he was nominated.

This is why we need ranked choice voting.

This exactly.

A truly popular candidate isn't going to be stopped by shadowy bureaucrats. Hillary couldn't stop Obama winning the nomination in 2008. No Republican could stop Trump winning the nomination in 2016.

Bernie lost fair and square.

Back to this shit, are you?

Biden went out and spoke respectfully with protesters on the streets.

Trump ordered chemical gas attacks against peaceful American citizens, on American soil.

And you still think there's no difference between the candidates? You think removing Trump won't make an immediate positive difference and minimize harm? You're delusional.

Your mutual aid organizations can't do shit against rubber bullets to the face and genitals.

Your co-ops can't stop tear gas.

While I wouldn't use the word cheating (with or without the quotes) to describe what the DNC did, it would be wrong to say that they didn't put their thumb on the scale against Bernie. First, I'll go to the public actions that are easily verifiable, should anyone feel the need to check them, then I'll go to the ones that aren't public, and thus not easily verifiable.

At the start of the primary season, the DNC wrote the debate rules so that no one who did not solicit campaign donations from individuals could be in the debates. Makes perfect sense, after all, if your party is decrying the use of SuperPACs and big donors, then you don't want someone on the stage who's only source of campaign funding comes from SuperPACs and big donors. Then, Bloomberg got into the race, announced that he wasn't going to be taking contributions from anyone and the DNC quickly rewrote the debate rules so that he could be on the stage. While in some ways this only ensured that both Sanders and Warren would have the absolutely perfect foil to eviscerate on stage (as they so beautifully did), it made him a "legitimate" candidate, so the media would take him seriously. This means that instead of being a side-show candidate, as the Libertarian ones are treated, the media could pretend that Bloomberg had a chance of winning the nomination and focus on him, instead of candidates like Warren and Sanders, who no doubt made the people that own the media companies a bit uncomfortable.

Later on, the DNC rewrote the debate rules specifically to exclude Tulsi Gabbard. The argument that they would no doubt make is that Tulsi was in no way a viable candidate, and thus having her on the stage when she only had one delegate would be nothing more than a distraction. They're right about her not being a viable candidate at that point, but wrong about her being a distraction.

Additionally, one needs to look at Bloomberg's campaign strategy. Rather than being on the ballot in every state, he opted to wait until basically SC's primary rolled around to be on the ballot. Why? Because historically (at least since primaries actually determined who became the nominee) whomever (in the Democratic primaries) picked up either IA or NH and SC became the nominee. Bloomberg had enough money so that he could swamp the media outlets in the places that held primaries when SC did and thus drown out the other candidates, meaning that it was likely the candidate most familiar to folks in SC is going to win the nomination. That tilts the field in favor of someone like Biden. I cannot say that this was an active coordination between the DNC and Bloomberg, but given that I'm not nearly as politically savvy as the folks who run political operations and I noticed this, it seems likely that they at least recognized it was likely to happen.

Finally, there's what happened with the primaries after people started taking the coronavirus seriously. States with Democratic governors generally insisted that the primaries go ahead as scheduled, while states with Republican governors generally opted to delay them or go with mail-in ballots. There were cries of "voter suppression" by folks connected with the DNC when it came to the delayed primaries, but in the states where in-person primaries were held, there were also incidences that would be considered "voter suppression" if a Republican governor had done them. Things like polling places being closed or moved or so under-staffed that it made extremely long lines inevitable.

Now, to the things that aren't easily verifiable. A year or so ago, I was talking to one of the members of the TN Democratic Party's executive committee. He is one of three members, and the only person higher in the state party than him is the state chairman. So not only does he know exactly what's going on at the state level, he's got connections to the folks in the national party. He told me, and others, that "the party wants Biden." This upset him because he's not a fan of Biden. He didn't say that they were going to rig things in Biden's favor, but it is hard to believe that if something came down to a judgment call, rather than an established rule, that the party would default to anyone other than Biden unless he was so far behind the others that it would be screamingly obvious they were rigging things in Biden's favor.

Lastly, and I PM'd a few people here about this when it happened, so if they want to confirm that I did tell someone about it they can, I was at a meeting of the local Democratic Party a week or so before the TN primary. At that meeting was a representative of the Bloomberg campaign. According to him, Bloomberg had thrown enough money around the state that he'd effectively bought the party apparatus. The most experienced campaign advisors and operatives were all working for him. He bragged about how various party officials all had brand new equipment, or finally had their own office space to work out. He swore up and down that even if Bloomberg didn't get the nomination, Bloomberg was going to keep throwing huge amounts of money at the DNC and keep all of his people on staff so that we could defeat Trump. In case you don't know, once it became obvious that he wasn't going to get very many votes, Bloomberg fired his staff, threw a pittance of what he promised at the DNC and walked off.

So, would I say that the DNC cheated the other candidates by changing votes, or eliminating otherwise viable candidates by underhanded means? No. But do I think that they tilted the table away from candidates like Warren and Sanders?

Yeah, Biden went out and said some cheap, free words that bely the policies he authored, supported, voted on, and funded, ones he still supports to this day. So vote for him, that's your prerogative. I'd rather do something constructive, something that is more than performative liberalism. Piss on it all you want, I don't give a fuck. It's your privilege.

And yet the police unions are breaking ties with him.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/04/police-groups-joe-biden-300222

Hmm... Who do I trust to gauge a candidates willingness to do something about violent cops? Do I trust the reactions of the cops themselves, or the hysterical rantings of a pony cartoon enthusiast that thinks posting twitter quotes is "exploitation?"

You clearly don't trust women.

So please fuck off.