So, the San Diego County Sheriff race is pretty interesting and demonstrates perfectly the issue, except here, the party and Dem electeds (even the more “progressive” ones) are split.
One candidate is more reformist, and not currently in law enforcement (though he was). He has been endorsed by the county Party, and the vast majority of local and affinity democratic clubs. Of note: our county party is run by young progressives, for the most part. Clubs are made up of activists and other folks whose only skin in the game is moral.
All of the major electeds here have endorsed the current undersheriff, who was a Republican until 2018, and would be more of the same admin as the former sheriff, who had to basically retire in disgrace because the county sheriff dept has one of the highest prison death rates in the country.
This split doesn’t follow normal left vs. centrist party infighting. It’s interesting, because it’s pretty clear proof that “eDem” just means “anyone who wants to stay in power.” Some of the most progressive people in our local and state government have endorsed the undersheriff, who has also been endorsed by the county gun owners organization, as well as our republican county supervisors. She has a ton of money and is sadly probably going to win.
Nothing was stopping democratic voters from backing Sanders over Biden the same way republican voters backed Trump. They just preferred Biden who crushed Sanders in the South, particularly with black voters, due to association with Obama, imho.
Obviously. No one was claiming they fucked with voting machines or anything like that.
The riggage refers to the collusion. And yes, Trump defeated it, but the when the Republicans tried it, it was too little, too late. I think the Dems learned from that and colluded earlier.
I think this has been gone over before but Bernie “leading” was only ever an artifact of the trash first-past-the-post voting system obscuring the will of the voters. Under the superior ranked-choice/instant-runoff system it would have been clearer that he was never a favourite for the nomination.
The establishment wing of the party consolidating around a single candidate is nothing but smart strategy from their ideological bloc. The only reason anyone codes it with pejoratives like “riggage” and “collusion” is that they didn’t like the result. If there was an insurgent right-wing candidate in the party, who had been a Democrat for about 5 minutes, running against a field of leftists and they did not consolidate like this you would be screaming bloody murder about the Dems being incompetent and people not being willing to put aside personal ambition etc.
In fact, I don’t really need to speculate about this, since Bernie fans were all calling on Warren to drop out and endorse Bernie, which would be exactly the same type of “collusion” and “riggage”. Just, you know, the good kind.
These two terms are not the same at all in this case. As I alluded to above, “rigged” is not the best term because there wasn’t anything illegal done.
Collusion on the other hand is a perfectly accurate description of what happened. Whether the collusion was against the rules in some way is a different issue. Using the term collusion doesn’t necessarily imply that something forbidden was done, and I’m pretty sure most who would use that term would agree that there wasn’t.
The bought and paid for stooges got together and consolidated the bought and paid for stooge portion of the Dem electorate which is a majority. I mean imagine the average Dem voter. Of course they are a stooge who thinks Hilldawg/Biden/Nancy/Chuck are just great! Occupy Democrats personified is the median Dem voter.
It wasn’t rigged per se but yes the will of the majority of the Dem party was to elect Biden over Bernie. That’s kind of the problem.
ETA-Yes that’s democracy. And that’s fine I guess. But the problem is the mainstream Dem electorate mostly thinks things have been just fine since Biden took over in my experience. It isn’t just that our elected officials are terrible it’s that they mostly are actually what the Dem voting populace wants because they are “safe”. Yes that is due to propaganda and a bit of brainwashing. But it’s reality.
Collusion is a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading or defrauding others of their legal right.
The only part of this that applies is that there were, presumably, secret negotiated deals where people got something for dropping out. But it’s extremely normal for backroom agreements to be made so that people can unify separate blocs and consolidate their political efforts. That’s politics as usual. The cooperation (that is, the withdrawals and endorsements) were right out in the open, after which there was open competition and nobody was defrauded of anything.
In other words:
I think use of pejoratives like “collusion” just obscures that this is the problem here. The essence of the word is that the result ends up being unfair and manipulated. But the cooperation of the eDems wasn’t to thwart the will of the voters, it was to overcome the deficiencies of the voting system and ensure that the nomination got to the guy who really was the consensus choice.
Here’s the definition that happens to be how I naturally think of the word collusion in a vacuum:
In this definition, and others like it which I looked at in the past few mins, it seems that “fraudulent or treacherous purposes” (or anything along those lines) is not a necessary condition for collusion.
I’d also agree that the collusion that happened here as “politics as usual” and that the people who use the term didn’t like the result. It doesn’t change the fact that it is a valid descriptor of what happened. It’s even more valid when it’s qualified by the explicit observation that nothing actually illegal was done.
I don’t think it “obscures the problem”. I think most understand that Bernie’s views are not mainstream dem views.
The issue is that first past the post is a shitty system and leads to shitty outcomes. But this one time, it would have lead to a superior result. And that’s the time the bigliest collusion happens. If dems were their usual feckless, incompetent selves, Bernie gets through.
I think a lot of what you say would apply to people who feel that “rigging” is the best term to describe what happened. It’s not my preferred term, for the reasons explained in my prior post.
I’m using riggage is in a rigged game. Maybe no more so a slot machine where the net payout is <100% of the money in (and really <<).
The point isn’t to have a debate about rigged or collusion, it’s that if the establishment/DeSantis Republicans beat Trump in a primary it is because they biased the process somehow. The irony is that the real “riggage” will have actually occurred instead of being the big Lie. Primaries are easier to have influence outside of the main election.
