People can have sincere disagreement over what would benefit the people.
Pete dropped out after SC. Iâm sorry, but Bernie sweeping 2 of the whitest states in the country and Nevada, in hindsight, were not him mopping up. African Americans are probably the most important voting bloc in the Democratic Party, the fact that they donât get to vote until the fourth nomination in any true sense is ridiculous. Bernie didnât lose because of Pete. Bernie lost because he failed to connect with 35 and older black voters, and you canât be the democratic nominee if you fail to do that.
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Well, establishment POS Jim Clyburn didnât help. Neither did the media.
True, but how much time did Bernie spend in SC? How many black churches did he visit? Obviously this shit is easy to Monday Morning Quarterback.
The fact that South Carolina which will never vote for a Democrat in the general gets that much weight is ridiculous.
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Fair, and thereâs a pretty strong case that Bernie lost primarily because he failed (or didnât even try) to do basic coalition building and horse trading.
2016 was arguably even more egregious. Nominating Hillary fucking Clinton - the only person on earth Trump could beat - was the biggest own goal of my lifetime.
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I donât see why this matters
it should be trivial to find someone who lost a primary in a swing state and still managed to win the state in the general
No argument there.
Hillary won tho
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Well as a consolation Trump probably would have beaten Al Gore or John Kerry too!
Hard disagree. Neither of them engendered as much raw hatred as HRC. You can draw your own conclusions as to why that was.
anyway, I agree that some states get outsized influence in the primary, which could be alleviated by randomizing the order every cycle, but I donât see why either party would want to do that (party insiders almost certainly like having a fixed schedule because all the consultants and media geniuses and staffers etc already know all the people on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire etc and have relationships with reporters and local news stations and all that jazz.
South Carolina is not a swing state.
It matters because it means that the best candidate to win the Democratic primary is not necessarily the candidate with the best chance to win the general election.
Bernie has a lot of flaws but thinking the reason he lost is that he didnât visit enough black churches is a weird take. Biden didnât really even campaign and won solely because the entire weight of the party and corporate media ralled behind him.
Pretty much whoever got that juice was winning and thatâs largely what is wrong with the process. A functioning democracy should be about people picking the candidate they want with the positions and policies they want. Not having a segregationist fossil jammed down their throat while having the illusion of choice. Or having LOL Hillary annointed either.
We talk here all the time about how democracy is at risk but to be fair the fact the Democratic primary is the way it is already means we arenât really choosing one of the presidential candidates. In a unbiased primary we donât get Hillary or Biden (or probably Bernie either).
People picked the candidate with the narrative they most preferred among the choices. Narrative trumps policy positions.
If Bernie ran his campaign along idealistic lines of how democracy is âsupposedâ to work, thatâs as naĂŻve as Dems in Congress who think we can have a government where Republicans function as the loyal opposition with the good of the country in mind.
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yes, that wasnât what I was trying to say, what Iâm getting at is that the fact that itâs not a swing state in the general doesnât make the opinions of its primary voters less interesting.
Reminiscing about the 2020 primary and how Warren somehow thought it was correct to backtrack on Medicare for All and completely destroying her campaign. That was the biggest unforced error that cycle, IMO.
Anyway at least she gave us the national televised ethering of Bloomberg. Guy hasnât been seen since except to have Stacey Abrams take all his money and act like sheâs still some super liberal queen. Please.
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Reading these posts picking apart the errors of once-leading candidates and the party, you could almost draw the conclusion that the establishment Democratic party doesnât really represent what the people want.
In general turning âI have a plan for thatâ into a catchphrase was what did it. It wasnât necessary, everyone already knew she had well thought out plans for all kinds of economic issues. Using that as a campaign slogan forced her into a corner where she actually needed to put details on paper. And thereâs no way to write a feasible M4A plan without talking about some scary numbers. Itâs best sold by just saying youâll do it and weâre going to tax the rich to pay for it.
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Biden has been in the game for a long time and he is undoubtedly good at it. Previous Biden presidential runs didnât even come close to getting off the ground though. Part of his success in 2020 was being tied to Obama who is hugely popular with Dems and part of it is what I have been saying. Whoever the full force of the Dem machinery/CNN/MSNBC got behind in 2020 was winning. That was Biden that time because he was the most viable candidate who wouldnât upset the DemE interests. It was Hillary in 2016.
Yes people did go out and pull the lever for both of them but if either of them had gotten the Bernie treatment then they would have lost badly. If Bernie (or anyone else) had gotten the Hillary/Biden treatment they would have won. Thatâs why itâs an illusion of choice. The powers that be within the party decide who will win and then use their power to make sure that happens.