I’m a long time Bernie supporter, and as I said I’d like to see ranked choice voting because it more accurately captures voter’s preference.
That said, how was the 2020 primary not democratic? If one soccer player passes the ball to another and they score is that manipulating the system? It’s playing the game by the rules. What is the alternative to people dropping out of the primary? Should they be forced to keep running even if it’s clear they won’t win?
You’re right that some rules aren’t ideal. For example, thinking of this current primary my understanding is that if a candidate drops out, their pledged delegates are free to vote for whoever. That’s pretty undemocratic since now the preferences of a bunch of voters is not connected to who the candidate is.
In the case of the 2020 primary, people did get to vote for who they wanted. To me it’s not a conspiracy when candidates drop out because they see there’s no chance they’ll win and they want someone who is sort of like minded to succeed. It sucks because in this case it was someone who I didn’t prefer.
But think of the recent French election - a bunch of centrist candidates dropped out after the first run because they wanted to make sure the far right candidates didn’t win. That meant more far left people won. The far right in France were complaining that this was unfair. But all it really showed is they didn’t have a majority of support in those districts, and the other “team” played the game better.
If one soccer player passes the ball to another and they score is that manipulating the system? It’s playing the game by the rules. What is the alternative to people dropping out of the primary? Should they be forced to keep running even if it’s clear they won’t win?
This is a bad analogy. A better one would be that a soccer player was kicked from the game for a penalty, but as they’re leaving the field - while the game is still active - they kick the ball to one of their own players who then scores the winning goal. That’s totally unfair; the penalized player was already out of the game and shouldn’t be influencing it further, more or less helping to score the winning goal.
A truly democratic election would allow for all voters to be informed and making their own logical choice for president. But instead, we have millions of uninformed voters who are clinging to every word of whatever candidate they happen to associate with first. And when that person doesn’t make the cut, they throw their support behind another specific candidate still in the running. Instead of telling their constituents to make informed, logical decisions on their next choice of candidate, they’re leading their flock of followers to whomever they’re being paid to support after dropping out. And you know these guys are being paid to push certain party-approved candidates. I mean, we just recently learned that the DNC specifically pushed out all their legit candidates so they could throw support behind Biden and crush Bernie.
I don’t think this is very democratic. It’s misleading at best. But until a majority of people actually take the time to properly research candidates, it’s the corrupt system we’re stuck with.
It’s frustrating that Bernie didn’t win, and I think he has the best policies. Democracy works by allowing people to have input on how things are run. If I’m reading you right you feel like a lot of voters aren’t properly informed. Isn’t that on the candidates and their campaigns? If a candidate drops out and tells their supporters “I recommend you follow so and so now” it’s on those people to do their research, but ultimately who are we to tell them we’re wrong?
Democracy is a kind of error correction. Any one of us may be wrong, and we’re all wrong about something. So distributing decision making across many people with different perspectives, experiences and reasoning processes is a way to guard against individual error.
Even with that process unfortunately many times the majority thinking has been shown to be misguided with time and new perspective. We can try to persuade and inform, and should. But many times our cause loses an election, and that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a conspiracy or cheating.
It was incredibly anti-democratic. The superdelegate system is designed to stop democracy from occurring in the party and ensure the candidate is picked by big donors.
You’re right, superdelegates are bullshit. They didn’t play into Biden beating Bernie, although they could have if it was closer. As I understand it the rules have been revised so that superdelegates can’t fuck up the first vote, but could if there are additional rounds. Regardless they should be eliminated.
Surely you are aware that after 2016 the Sanders campaign worked with the DNC to overhaul the superdelegate system, right? Not that it actually made any difference in either primary.
This is what kills me about that argument. Yeah the idea of super delegates is scummy, but that’s all it ever was. An idea. It wasn’t implemented. People of concocted this fiction where the vote was stolen. It’s just nonsense.
I’m a long time Bernie supporter, and as I said I’d like to see ranked choice voting because it more accurately captures voter’s preference.
That said, how was the 2020 primary not democratic? If one soccer player passes the ball to another and they score is that manipulating the system? It’s playing the game by the rules. What is the alternative to people dropping out of the primary? Should they be forced to keep running even if it’s clear they won’t win?
You’re right that some rules aren’t ideal. For example, thinking of this current primary my understanding is that if a candidate drops out, their pledged delegates are free to vote for whoever. That’s pretty undemocratic since now the preferences of a bunch of voters is not connected to who the candidate is.
In the case of the 2020 primary, people did get to vote for who they wanted. To me it’s not a conspiracy when candidates drop out because they see there’s no chance they’ll win and they want someone who is sort of like minded to succeed. It sucks because in this case it was someone who I didn’t prefer.
But think of the recent French election - a bunch of centrist candidates dropped out after the first run because they wanted to make sure the far right candidates didn’t win. That meant more far left people won. The far right in France were complaining that this was unfair. But all it really showed is they didn’t have a majority of support in those districts, and the other “team” played the game better.
This is a bad analogy. A better one would be that a soccer player was kicked from the game for a penalty, but as they’re leaving the field - while the game is still active - they kick the ball to one of their own players who then scores the winning goal. That’s totally unfair; the penalized player was already out of the game and shouldn’t be influencing it further, more or less helping to score the winning goal.
A truly democratic election would allow for all voters to be informed and making their own logical choice for president. But instead, we have millions of uninformed voters who are clinging to every word of whatever candidate they happen to associate with first. And when that person doesn’t make the cut, they throw their support behind another specific candidate still in the running. Instead of telling their constituents to make informed, logical decisions on their next choice of candidate, they’re leading their flock of followers to whomever they’re being paid to support after dropping out. And you know these guys are being paid to push certain party-approved candidates. I mean, we just recently learned that the DNC specifically pushed out all their legit candidates so they could throw support behind Biden and crush Bernie.
I don’t think this is very democratic. It’s misleading at best. But until a majority of people actually take the time to properly research candidates, it’s the corrupt system we’re stuck with.
It’s frustrating that Bernie didn’t win, and I think he has the best policies. Democracy works by allowing people to have input on how things are run. If I’m reading you right you feel like a lot of voters aren’t properly informed. Isn’t that on the candidates and their campaigns? If a candidate drops out and tells their supporters “I recommend you follow so and so now” it’s on those people to do their research, but ultimately who are we to tell them we’re wrong?
Democracy is a kind of error correction. Any one of us may be wrong, and we’re all wrong about something. So distributing decision making across many people with different perspectives, experiences and reasoning processes is a way to guard against individual error.
Even with that process unfortunately many times the majority thinking has been shown to be misguided with time and new perspective. We can try to persuade and inform, and should. But many times our cause loses an election, and that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a conspiracy or cheating.
It was incredibly anti-democratic. The superdelegate system is designed to stop democracy from occurring in the party and ensure the candidate is picked by big donors.
You’re right, superdelegates are bullshit. They didn’t play into Biden beating Bernie, although they could have if it was closer. As I understand it the rules have been revised so that superdelegates can’t fuck up the first vote, but could if there are additional rounds. Regardless they should be eliminated.
Surely you are aware that after 2016 the Sanders campaign worked with the DNC to overhaul the superdelegate system, right? Not that it actually made any difference in either primary.
This is what kills me about that argument. Yeah the idea of super delegates is scummy, but that’s all it ever was. An idea. It wasn’t implemented. People of concocted this fiction where the vote was stolen. It’s just nonsense.