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Vote for the change you want to see.
The Republican party got remade because trumpists showed up and outvoted the party elites. No reason it can't happen for the Left except for laziness and apathy.
If all the progressives furious about the state of affairs now had shown up for Sanders in 2016, I doubt we'd be in this hellish timeline. Sadly, he needed the young progressive vote to show up.
This response is ironic considering your post.
Failure to acknowledge how the DNC and super delegates operated in 2016 is a great way to ensure the rightward ratchet.
The super delegates do not change the fact that Clinton got 3,5 million more votes in the primaries than Sanders did. Or, to put it another way, Sanders got 43% of the vote compared to Clinton's 55%. Those are voters, not pledged delegates.
Blaming superdelegates is a great way to make sure we don't change a damn thing. (Also, the DNC changed the role of super delegates afterwards to make them less powerful.)
Everything you listed here is putting the cart before the horse.
Bernie was doing well until the DNC put all of its backing into Clinton and even ran negative ads against Bernie.
Get money out of elections if you want change. If you’re just looking to bash people to the left, carry on as you are.
No, the cart always has to be voters. Actually showing up to the polls has to be the cart. Anything before that is nonsense. Leftist will never ever ever have any power in this nation unless they show the fuck up. A lot of leftists don't want to show up they just want to sit back and complain.
This is nonsense. I worked on Bernie’s campaign in 2016. I saw what happened.
Oh cool! Tell us exactly what you saw then.
You saw what happened? You saw more votes go to the other candidate? Because that's what happened.
I find myself thinking, “how could trump possibly get elected (again)?” And then I have exchanges like this.
Well certainly yeah I agree that's exactly how he would win. Leftists thinking they should stay home in a snit. Leftist not showing up is exactly how Trump will win I agree. Which is why I would hope you would join me in telling leftist to get off their ass and vote. Instead you're making the counter argument for some reason.
I will never stand by what you are saying here in these comments. Never. By gaslighting the left, you gain nothing and only turn people away for life. Your words are exactly why I will never support the DNC; never own up to their corruption, blame the left, and continue to slide right.
I'm not actually trying to argue one way or the other, but
You're literally putting the cart before everything else, including the horse. Work on your metaphors a little.
You're totally right I should have put horse there.
"Oh no, the bad guys ran ads against us!"
If we can't overcome horrific barriers like that, how on Earth do you expect wr achieve anything meaningful? Literally all we had to do was get people to show up and vote.
Yeah dude idk if you understand politics at all, so there are people. And those people get informed. Often by ads. And you see, the Clinton campaign was skirting campaign finance law by funneling money through the DNC and then taking that money for her campaign to run attack ads against a primary opponent when that money was promised to states and to whoever won the primary.
So yes, the person who won broke the law in order to gain the upper hand to win but it’s our fault for not voting harderer. So many of yall DNC worshipers think it’s all the progressives don’t vote, or only vote in the presidential elections, meanwhile they literally turn out way higher than any other block of voters in EVERY election.
The problem is money. Literally so much money they had to illegally funnel it through the DNC instead of a single campaign to gain that money.
So according to your logic then, no one should worry about this logic as Harris has roughly half a billion more than trump?
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
I'd love to see a source for this. Especially as Clinton won 55% of the primary votes compared to Sanders' 43%, were the progressives secretly voting for Clinton? Or do those elections not count even though, especially to a progressive, they'd matter more?
Not saying money is the sole decider, but it helps. Also the difference between what you can donate to a candidate (like $3000) and what you can donate to the DNC (like $40000) is… quite large. Like 12x the amount of money… Kamala does not have 12x the amount of money as trump.
Also, you really think there’s just like… two blocks of voters in the primaries… and they’re exactly equal in number, and exactly spread evenly between all states and districts? Progressive/leftist/whatever you wanna call the “far left” makes up a fairly small amount, but one that literally turns out in higher percent than any other voting block. It does not mean they outnumber EVERYONE ELSE COMBINED.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/05/americans-at-the-ends-of-the-ideological-spectrum-are-the-most-active-in-national-politics/
Here’s some data from Pew Research on it. You can look for some others they’ve done on similar stuff.
Appreciate the Pew link! I'd note thought that it talks about the general election, not primaries.
If the progressives don't outnumber the moderates and centrists even within the Democratic party, then that seems a pretty good indication that American politics is roughly in line with American attitudes, which would mean democracy is working as it should.
Here's the thing, Sanders got 43% of the primary vote iirc and Clinton got 55. This happened, despite the middle age and elderly voters showing up in significantly larger numbers than the young, presumably progressive ones. If the young voters had shown up and their vote patterns held, Sanders would likely have had a comfortable win.