this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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I didn't say the national presidential primaries were clean and fair. I said that local primaries are. And that is true.
Regardless, nothing you said changes the fact that when it came down to actual votes in the primary, those who voted in the Democratic primary seemed to prefer moderate neoliberals over social democrats and progressives in 2016 and 2020.
All this complaining about the primary process amounts to useless hand-writhing because no amount of calling for reform or argumentation is going to change the system. Calling for people to be "up in arms" is a useless activity because being angry by itself means nothing. If you want change, you need power. If you want power, you need to get it by playing within the rules of the current system.
So vote in the damn primaries to get the party to nominate progressives and tell your mates to do the same. Start or sign ballot initiatives to move to nonpartisan blanket primaries and ranked-choice voting.
Putin won with actual votes too.
Exit polls in the 2020 primary showed that voter's had really only one issue that drove their vote, and that was electability. Corporate media absolutely pounded out the message that Bernie was less competitive with Trump than more establishment candidates. That was disinformation because Bernie and Biden performed almost identically in polls against Trump. Bernie was the clear favorite when it came to platform and policy.
Getting people actively engaged or "up in arms" is how you win elections, including primaries. That is a lesson the establishment understands when facing off against progressives, but consistently fails at in general elections, at least since 2008. It's not a waste of anything to get people energized, even on a losing issue.
Quit fucking lecturing progressives on the need to vote. Progressives vote more consistently than any other group in the US political spectrum. You are just furthering establishment disinformation. They want people to think progressives are flaky and unreliable so they can continue to win the electability argument in primaries. Progressives don't just vote. They make up almost the entirety of the grass-roots Democratic ground game, and the vast majority of individual donors.
If that's true, then that means that they're losing primaries despite being disproportionately represented. You're just saying that progressives losing primaries is more than fair. If progressive are the most consistent voters, and they still lose, then they're just not popular.
It is true. See this Pew study.
Did you even read what I just wrote? Exit polls said that Bernie was the candidate that voters would most like to see in the presidency but, for most voters, electability was an overriding concern for pretty obvious reasons. Bernie and Biden performed almost identically against Trump in polls, but that's not what voters believed. News coverage was relentless in telling voters that Bernie was "too radical" to win in the general, so that's what most voters believed.
Okay, so what are you going to do about it?
What can I do but keep fighting? Assuming that America isn't over, the most important thing right now is to force the Democratic establishment to acknowledge their role in this disaster and embrace whatever reforms we can get.
In practical terms, if Rahm Emanuel wins election at the DNC, it's pretty much a guarantee that the party will learn nothing and the failures will continue to compound. That's where my attention is.
What do you mean by "keep fighting"? How are you fighting?
I'll tell you what I've been doing these past months. I signed the petition to bring forth a ballot measure to institute instant-runoff voting in Oregon. When it was placed on the ballot, I was actively talking to everyone I knew to convince them to vote yes (the ballot measure did not pass). I donated $50 to the campaign of Janelle Bynum, who unseated Republican Lorie Chavez-Deremer in the extremely competitive Oregon 5 constituency where I live. I helped my grandparents read through the voter's guide and mail in their ballots.
This isn't intended to be a competition, I just want to know what your idea of "fighting" is.
Most recently I sent postcards to my Democratic representatives expressing my concerns over the coming DNC chair election. (Postcards are the most effective communication - short of cash anyways. It used to be letters, but security threats have made those less desirable.)
I have personal health issues with chronic sinus pain that really limits my social circle, but I do what I can. I used to donate more than I do now, partially because I'm unable to work, but I do still contribute to select progressives outside my district. Unfortunately, my very blue state rarely nominates actual progressives.