this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Too bad the scores are made up and the points don't matter.
Agreed. When push came to shove, the people didn't want Bernie. They wanted Biden. We all had fun mocking "Nothing will fundamentally change" but it turns out that in America that's a winning message
This is not true.
They wrapped up the primary after like 10 states, making it very clear they would blame all the resulting Covid cases on Bernie if he continued. I never got to fucking vote. It was already "over" by the time it came to New Jersey. The way primaries are organized heavily favors conservative candidates. We run through a whole gauntlet of states which Democrats don't even hold office in and let motherfuckers like James Carville use that as evidence that Americans don't want to "rock the boat" night after night on cable news. Then you have the fucking 16+ candidates, all of whom dropped out at the last second to clear the lane for Biden, while deliberately splitting the vote on the "left." Then the bogus fucking shit about "bernie bro" harassment, the bold faced lie from Warren about his misogyny, Chris Matthews screaming about executions in Central Park, Micheal Bloomberg packing the audience at the debates with people instructed to boo public healthcare.
I don't think the "Bernie would have won" discourse is particularly useful, but don't think for a second this shambolic process in any way indicates what the people want. It is a complete fucking manipulation from start to finish.
There is a reason we don't have national policy referendums.
I would call the American primary system a shit show but that implies it’s shitty by accident and not design. South Carolina was where Bernie’s campaign was murdered. It’s a state where the Democrat voters are particularly conservative and it’s a state the Dems will never win. I’m convinced if the primaries were all on one day nationally Bernie would have one; though this naively assumes we don’t live in a dictatorship of capital, which we do, sooo…
Well... "the people" didn't want Trump. And the panic after Nevada boiled down to media figures selling Bernie as the next Hillary.
I don't even know if they were strictly wrong. If Bernie had taken the nomination in August, would news media have slandered and undermined his campaign for the next three months? Would Bernie have won in Arizona or Georgia once the business goons at MSNBC and CNN were through with him? Would he have held Virginia once Langley went full bore on him? Would Dems have retaken the House or Senate when Conserva-Dems were trashing their own Presidential nominee? Would a third party candidate have utterly sabotaged things?
Biden was the safe pick for a plurality of voters that only cared about Not-Trump. And that's what national news sold to people on the fence. It could have just as easily been Buttigieg or Klobacher or Beto, if they'd demonstrated even the slightest inclination to run well nationally. Just not Bernie.
There's a great (and depressing) documentary about the media's war on Bernie's campaign and how they intentionally sabotaged it. It's well worth the watch, but be warned it's not going to put you in a good mood, to say the least.
Biden 2024 platform: deflate the US dollar until gas is only 6¢/gal, poodle skirts for all (AFAB only), and a malt shop on every corner (whites only)