UPDATE: Folks aren’t answering the question asked here. What was the problem some saw and how do we fix this? Who supposedly gave the nomination to Hillary if not the voters? And if so, how? Saying “the rules that existed for years did it” is silly. Why weren’t folks trying to change whatever those rules are before the primary season began if you believe that? Please answer the questions. We all need to look at ourselves and approach this with intellectual honesty. I am SERIOUSLY trying to understand the argument. I may not be the smartest person out there, but if I don’t get it, I have to believe there are plenty of others who have no idea what people are trying to say we need to address. In other words, we are all set to tear ourselves apart again, next time around, if no one is asked to make a coherent argument. “The fix was in” is not one unless you can provide specifics and show how that affected votes. “He would have won based on polls taken in May” is not one. She would have won based on polls taken on November 7. “The rules should have been changed” is also not one, unless you were trying to change them before the primaries and can specifically show which rules must be changed, and not simply pick and choose based on how to get the outcome you want. “Anyone should be allowed to vote in Democratic primaries” is a dangerous one, since Republicans could mess with our nomination process. So, who is the villain in this narrative? If you can’t explain it, with specifics, the villain may well be all of us for tearing at each other rather than at Trump. And we have to find a way to stop it. If we couldn't get together to stop a racist, misogynist who inspires neo-nazis, when could we get together?
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This is not meant to offend anyone. Nor is it meant to refight the primary. These are just questions that have torn at me for months. When i read the comments to Kos’s well-deserved rant, the arguments that confuse me come up all over again. Some people seem willing to throw out catch-phrases without ever explaining how they reached their conclusions. So, before I return to fighting against Trump and fighting for 2018, I need to address this. We all do.
A key point at the top: Democrats have, to a sad degree, always been pathetic when it comes to elections. Rather than fighting for policy once a democrat gets into office, we fight against each other rather than unifying around nominees — president, senate, congress, whatever. We say “that senator is too conservative” without caring that defeat would flip the entire senate. We say “that presidential nominee is too whatever” without caring that the Republicans would be a million times worse — or in this case, a billion times.
Which leads to my issue: I have never understood the argument that essentially assumes that Clinton was selected by coronation. All of the anger that Bernie would have been the better candidate seems to presuppose that there is someone, something out there that could have changed its mind and made it happen.
More voters chose Clinton. Fourteen million more. You can dismiss them as stupid (I don’t), you can dismiss them as misled (I don’t.) Or you can treat them with the respect they deserve and accept that they went into the voting booth and chose someone they supported more than Bernie.
All other arguments require real backflips. Here they are:
1. Super Delegates should have voted for Bernie. This argument has always been the most offensive to me. Essentially, those who make this argument are saying that the entire primary season should be thrown out, that the will of the voters be ignored, and that the Super Delegates should have determined the outcome based on what YOU preferred, not the majority of the democratic voters. Why? I have no idea. The entire argument seems to be “Screw democracy! I know best.” And talk about something that would rip apart the party!
2. Super Delegates committed to Clinton early. Again, this is a silly argument. They did the same thing in 2008, and then flipped to Obama when he won the majority of delegates. Had Bernie done the same, they would have flipped to him. Again, had they gone against the will of the voters, it would have ripped apart the party. So if Bernie won, he would have won.
3. Super Delegates commitments influence the vote. Seriously? Yes, hyper-political people like us know the procedures for nominations. But I doubt more than 5% of all voters even knew a thing called Super Delegates exists or what they do. And there is no evidence that they have any influence at all (See Obama, 2008.)
4. The DNC had its finger on the scale, part 1. I have scratched my head about this one forever. Ok, yes, there were some emails from May 2016 showing that the DNC favored the candidate who had won. Regardless of what Bernie folks wanted to believe, there was no pathway to victory for him. None. Hillary was the presumptive nominee. I flipped to Clinton in late April because I saw the math. After New York, 2+2 would have to equal 974 for Bernie to win. The race was over. Yes, when Bernie kept going in the face of impossibility, the DNC officials got annoyed. So did I. If my emails had been hacked from May 2016, they would have read a lot like those that came out of the DNC. Because, whether Bernie people can accept it or not, when you lose, you lose.
5. The DNC had its finger on the scale, part 2: “DNC” has become the moral equivalent of “Benghazi.” No one had to explain how this amounted to a Clinton scandal, everyone just knew it did. There were 9 sponsored debates, more than in 2008. There were forums. The total viewership of the sponsored debates was almost equal to the total viewership of ALL debates in 2008. With the forums, millions more saw the candidates make their cases in 2016 than in 2008. The Saturday debates were among the most watched. As for the rules, they were set in place long ago. What about them made them skewed toward Clinton? No one ever explains. But everyone knew what the rules were when Bernie started. If there was some problem with them that escapes me, people should have been pointing it out back then, not after Bernie had lost.
There was no conspiracy. Bernie lost because fewer people voted for him. So who have the Bernie people been arguing against? And who have the protest voters been trying to make their point to? Millions of voters who won’t even hear the message because they are not hyper-political? For these folks they know this: Trump won. And then they go back to their lives.
In other words, no one who mattered heard your protest. If you didn’t vote, they don’t care about the back-and-forth minutiae. If they are REALLY attentive, all they knew was that Bernie supported Hillary, because he said so. Your protest — against what I will never understand — was pointless.
If you truly believe that there is no difference between Clinton running on the most liberal platform in history or Trump running on the backs of neo-nazis, then fine. Stay home. But please don’t expect anyone to respect your critical thinking abilities.