• Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      5 days ago

      2008. They were NOT expecting Obama to oust Hillary, and took steps to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. Allegedly the new DNC head or whatever his title is wants fair primaries, so I guess we’ll see.

        • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          5 days ago

          As far as I know/remember it was, at least as fair as any primary with superdelegates can be. Or rather, it was still using an unfair system and enough people turned out so that the system to keep nominations “in check” didn’t work.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Cynthia McKinney was elected as a Democrat in Georgia around that time. iirc she was looking at a presidential run. You might have seen her on here yesterday for her latest tweet. (Spoiler: super bigot)

            Which is to say, if you open the field to everyone in the country you will spend a certain amount of time winnowing the contenders from the stunt candidates. Republicans don’t do that because they’re all the same candidate. So they spend almost zero time (since Perot) dealing with that.

            Superdelegates aren’t great, but an alternative to achieve that aim of not having to platform every trust fund kid with a boot on their head might be good.

            • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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              5 days ago

              She ran as a Green Party candidate, not a Democratic one. I’m not sure how she’s relevant?

              She was pretty suspect even in 2008, so I’m not sure I buy that if we don’t have superdelegates and let voters decide who the candidates are, then the stupid masses will just pick whoever.

              • Optional@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                Oh man you’re right I’d forgotten that.

                I don’t think superdelegates are to prevent popular candidates (see Obama), I think they’re to get a comprehensible slate of candidates to focus on issues and themes and not on turning the Iowa caucus into something bizarre by claiming to be a Democrat who just happens to demand we all live in the sea or something.

                Again, republicans don’t have this problem, and they’re well known to fund ‘spoiler candidates’ with the intention of wrecking momentum or message or other campaign aspects.

    • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Even 2016 was pretty fair. The nomination went to the person with the most votes and the majority of the non-super delegates. Bernie lost because people didn’t want to vote for him because of a variety of reasons but not because the primary wasn’t “fair”. If more people voted for him he would have won.

      • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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        5 days ago

        No, Bernie had the nom stolen by Hillary and DWS via corrupt back room dealings and superdelegate shenanigans. Everyone was voting Bernie and for the corporate elite that was a problem. They solved it by ratfucking the primaries, a tried and true dem tactic.

        • W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          Agreed 100%.

          Source: I was there. Bernie got screwed because the dems through it was “Hillary’s turn”.

          Fuck that.

        • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Ah yes, super delegate shenanigans like the majority going to the candidate who had over 3 million more votes than the other. The only way Bernie could have won with super delegates is if he got almost all of them. And if he did then the candidate who got 3 million less votes would have won the nomination and we would still be facing people saying the democratic primaries aren’t “fair”.

          Now don’t get me wrong, DWS was biased as fuck. But if the voters simply turned out and voted for Bernie then bias wouldn’t have mattered. The RNC was biased towards Jeb bush and Ted Cruz but you know how that turned out.

          • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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            5 days ago

            You can’t use the result of the ratfucking to explain that there wasn’t ratfucking…

            She couldn’t have cheated, she had more points

          • DaMummy@hilariouschaos.com
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            5 days ago

            In the 2016 WV Democrat Primary, Bernie won every single county, 40k more votes than Clinton, but Clinton won the state. Your math isn’t mathing.

            • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              Nope Bernie won the state. He won and got 18 delegates and Clinton got 11. But then at the convention Clinton got the 8 super delegates from the state which put her at 19 delegates to Bernie’s 18 but Bernie still won the state. Here’s my source.

                • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  You win the majority of the delegates that were up during the primary by voting in the primary. Which Bernie did. But when the convention rolled around and Hillary was 3 million votes ahead of Bernie country wide and significantly closer to the nomination delegate threshold, the super delegates came into play to decide things. But that doesn’t change that Bernie won the state. Those 8 super delegates are from West Virginia but they were only allocated at all because neither Bernie nor Hillary had reached the delegate threshold needed to win the nomination.

                  • DaMummy@hilariouschaos.com
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                    5 days ago

                    I honestly can’t believe you’re making the case that Bernie won 18-19. I don’t even know how to argue that, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it.

      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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        5 days ago

        Clinton literally controlled the DNC treasury during that election. The party was low on funding due to mismanagement during the Obama years, she lent it money in return for control, next thing you know, media is flooded with articles talking up Clinton having all the superdelegate votes so being so far ahead before any real votes were cast…even when Bernie won states, it was all “doesn’t matter he still can’t make up for the SDs”

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Bernie lost because people didn’t want to vote for him because of a variety of reasons but not because the primary wasn’t “fair”. If more people voted for him he would have won.

        Uh oh

        (I agree, although DWS really screwed up everything including discussing this)

        • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Yeah this is something that really bothers me about my fellow leftists and is pure revisionism about the 2016 primary. Bernie lost fair and square and all we had to do to make sure that didn’t happen was get more people to vote for him. But according to many people on here if the candidate fails to win then it’s their sole fault because they couldn’t convince voters to go with them. But I guess that doesn’t apply to Bernie.

          Also I hate how DWS screwed up talking about this all because she was biased as fuck towards Clinton. Her bias wouldn’t have mattered if more people had voted for Bernie but her having a bias at all must mean Bernie was cheated out of the nomination.

          • Soupbreaker@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            I think where a lot of this comes from is that HRC had locked in the vast majority of the superdelegates right from the start. The media consistently represented Bernie as having no chance to win, due to all the superdelegates being in the bag for Clinton, regardless of how people voted. This depressed progressive turnout, as a Clinton victory was apparently a foregone conclusion. Absent the superdelegate system, and the lopsided media coverage it engendered, many would argue the result would have been different. Obviously, there’s no way of knowing at this point, but it’s not as if these claims have no basis in reality.

            • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              See now that’s an actual conversation to have! Not saying that Clinton cheated and/or was always going to be the candidate but that how the media represented the race depressed turnout. That’s a thing that continues to happen from the media trying to suppress progressive turnout and it often works. But those things still don’t change that if those progressives hadn’t been so easily suppressed and had continued to go out and fight and vote regardless of what the media said, just like trump voters did, then Bernie would have won the primary and the super delegates wouldn’t have mattered. And then likely would have won versus Trump, in my opinion.

              • Soupbreaker@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                Indeed. Conversely, if the GOP had had superdelegates, Trump may never have won the nomination. Superdelegates are inherently anti-populist, which cuts both ways.

          • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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            5 days ago

            If you call wall to wall Propaganda about how it doesn’t matter how Bernie is winning all these states, all the superdelegates are going to Clinton and she wins basically by default?

            Like that wasn’t designed to dissuade voters?

          • DaMummy@hilariouschaos.com
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            5 days ago

            Does this mean if Trump enforces voting via Real ID, and millions of people get removed from their right to vote, and Trump wins in '28, that more people should have voted for Democrats or that Trump shouldn’t have purged the voter rolls of as many people as possible that wouldn’t vote for him?