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The Democratic Primary: Will Never End
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and i was like "a third party run by Sanders would essentially guarantee a GOP victory, this is absolute madness"
and i am not anticipating a positive, well-reasoned response.
If Sanders has the ability to ruin Clinton's general election chances, how exactly does she have all the power? This is a cognitive tension I see running through several posters' lines of thought here: the notion that Sanders is somehow both a pathetic gadfly without influence and a mortal threat that must be brought to heel as soon as possible.
That is certainly one way to negotiate.
Is there any evidence to support this? Or is just something you "know" is true?
If Kasich had a feasible path to the nomination I'd be terrified.
I mean, he does. Trump's path to 1237 is looking rockier by the day, and I really don't think he has any shot at winning a multi ballot convention given how badly he has failed at securing state delegates that support him. If the GOP is smart, they pick Kasich out of their hat and this race is probably 60/40 at best for the dem nominee.
Here, let me put it another way: Sanders absolutely could choose to ruin Hillary's chance in the general. But in doing so, he'd almost assuredly destroy any goodwill he and his movement have garnered at this point, along with setting the country back to a point where any of his demands will be laughed at by a majority in both parties.
It is a very near-sighted form of power that Sanders wields here, and in no way as strong as you believe it to be.
3DS: 2981-5304-3227
You're not really making a case for why Sanders isn't working against the party.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
That is not true.
If Bernie never ran those people would almost have certainly voted for Clinton. They wouldn't know any other way.
It's the same story with Trump.
If there's a coup it sounds like it'll be for Ryan, not Kasich. Which is great, because Ryan against Clinton in a debate would be almost as good as Biden vs. Ryan was, but without Biden's amazing "can you believe this little shithead?" gestures.
Then you should be more terrified.
If Sanders never ran I would never have donated. As for voting, I dunno. Donating spurred me to update my registration.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
All reporting contradicts it.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
If by "working against the party" you mean challenging the priorities of the party's leadership, then no, I am definitely not making such a case, nor have I ever intended to. It is plainly not Sanders' objective to make Hillary Clinton or Debbie Wasserman Schultz comfortable.
His objective is to drag the party to the left economically. Since he's such an ornery old coot, I believe he is going to play hardball through whatever means available. He doesn't need to actually withhold his support to do this; he only needs to make the other side believe that he might.
Hillary Clinton and her platform has been selected by a large majority of the party. You're saying you want the distinct minority that supported Bernie Sanders to have the power to hold that majority platform hostage because of pique
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
He doesn't have to want them to have that power, they already do
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
these people are either disengaged/disenchanted/pissed off/whatever or they aren't; if you think that they are and were, they were never clinton voters. It's not as though clinton never got criticism from the left before sanders entered the race.
If they aren't, then they were and likely are going to vote for clinton in the general anyway.
There is pretty reliable research that says once a person has voted in three consecutive elections, voting becomes a habit and they're more or less locked in as an LV. If sanders being in the race really is getting more people to the polls than otherwise would go, I'm inclined to believe he should stay in. It's not as though he's pulling a Chris Christie or something; even in the more recent 'contentious' part of the primary he and clinton have been pretty genial.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
This is kind of how politics works: coalitions come together to advance their goals using the power available to them. Deranged madman Sanders will threaten to withhold his support in order to accomplish the dastardly scheme of... getting Hillary Clinton to come out in favor of $15/hour minimum wage instead of $12/hour. What a monster!
"Because of pique" is cute, though. It's interesting that we are asked to always take Hillary Clinton at face value when she expresses her political values, but you feel utter freedom to simply assert that Sanders is motivated not by an authentic desire to improve the lives of poor and working Americans but out of nothing more than ego.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Life is full of contradictions, like how winning is the only thing that matters in politics and yet a loser is holding the party hostage, or how Sanders is siphoning off the support he helped bring in, or how Hillary is so strong and has such a cultured and loyal base that she can be easily toppled by an upstart Vermont senator and his elite crackpot team of redditors.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'm most interested in a basic income program & some version of single payer healthcare (whether that's an optional public health system as was discussed back in Ye Olde Tymes of 2008 or something more like my Canadian system).
I would also accept some sort of compromise programs being instituted at the federal level that allows eligible applicants to relatively quickly and relatively easily be able to access subsidy money.
Ah yes, the $15 that will be delivered by unicorns every hour once Bernie is President.
Let me first say that Sanders hasn't actually threatened a convention fight, at least not yet. I brought up the 1980 convention to illustrate the anxieties that any frontrunner in a heated primary battle must face. As long as those anxieties exist in the Clinton camp, Sanders has some power to make conditions on his general-election endorsement.
Now on to the substance of your post. You seem to believe you have identified a contradiction in the case for Sanders to persist to the convention. However, in reality there is no such contradiction. Your post relies on a basic equivocation about the meaning of "helping the party."
If helping the party means registering new Democrats, then continuing the campaign helps the party.
If helping the party means making Hillary Clinton's path to the presidency silky smooth, then I suppose he is not helping. But I see no compelling reason why he should smooth the way for Clinton at his juncture, when he still has an opportunity to advance his agenda through opposition.
He's running to convention because why not? That's part of the process - the one you yourself say over and over again is non-democratic, and not intended to be.
He wasn't going to win anyway, and we all knew that going into it. We said it a long ass time ago. If Mr. Sanders was going to leave early, there was very little point in even getting on the campaign trail and wasting some of his precious twilight years anyway.
He will give Hillary an endorsement.
EDIT: Edited for being overly antagonistic.
A $15/hour minimum wage is exactly as likely as a $12/hr wage in the Congress to come. But frankly legislative feasibility isn't really the relevant point here. A party platform is a wish list, not a promise.
It's also kind of interesting that a big-tent party seems so opposed to making concessions to appease what must be a sizable contingent of their voter base (being that these people are voting in primaries in the first place, and the fact that there's a visible concern that they might not vote).
Like, this doesn't seem so weird to me. A certain number of people have visibly chosen Sanders as opposed to Clinton as their primary candidate. The Democrats have to do one of two things with this information:
1) Try to shift their party platform in such a way as to incorporate and appease those voters, to persuade them to support Clinton
2) Write the Sanders coalition/progressives/leftists/whatever you want to call them - off, and try to win without them. If Sanders voters aren't real Democrats they should be able to manage this.
These are political parties, not fuedal lords. If the Democrats want Sanders' voters' votes (ugh, apostrophes), then there's got to be some give-and-take. If the Democrats are, in fact, doing some giving, then I have little doubt that the vast majority of Sanders' voters will give back their votes in return. This hysteria about Sanders voters willingly throwing the election to Donald Trump in a nihilistic burn-it-all-down fit seems utterly unsubstantiated. I have literally met, seen, or read anyone who is threatening or has ambitions of doing this outside of internet comments sections.
As an aside, watching the Democratic establishment try to whip "insubordinate" candidates and voters into line does much more to turn me off the party than anything Sanders is doing, or could do.
Not that it matters for me, personally, anyway. Democrats don't even bother to campaign or run candidates in the state where I'll be voting, and I strongly doubt it'll be turning blue in November.
Oh yes clearly people are taking Clinton at face value.
A coalition did come together and they chose Hillary Clinton and her platform. And she likewise is working to help people's lives. She, and most liberal economists, think for instance a 15 dollar minimum wage is a bad federal standard. But you think she's going to be willing to sacrifice what she and her majority of supporters thinks is best. I guess that's taking her at face value.
The justification for this theoretical demand? Sanders disagrees and thinks it should be different, which is totally not ego. Clinton didn't demand concessions or control of the platform for her 49% of the pledged delegates in 2008 and if she had it would have been seen, correctly, as highly offensive, undemocratic bullshit.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Characterizing the Democratic party of writing off progressives this cycle because Clinton runs more on pragmatism seems like a stretch.
I think it's a great point that Sanders hasn't threatened a convention fight yet; we're not to the point the Republicans are, where the remaining candidates over there have completely dropped the pretense of supporting Trump/NotTrump in the general. Sanders is just making noises that are making some of us nervous, and I think it's right to acknowledge that that is a valid interpretation of events, just like it is also a valid interpretation that Sanders is just trying to stay in, will trade his delegates for some platform influence when the time comes, and then will support Hillary just like we all want him to. Surely we can argue about these scenarios without getting this crazy over it?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I dunno about undemocratic, but I will allow that Hillary Clinton is more graceful than Bernie Sanders, despite the whole Snow White thing.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
One of the remarkable qualities of the 2008 campaign was how similar the Clinton and Obama policy platforms were, even by the standards of primary opponents. If there had been more daylight between them, I have every confidence that Clinton would have pushed for her priorities to be adopted by the winning side. (And, in fact, Obama did end up adopting the individual health insurance mandate, although not because of a convention negotiation.)
All that said, when you call platform wrangling "undemocratic bullshit," you are relying on a theory of voter behavior that simply does not withstand scrutiny. Voters choose candidates for a vast array of reasons, and -- for better or worse -- the specific details of their policy platforms is but one factor, and possibly not even a particularly significant one compared to other factors (experience, temperament, perceived electability, the list goes on). The idea that DNC platform as Hillary Clinton herself would write it represents the pure democratic will of the Democratic electorate is therefore ridiculous.
Why would trading his delegates in matter at this point? It's not like Mrs. Clinton needs them; she's not neck and neck with someone else and in desperate need of support. It's been a decidedly one-sided primary.
Mr. Sanders will give you your damn endorsement, JFC.
So people chose Sanders for his platform but we can't assume the same for Clinton.
And Clinton didn't demand concessions in the platform was totally would have based on Dean, Edwards, Biden, Bradley and every other Presidential candidate never doing that.
The idea that even a threatened convention fight wouldn't be beyond the pale is just bonkers.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I am positive that plenty of people chose Sanders for reasons other than policy specifics. Please don't put words in my mouth.
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I'd like to know the response.
I see lots of this type of stuff in my feed as well.
Theoretically the super delegates could abstain for a ballot and madness would ensue. But no.