Big Bernie Win: DNC to Reduce "Super Delegates" by 60%

Er, right. I'm guessing that when the people don't vote for your preferred candidate, that means the people didn't choose.

You can't have it both ways. Either you believe the majority of primary voters in each state should determine the party's choice of candidate for that state or you do not.

The history of the so-called superdelegate system within the DNC was specifically designed to thwart the nomination of candidates deemed "too progressive" by the party establishment. Which I'm sure you know. Stop with the bullshit.
 
You can't have it both ways. Either you believe the majority of primary voters in each state should determine the party's choice of candidate for that state or you do not.

The history of the so-called superdelegate system within the DNC was specifically designed to thwart the nomination of candidates deemed "too progressive" by the party establishment. Which I'm sure you know. Stop with the bullshit.

That's not accurate. It was designed to prevent unelectable general-election candidates more broadly. As a liberal, I am fine with the mix of representative democracy as a sanity check. But I think whatever your ideological leaning is, you can see that there are major problems in multi-candidate elections that need some kind of solution. Democrats require a majority (not merely a plurality) so a potential result is brokered conventions, which are less-democratic than the current system. Eliminating the majority requirement would lead to the possibility of highly unpopular candidates winning with a small plurality. Ranked-choice elections might be better. But as is, there's a built-in solution that seems to work well, and 2008 is really the only election in which you can argue that the people's choice wasn't selected (though the Michigan thing undermines that argument).
 
That's not accurate. It was designed to prevent unelectable general-election candidates more broadly.

Two words: George McGovern.

But keep pretending superdelegates exist to protect the democratic party from producing a general election candidate who is too far to the right.

And another thing: Trump proved there's a world of difference between being an unhinged outsider with nutty policy proposals and being "unelectable".
 
TBH, I think the argument that this change would have helped Bernie is a tricky one to make. I think you're absolutely correct that Hillary's entire campaign strategy, both in the primaries and the general, was to carefully cultivate this air of inevitability that attempted to exclude the very notion of any legitimate challenger. Starting with a huge superdelegate advantage and pumping that narrative to the press was an important part of that strategy and I think it did have the effect of suppressing other establishment democrat challengers. By the same token, however, I think it may be the very thing that created the opening for Bernie. Not only did the superdelegate structure alienate a measurable percentage of Dems, it made it possible to concentrate Hillary-opposition votes into a smaller pool of (and ultimately only one) potential candidates. While I do believe superdelegates helped Hillary I suspect removing them would empower some other mainstream dem more than it would Bernie.


I dont think that is accurate just based on polling (many diff polls over the last three years all the way to today) both of Bernie as a person and his policy positions. While I dont have the numbers here I have been following this pretty closely as an avid supporter. As a human being he is the most popular politician in america by far. I think this is not a fluke or a fad. He is a good person and one of the few who have not capitalized on his position for massive personal gain. On the level of policy, universal health care, a living minimum wage, publicly funded elections (to get out much of the corruption) taxing the very wealthy at a higher rate, getting us out of unnecessary wars, etc etc, his positions also are supported by a significant majority of democrats and progressives. I believe an honest discussion of these issues in the media (there has not been any) would only increase these numbers.

I really do think it took the muddy response of the corporate media, the corruption of the DNC and a candidate like Trump (who I believe is the fake version of Bernie) to get Bernie to lose the primaries.

Of course there is no way to know for sure but everything he stands for is basically what the majority of Democrats want. The only reason it doesn't happen is bribery-- AKA campaign donations.
 
Two words: George McGovern.

But keep pretending superdelegates exist to protect the democratic party from producing a general election candidate who is too far to the right.

And another thing: Trump proved there's a world of difference between being an unhinged outsider with nutty policy proposals and being "unelectable".

Well it depends on what narrative you believe.

In one narrative McGovern was unelectable.

In the other narrative, actually being willing to end the war in Vietnam, eliminated him as someone a corrupt democratic establishment would allow to win the nomination.

It basically comes down to whether you believe the MIC controls both parties.
 
Two words: George McGovern.

But keep pretending superdelegates exist to protect the democratic party from producing a general election candidate who is too far to the right.

Not pretending anything. Electability is the concern, regardless of the reason.

My take is that it is at least some minor level of protection against a left version of Trump.

Well it depends on what narrative you believe.

In one narrative McGovern was unelectable.

In the other narrative, actually being willing to end the war in Vietnam, eliminated him as someone a corrupt democratic establishment would allow to win the nomination.

It basically comes down to whether you believe the MIC controls both parties.

??? McGovern got the nomination.
 
??? McGovern got the nomination.

McGovern was getting slammed by Nixon in nationwide head-to-head polling. There was a basis for considering McG "unelectable" at that time in history.

Not even remotely comparable with what we saw in the 2016 Sanders v. Trump polls.
 
McGovern was getting slammed by Nixon in nationwide head-to-head polling. There was a basis for considering McG "unelectable" at that time in history.

Not even remotely comparable with what we saw in the 2016 Sanders v. Trump polls.

So? This isn't even about 2016 (2008 is the only time SDs have mattered to date), and I was responding to Viva talking about how McGovern was electable and wasn't allowed to get the nomination because of how evil Democrats are.
 
Not pretending anything. Electability is the concern, regardless of the reason.

My take is that it is at least some minor level of protection against a left version of Trump.



??? McGovern got the nomination.

Yep, and the creation of superdelegates in response to his nomination, shows exactly why I believe that McGovern was slandered by a media who was beholden to Nixon, and a DNC establishment that opposed McGovern.

This was actually one of my biggest worries for if Bernie had won the nomination. That the left leaning media would split in their support. Of course trump made that far less likely.
 
@Trotsky, this is the kind of thing that drives my opinion of that guy.

Your post re the Intercept being a "left-outreach arm of the GOP propaganda machine" was an objectively silly post.

If you think they are contrarian, hypercritical, or defeatist regarding the Democratic left, you'd have a stroke reading leftist publications (Salvage, New Left, Jacobin, In These Times, Counterpunch, etc.)
 
Your post re the Intercept being a "left-outreach arm of the GOP propaganda machine" was an objectively silly post.

If you think they are contrarian, hypercritical, or defeatist regarding the Democratic left, you'd have a stroke reading leftist publications (Salvage, New Left, Jacobin, In These Times, Counterpunch, etc.)

Whether you agree or disagree with the point I made is not the issue there. Read the exchange, and you can see why it is impossible to have a normal, reasonable discussion with the guy and why one would think that he's a shit-tier human.

That said, "Intercept types" refers to a type of person (Greenwald would certainly fit) rather than the magazine itself. I actually saw a piece in the Intercept attacking what I call Intercept types. Part of it:

Between the two available options, Bottoms clearly best represented the positions, policies, and people progressives should care about most. Yet at every single mention of her on Facebook or Twitter seems to get pushback from the left; some progressives will call her supporters a sellout, say they are supporting the Democratic establishment, and ask if they are being paid by the Democratic National Committee.

This is foolish. They speak as if the more progressive option was to support Norwood. It wasn’t — at all.

This is where progressives find themselves. When the preferred progressive candidate doesn’t win, either because they ran a bad campaign, struggled in the two-party system, or lacked the support they needed in other ways, progressives too often proceed to tear down the establishment candidate. I’m not speaking in code here about Hillary Clinton, either. I’ve seen this in races all over the country.

Progressives are terrible losers. And don’t get me wrong: I hate losing, too. I despise it. But when my preferred candidate loses, I simply don’t feel like I have the right to set the whole election ablaze. And that’s the rub for me. It’s far too easy for people who won’t be directly harmed by conservative policies and leadership to trash a Democratic candidate they didn’t prefer, at the risk of assisting their opponent. This isn’t me echoing the “If you aren’t for me, you are against me” style of politics. In primaries and large-field races, you should go hard for the candidate you love and support. But when you lose, a transition should take place.

Keisha Lance Bottoms is not perfect. Hell, if you thought Vincent Fort was perfect, you probably aren’t from Atlanta. But I have to be honest with you: Hating good candidates because they aren’t perfect is getting old. Critique their policies. Investigate their decision-making and financing. Do those things! But when a race comes down to a left-leaning Democrat and a right-leaning conservative, stop pretending like they are one in the same. Stop acting like the Democrat has cooties. Stop acting like you are so holy that you can’t lower yourself to vote or support a person endorsed by the establishment.

This type of thinking loses important elections and puts real people in harm’s way.

I've made those points many times here. But there's a reason that piece was in the Intercept taking the tone it was. Dude knows his audience.

Yep, and the creation of superdelegates in response to his nomination, shows exactly why I believe that McGovern was slandered by a media who was beholden to Nixon, and a DNC establishment that opposed McGovern.

This was actually one of my biggest worries for if Bernie had won the nomination. That the left leaning media would split in their support. Of course trump made that far less likely.

How did McGovern getting crushed in the election help the anti-war effort?
 
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It's not really a win unless they also prevent them from declaring their intentions to vote for a particular candidate before the primary process even starts. In both the 2008 and 2016 primaries, the vast majority of superdelegates supported Clinton out of the gate.
 
Keep pretending that the media counting those superdelegates for clinton, and saying over and over, that Bernie couldn't win, wasn't meant to depress voter turnout for Bernie.

I have never seen an examination of this point but it seems to me that a much larger percentage of reporting is on who is winning the horse race than was the case 30 or 40 years ago, which seems to help the candidate that the party apparatus supports, and the media companies have specific loyalties. I was surprised that Obama was able to overcome Hillary. Personally, I remember saying Bernie just blew his chance for good when he discredited attacks upon Hillary concerning the email scandal during one of the Dem debates. If Bernie had pushed the issue, he had a chance that many Dems would have jumped off the Hillary bandwagon, not because they care about ethics but to avoid nominating damaged goods. Then again, maybe not.

Concerning media companies and party affiliations, in my opinion FoxNews did virtually all it could do to stop Trump in the early stages of the nominating process. Their influence and the party apparatus couldn't stop him. Maybe, Hillary was an unstoppable juggernaut on the Dem side.
 
I have never seen an examination of this point but it seems to me that a much larger percentage of reporting is on who is winning the horse race than was the case 30 or 40 years ago, which seems to help the candidate that the party apparatus supports, and the media companies have specific loyalties. I was surprised that Obama was able to overcome Hillary. Personally, I remember saying Bernie just blew his chance for good when he discredited attacks upon Hillary concerning the email scandal during one of the Dem debates. If Bernie had pushed the issue, he had a chance that many Dems would have jumped off the Hillary bandwagon, not because they care about ethics but to avoid nominating damaged goods. Then again, maybe not.

Concerning media companies and party affiliations, in my opinion FoxNews did virtually all it could do to stop Trump in the early stages of the nominating process. Their influence and the party apparatus couldn't stop him. Maybe, Hillary was an unstoppable juggernaut on the Dem side.

So I think it was tit for tat, on the e-mail thing. Bernie played nice with clinton, which he always does as he runs a high road, issues based campaign. The Clinton/DNC camp was supposed to respond in kind.

Then that slimy crooked cunt, then starts going after Bernie on guns, and saying doesn't know anything about banking.

I think they made a deal, that Bernie would play nice, and Clinton would keep it above the belt. That is until Bernie made it close, and Clinton did the only thing she knows how to do, and that is be one of the dirtiest players in the game.
 
So I think it was tit for tat, on the e-mail thing. Bernie played nice with clinton, which he always does as he runs a high road, issues based campaign. The Clinton/DNC camp was supposed to respond in kind.

Then that slimy crooked cunt, then starts going after Bernie on guns, and saying doesn't know anything about banking.

I think they made a deal, that Bernie would play nice, and Clinton would keep it above the belt. That is until Bernie made it close, and Clinton did the only thing she knows how to do, and that is be one of the dirtiest players in the game.

Hillary had access to hundreds of FBI files while she was First Lady. Who knows what she knows about Bernie. Maybe he didn't think that he could win, or maybe he blundered his chance.
 
Hillary had access to hundreds of FBI files while she was First Lady. Who knows what she knows about Bernie. Maybe he didn't think that he could win, or maybe he blundered his chance.

Like is said, I think it was a calculated play on his part. It was smart of him to try and stay away from war with the whole DNC apparatus. It was dumb to trust that Clinton's word is worth the Charmin extra soft I will wipe my ass with.
 
It doesn't matter because when the DNC runs Dwayne Johnson in 2020 everyone will smell what the Rock is cooking.

<4><{smellit?}>

I'd only vote for him if his running mate is Stone Cold, who is surprsingly more liberal than the Rock based on what I've listened to by both.
 
I'd only vote for him if his running mate is Stone Cold, who is surprsingly more liberal than the Rock based on what I've listened to by both.

I would be very interested to hear more on this.

Also saw that Dave Bautista is pretty left-leaning. And just a pretty awesome guy over all. And hilarious to boot in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
 
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