Vote for the change you want to see.
The Republican party got remade because trumpists showed up and outvoted the party elites. No reason it can’t happen for the Left except for laziness and apathy.
If all the progressives furious about the state of affairs now had shown up for Sanders in 2016, I doubt we’d be in this hellish timeline. Sadly, he needed the young progressive vote to show up.
Bernie was doing well in 2016 until the DNC kneecapped him.
Get money out elections if you want change, but neither party is willing to. The oligarchy works for itself
Obama outperformed the establishment Democratic candidate in 2008 and became the candidate. It’s not impossible.
Oh to go back to a pre citizens united world! lol
I am once again asking to get money out of politics.
Get. Money. Out. Of. Politics.
Get money out of politics.
You just proved OP’s point.
Look at Obama. No one thought he could get past Hilary in 2008. He got his people motivated and hit the streets.
You want to get your candidate in? Organize!
That was before citizens united. This doesnt prove op’s left bashing. Like I said earlier GET MONEY OUT OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS
Sorry, there’s no magic genii going to pop up and reverse that decision.
You want change? Roll up your sleeves and get to work. And typing all caps doesn’t count as work.
I haven’t stopped since 2015 (edit: worked on sanders camp). Stop deflecting with nonsense
Did the DNC stop anyone from voting? There was nothing to stop us from outvoting the establishment. “Oh no, the moderators liked Clinton!” The RNC tried way harder with trump and failed.
Are we not as capable as goddamn republicans?
Do you understand how superdelegates work? they’re not assigned by vote.
As well, the Bernie campaign was blocked from accessing the voter rolls because they reported a bug to the DNC that allowed them to view stuff the clinton campaign was doing. They did not exploit it, they just reported it.
Also, did you read that hacked/leaked memo where the DNC chair admitted to intentionally sabotaging Bernie’s campaign? no one has ever contested the contents of that memo. in fact the DNC chair resigned over it. (and you’re an idiot if you think Hilary wasn’t pressuring the DNC chair to do just that. Hilary always has someone else to throw under her campaign bus.)
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. And then she went and hid under Hillary’s skirts, like she was an enabled naughty child, rather than a malicious, feckless adult woman.
You do realize the super delegates never came into play right? I mean I’m sure they would have if they needed them to but it never got that far.
They were actively endorsing Hilary.
Yes, they came into play, even if they didn’t yet cast their vote.
That’s their right as americans. Anyone can endorse anyone they want. That’s called freedom of speech.
I don’t see how that would have any effect on anything however though. Or how it’s in any way untoward. If you’re suggesting that one of these super delegates supposed endorsement of Hillary Clinton pushed leftists to vote for her though I’d love to see how you justify that argument.
That’s their right as americans. Anyone can endorse anyone they want. That’s called freedom of speech.
As a private person, yes. As a representative of the DNC… only if the DNC allows you to. Same as how you’re not allowed to say “[I am an X for Y employer] and we support Mickey Mouse for President” without consequence (probably getting fired, unless you’re specifically authorized to announce it,).
As for how it affects primaries, you remember all the backlash people got for saying Biden was a bad candidate? All the calls for “party loyalty”? Same thing. That’s how it affects things.
Delegates are in no way employed by a party. The entire point of delegates is to endorse a candidate. So these hypothetical super delegates and their supposed endorsement in no way is equal to a direct employee of the party endorsing a candidate.
That’s how what affects things? You’re saying that leftist didn’t vote for Bernie Sanders because liberals said that would be bad for the party? Well they’re pretty shitty leftists then aren’t they? Why is it so God damn easy for leftists not to vote? I mean the wind changes and suddenly they decide that voting is pointless. I have trouble believing you actually believe this. I have trouble believing any at leftist is so easily cowed as to not vote for their best interest because a capitalist says they shouldn’t.
You do realize they actually did right?
I watched the DNC do everything they could to throw the election to the worst candidate they have ever run, simply because their donors didn’t want to give everyone health care.
That election turned an entire generation into people who don’t bother voting because nothing will ever change.
We didn’t even fucking GET a primary this time. How can I vote in a primary that doesn’t even really exist? The Democrats end up with the candidate they want one way or another.
The stupid ass Russian propaganda that you people swallowed afterwards turned you into a generation of non voters.
Oh please. The russians had nothing to do with Hillary fucking over Bernie. That was all her.
But keep assuming that you can blame the democrats failings on Russia. If trump wasn’t running the dems would lose this election because they lost so many votes.
Look at them running to dick fucking cheney and his goon daughter instead of the Muslim vote that can actually win them a swing state.
You gonna say that the Muslims in Michigan are falling for Russian propaganda about a genocide too?
Maybe you don’t?
Sanders didn’t win a majority of the votes so whether the super delegates would’ve over-ridden the votes is fairly irrelevant.
You can argue it wasn’t a completely balanced playing field but there was nothing stopping us from winning the votes except for our refusal to show up rather than removed online.
Iowa was a hair thin win for clinton, New Hampshire was an overwhelming win for Bernie.
And that’s when they the DNC started fucking with the Bernie campaign. The superdelegates piling in was making it further impossible for Bernie to win.
The DNC should just stop pretending it actually cares what it’s base thinks. it’s not like they’re legally obligated to run a primary anyway.
Also. you do know that candidates in the primary rely on equal access to the voter rolls precisely to reach potential voters and turn out the vote, right? that database was what they DNC cut Bernie off of.
what makes you think I didn’t vote for Bernie?
“it wasn’t a level playing field, but you could have still won!” is such a ~~removed~~dick move, it’s hilarious. we will never know what Bernie could have done had they not interfered in the primary. Similarly we won’t know just how far the DNC would have gone to prevent a Bernie win.
they did enough to break Bernie’s momentum and then Hilary fucking lost the main election. in part because she was an arrogant fool and ignored Michigan.
people like you. You’re the people that practically gave trump the win on a silver platter.
The superdelegates weren’t bound to Clinton. If Sanders had kept winning the vote they’d be hard pressed to over-ride the people.
I’m not saying you didn’t vote for Bernie, I’m saying not enough people did. This blaming superdelegates is nonsense. Democracy is dificult, people die just to make a protest vote but somehow the fact that Clinton had a lead in uncommitted delegates is too much of a burden? Give me a break. If you want a revolution but can’t actually get the majority of leftist voters to the polls, well, that’s on us.
Are you acknowledging that there was indeed foul play, just to then handwave it away and say no one should object to said foul play because we lost?
Nope. Maybe re-read the sentence carefully:
The superdelegates weren’t bound to Clinton. If Sanders had kept winning the vote they’d be hard pressed to over-ride the people.
At the end of the day, Sanders had 43% of the vote compared to Clinton’s 55%. That doesn’t involve super delegates, that’s just not enough progressives showed up to win. Pretty simple stuff.
Like, I love the folks claiming we need a revolution etc are also stymied by the need to get the majority of Left leaning Americans to agree with them.
People like you are the reason Democrats can’t unite fyi, reducing problems of people who did exactly what you’re saying and got shat on once again
More young people voted in 2016 than ever before. We showed up. The boomers overwhelmed us.
Yup. Young votes don’t show up to the general or primaries at anywhere near the same rate as boomers. And sadly, democracy caters more to those who vote.
Yes they did actually, do you not know or remember what fucking happened??
This response is ironic considering your post.
Failure to acknowledge how the DNC and super delegates operated in 2016 is a great way to ensure the rightward ratchet.
The super delegates do not change the fact that Clinton got 3,5 million more votes in the primaries than Sanders did. Or, to put it another way, Sanders got 43% of the vote compared to Clinton’s 55%. Those are voters, not pledged delegates.
Blaming superdelegates is a great way to make sure we don’t change a damn thing. (Also, the DNC changed the role of super delegates afterwards to make them less powerful.)
Everything you listed here is putting the cart before the horse.
Bernie was doing well until the DNC put all of its backing into Clinton and even ran negative ads against Bernie.
Get money out of elections if you want change. If you’re just looking to bash people to the left, carry on as you are.
No, the cart always has to be voters. Actually showing up to the polls has to be the cart. Anything before that is nonsense. Leftist will never ever ever have any power in this nation unless they show the fuck up. A lot of leftists don’t want to show up they just want to sit back and complain.
This is nonsense. I worked on Bernie’s campaign in 2016. I saw what happened.
Oh cool! Tell us exactly what you saw then.
You saw what happened? You saw more votes go to the other candidate? Because that’s what happened.
I’m not actually trying to argue one way or the other, but
No, the cart always has to be voters. Actually showing up to the polls has to be the cart. Anything before that is nonsense.
You’re literally putting the cart before everything else, including the horse. Work on your metaphors a little.
You’re totally right I should have put horse there.
“Oh no, the bad guys ran ads against us!”
If we can’t overcome horrific barriers like that, how on Earth do you expect wr achieve anything meaningful? Literally all we had to do was get people to show up and vote.
Yeah dude idk if you understand politics at all, so there are people. And those people get informed. Often by ads. And you see, the Clinton campaign was skirting campaign finance law by funneling money through the DNC and then taking that money for her campaign to run attack ads against a primary opponent when that money was promised to states and to whoever won the primary.
So yes, the person who won broke the law in order to gain the upper hand to win but it’s our fault for not voting harderer. So many of yall DNC worshipers think it’s all the progressives don’t vote, or only vote in the presidential elections, meanwhile they literally turn out way higher than any other block of voters in EVERY election.
The problem is money. Literally so much money they had to illegally funnel it through the DNC instead of a single campaign to gain that money.
So according to your logic then, no one should worry about this logic as Harris has roughly half a billion more than trump?
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
meanwhile they literally turn out way higher than any other block of voters in EVERY election.
I’d love to see a source for this. Especially as Clinton won 55% of the primary votes compared to Sanders’ 43%, were the progressives secretly voting for Clinton? Or do those elections not count even though, especially to a progressive, they’d matter more?
Removed by mod
Funny how that comment is getting downvoted heavily.
You annoyed somebody
remind me, what Primary did I get to vote in to pick against Harris?
That super cool one with Dean Philips and Marianne Williamson. But frankly there wasn’t really a ready pool of willing candidates, and there still isn’t.
The very public V.P. courtship process was sort of the de facto primary we got. Or the closest thing to it.
Maybe in bizzaro land, Harris wasn’t listed on my ballot in 2020
She was on the ballot in the primaries, which is entirely the point of the post.
So what, being VP guarantees you as the party nominee in the next election?
What on Earth are you trying to say?
Harris and Biden were on the ballot in 2020, as were more progressive candidates. As usual, more moderates and centrists did the boring grown up work of showing up and voting in the primaries and thus, Biden won.
So, how many delegates did she get then?
deleted by creator
I would need to know what US state [if any] you are registerer to vote in to look up what your primary options were. And how you might have used it best to state an opinion.
In NJ:
We did have the uncommited option (got 9%, nearly the rest to Biden at the time, you could have also written in any other elegable person) However we also had a senate race:
In the democratic primary senator race, the results were (aprox) 9% for Lawrence Hamm 16% for Patricia Campos-Medina 75% for Andy Kim
If you want the US to be less involved with the Netanyahu government Kim was the worse of the three.
And this decision (ie who will be in the senate, driving laws) makes a huge difference in the party wide policy, that is the primary policy Biden (now Harris) is following… Since the president is inherently a centrist roll. (Ie center of those the people elect, this can of course shift left/right/up/down/ect with the electorate)
Is the system perfect no… (but posts on instant runnoff voting, or ranked choice will make the post a book, and they are not yet the system in play, last these systems would really only help reiterate the signal the primaries give… It would be still someone in the center of the electorate at the top… And if we are lucky more parties)
Not the best argument in 2024 given the circumstance but yes, in 2020, the “we need someone to beat Trump” crowd scoffed on the idea of Warren (my pick) or Bernie. But with the current system it kind of makes less sense too since Biden mostly won support in states he had no shot winning, so by the time it was even CAs turn there was no hope.
At least in 2008 I felt like it worked. Obama was a thousand times better than Clinton.
Totally fair point about 2024. Though I would suggest that given Sanders’ outspoken opposition to what’s happening in Gaza, we might have a very different situation in the middle East had progressives voted in sufficient numbers in 2020. (Which in of itself would be a good thing but when I see complaints about Harris also being bad for Palestineans, this is my first thought.)
I doubt it would have made a difference. DWS would have ratfucked it for Hilary even if Bernie got more votes. Nobody ever remembers the unpledged delegates which are about 20% of the total and don’t have to follow the will of the voters.
DWS would have ratfucked it
Conspiracy theorists are mentally ill.
Meh, I’d be pretty stunned if Bernie had won more votes and then the super delegates turned around and gave it to Clinton.
Given that we didn’t get anywhere near that, it’s a moot point. Let’s get the majority of votes in a damn primary before we start complaining about what the super delegates might or might not do.
Yeah, I know exactly why you memed it and I’m only poking fun since 2024 was primary-less. I’m not sure if anyone would have approached Gaza differently (save for some of the crazier options, like Tulsi Gabbard) because even Bernie might find himself in a bind on this one.
At this point I almost fell like we just need more people to get into politics. More AOCs rising the ranks, but even getting smarter people running the DNC. Too bad most of the poli-sci people I’ve met in school were dense as hell.
Edit: oh dear, 2020 was more depressing primary than I remember. Biden won such Democratic strongholds as… Oklahoma. Texas. Arkansas. Alabama. etc etc. I get that the minority blue in those states should get some say, but they are who you can thank for Biden. I mean, Florida handed him 162 delegates to Bernie’s 57. Ugh.
What Democratic primaries?
In case you’re unaware, there were tons of them around the nation. There wasn’t one for the president this time, but there were still plenty of primaries that were very influential. Your local officials have more impact on you than the president does.
So even in local elections people are not allowed to vote for a third party?
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you just want to act like you’re a victim for no reason, while also acting like you have some moral highground?
Of course you can vote third party. I’d still do it strategically, but local is where they can actually win and gain influence. You can also vote in the Democrat and third party primaries (if they have them) to get candidates that suit you better.
Odds are a leftist will run under the Democrat banner, and try to win local primaries, and this is how parties change. They don’t change from presidential elections (usually, Trump arguably did but I’d argue that change was happening for a long time locally first). You need to win local elections and build a power base of enthusiastic voters and experienced politicians (and donors). They usually have to prove themselves locally first, and if you aren’t supporting them then you’re never going to have someone you like in positions of power.
You’re allowed to do whatever you want.
If you want to actually make a difference you use strategy.
The smart play is to get a Left leaning Dem nominated. Most voters aren’t going to vote for a 3rd Party candidate no matter how good they are.
I’d rather vote for a mild Left candidate who has a real chance of winning than throw my vote away on my ideal candidate.
There wasn’t one for the president this time, but there were still plenty of primaries that were very influential.
There technically was, it just not one where other candidates can really compete. The incumbent is pretty much guaranteed to win their primary.
AOC has entered the chat.
The guy she unseated in the primary was along term incumbent with lots of connections to the NYC establishment.
If the DNC was fully filled with a bunch of AOC types, we’d be leagues ahead on so many things this country is fucking up.
Granted, that is in part dependent on a country that would accept an AOC style DNC.
Look at what FDR actually did back in the day. If we had a CCC today they’d be working on climate change and high speed rail.
No, for the president there literally wasn’t. The party gets to choose to hold a primary. It isn’t a given. Usually they don’t hold one if the previous president is running again. There were primaries for other positions, but there was not a Democratic primary for the president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
It very much happened. I remember voting for Philips for the 2024 DNC presidential primary.
Probably state by state? I remember when I was complaining about party interference with Bernie, then CO saw which way things were going with Trump, and decided to cancel their primary and award all delegates to his opposition (I don’t remember who was still standing).
Edit: Nevermind I finally clicked the link after opening my big mouth and saw that the map shows no primaries were cancelled in 2024. I’ll leave this as a warning. People, don’t be like me. Click the link before replying.
Nevermind I finally clicked the link after opening my big mouth
Props to you for taking responsibility for that.
Oh, yeah. You’re right. I remember that now. It didn’t last long and I don’t know if it ever made it to my state with anyone left.
By the time my state got it’s turn, Philips had already dropped out and endorsed Biden. Still voted for him in the primary because he was basically the only other option.
Dude, I literally voted in the primary. What the fuck are you talking about?
2016 or 2020.
You underestimate the power of whining online.
MAGA is the result of decades of talk radio and pseudo-journalism aimed at curating a very specific way of seeing the world.
They refined a narrative that was persuasive, easy to upload into people, consistent in how it framed emergent issues, and instilled a sense of urgency that encouraged its adherents to spread the gospel and get politically active.
Obviously, we need to vote. But if you think victory is getting a Bernie 2.0 to 51% in a primary, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed by the general. It needs to be a slam dunk. We need a cultural win before we can have an electoral win.
That cultural win gets won from the bottom up, the people need to vote politicians like AOC and Bernie into every seat that comes up for election in every layer of government and push every neoliberal incumbent out. From local school board elections to the senate. That means that people need to show up and vote in every primary and election and not wait for the big one once every four years. The left wing of the party needs to put more focus and money in these smaller elections and put actual leftists or progressives candidates on those local ballots. That’s how the Tea Party and Maga republicans gained power inside the GOP.
I bet many of the Bernie voters have never voted in a local election in the years prior to that primary.
Promote NPVIC and RCV in your state.
Electoral politics won’t work in favour of leftist goals. The system is rigged from the start.
Best you can do is vote for a lesser evil.
How are they rigged? Except for requiring a majority, which seems reasonable, If we can’t get a majority of the Left to agree with us, then what is your alternative? Force them to adopt your ideals?
Multiple people have explained to you exactly how the primaries have been rigged.
And they’re making silly arguments.
At the end of the day, Sanders got 43% of the vote to Clinton’s 55%. That has nothing to do with Superdelegates. We just couldn’t get enough progressives to go vote. That’s it. That’s the entire issue.
Money wins elections and nobody with money is going to help a leftist.
Just look at how basically every left party in Europe has become a neoliberal painted in a different color. Germany has a coalition of “social democrats”, a green party and liberals and they still cut welfare, try to deport black/brown people (sorely needed on the job market) and screw up climate politics.
Every concession made in favour of the left has been reached through mass movements.
Maybe - and yeah this is fucking WILD but hear me out - maybe Leftism just isn’t as popular as you think it is?
Usually, leftist politics, like cutting taxes for wages and raising taxes for the rich is quite popular.
And sorry that I’m judging a party for not being leftist when its’ name is literally “social democrats”. /s
People are stupid. They like Leftist policies, but as soon as a Leftist says them, they hate it.
They voted for supposedly left-leaning parties (and a liberal one). 🙄
Yeah, it’s boring and hard. That’s just life. Now get out and vote or get used to living in a christofascist hell.
You would vote in the Republic primaries…
Don’t try to stretch the Overton window. You need to move the right side of the window left.This is how black people in the south managed the Democratic party; by voting for the least racist Democrats in the primaries, no matter who won the general election they were better off.
It’s basically ad hoc ranked choice and it prevents extremist candidates from winning.
This is how black people in the south managed the Democratic party; by voting for the least racist Democrats in the primaries
The black voter enjoyed a heavy Republican bias for nearly a century, and suffered much of the same treatment (GOP treated them as a captured constituency, Dixiecrats suppressed their turnout with fraud, incarceration, and terrorism).
By Kennedy, the northern Dems were embracing civil rights not as an electoral strategy but a labor organizing strategy. The vote was largely split, with black voters biasing by party in individual regions rather than as a national block.
It wasn’t into Clinton - when Southern Strategy Repubs had fully purged their party of black voters - that the trend was fully reversed. That wasn’t a decision by the NAACP or the median black voter. It was a Nixonian gambit. Black voters were viewed as a handicap. Appealing to fascism was how you obtained a majority in American politics.
Reagan, the Bushs, and then Trump seemed to further this theory. You’ll get two white voters for every black voter you lose, by being the most racist candidate in the ticket.
But… but… but that would mean… making an actual effort! Playing the long game! BO-RING!!!
bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTeAmerica would be a better place if people realised politics happens 24/7 and not once every 4 years.
Because in people’s mind, politic is purely about backstabbing and rich people party, and not about governing and policy making.
When people say that, they usually don’t mean voting in primaries or wasting your precious life in a party.
My state has one of the very last primaries, after the outcome is already decided. I did vote for Bernie in 2016 and 2020, but it meant nothing because he had already dropped out of the race by then.
Fair. The state by state process seems so weird to me. (So, we should vote more folks into the DNC and change it! There’s a theme here somewhere…)
Expecting to change the system from within is laughably naive. We still can’t pass legislation to replace the electoral college, 24 years after Al Gore got cheated.
Shouting down people who try to talk about real problems with “Well then I guess you should’ve voted!” is obnoxiously unhelpful. removed, I fucking did vote, and the problem is still here, so what now?
“I voted and things are STILL bad? I was promised everything would change if I voted!”
See how silly that sounds?
Trump radically remade the GOP because his people showed up and voted. Sanders could’ve if we had voted.
If you can’t even get enough people on the Left to show up and vote for a progressive, how on Earth do you expect to enact more radical change?
So are you admitting that voting alone isn’t enough? That you can’t just promise everything will be solved by voting?
Because then I’m asking you to stop shouting down the voices of those us feeling disenfranchised by a rigged system.
What? How is that your take away from the comment above? Did you mean to respond to something else?
“I voted and things are STILL bad? I was promised everything would change if I voted!”
I’m responding to this. I know you can’t just promise that everything will change through voting alone. So why is this whole thread just you shouting down those of us who feel rightfully disenfranchised about it?
Holy goddamn, really?
Yes, one vote doesn’t change anything, especially not in a country of 300 million.
But getting a lot of people to vote does change things.
If you’re actually so childish as to believe “well, I voted so everything should be fixed”, holy damn, adulthood is going to be difficult.
Not getting your way even though you cast a vote is normal. Not getting our way when progressives outvote the moderates, well, that’d be a different story but so far it hasn’t happened because we don’t show up in sufficient numbers to win.
I agree with the comic, just a kinda funny election year to post it.
Biden ran virtually unopposed in the primaries this year, despite his low approval numbers. And while you’d have to go back to the 19th century to find an incumbent denied the nomination, there have been serious challengers like Ted Kennedy to Jimmy Carter in more recent history. Seems the problem is also with lack of serious challengers, as well as lack of participation in the process from those looking for more significant change.
Yeah, odd without a primary. But think back to 2020. Bernie ran again and is strenuously opposed to what’s happening in Gaza. If we’d shown up to vote in the 2020 primaries, I wonder/pray/doubt we’d be inches away from a trump presidency.
I kinda wish I could, but I can’t vote in primaries unless I’m registered with the party and the way the
nazisMAGAs have been acting I don’t exactly want to put myself on a registered enemies list… I’ve been registered independent since 2016 :(I don’t think anyone is mad about this idea
You know the GOP elites weren’t really outvoted. A lot of them are comfortably still in office. A bunch of others just retired and handed them the keys. The biggest gift Trump gave the GOP is his ability to be a lightning rod of controversy and dominate the news cycle.
He is the best cover and distraction from their dogshit policies they could ever have dreamed of.
