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robertreich · 5 years

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Presidential Primaries: What You Need to Know

Every four years, our country holds a general election to decide who will be our next president. Before that happens, though, each party must choose its candidate through primary elections. But our system of primaries can be a bit confusing. So here’s a quick primer on the upcoming primaries, containing the most important things you need to know based on the most frequently asked questions: Are primaries, caucuses, and conventions written into the Constitution? No. The Constitution says nothing about primaries or caucuses. Or about political parties. So where did primaries and caucuses come from? From the parties themselves. The first major political party convention was held in 1831 by the National Republican Party (also known as the Anti-Jacksonian Party). The first Democratic National Convention was held in 1832. Who decides how primaries are run? It’s all up to the parties at the state level. Political parties can even decide not to hold a primary. This year, five states have decided not to hold Republican presidential primaries and caucuses, a move designed to stop Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers. Can state laws override party decisions? No. In 1981, the Supreme Court held that the Democratic Party wasn’t required to admit Wisconsin delegates to its national convention since they hadn’t been selected in accordance with Democratic Party rules. The court said that a political party is protected by the First Amendment to come up with its own rules. Why did we start holding primaries? In the 19th century, the process for deciding on a party’s nominee was controlled by party bosses, who chose the delegates to the party conventions. In the early 20th century, some states began to hold primaries to choose delegates for party nominating conventions. Although the outcomes of those primaries weren’t binding, they sent a message about how a candidate might do in a general election. In 1960, for example, John F. Kennedy’s victory in the West Virginia primary [archival footage] was viewed by Democratic Party leaders as a strong sign that a Catholic like Kennedy could win the votes of Protestants. As recently as 1968, a candidate could still become the Democratic nominee without participating in any primaries, as Hubert Humphrey did that year. But since then, both parties have changed their rules so their presidential nominees depend on the outcomes of primaries and caucuses. They made these changes to better ensure their candidates would succeed in the general election. What’s the difference between a caucus and a primary? States that hold primaries allow voters to cast secret ballots in support of candidates. States that hold caucuses rely instead on local in-person gatherings at a particular time and place -- maybe in a high school gym or a library -- where voters who turn up openly decide which candidates to support. Here are the states that will have Democratic primaries in 2020 and those that will have caucuses: Iowa, Nevada, Kansas, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Maine. What’s the advantage of one over the other? Primaries are the easiest way to vote. Caucuses are more difficult to participate in, so the people who turn out for them are usually the most enthusiastic and engaged voters. In caucuses for the 2008 and 2016 Democratic nominations, for example, Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama and then to Bernie Sanders. Fewer than 5 percent of pledged delegates will be awarded by caucuses in the upcoming Democratic primary, down from 14 percent in 2016. Are Democratic and Republican primaries the same? No. One of the biggest differences is in how delegates are allocated. In the Democratic Party delegates are allocated proportionally -- so that, for example, a candidate who wins 40 percent of a state’s vote in the Democratic primary will win 40 percent of that state’s delegates. The Republican Party allows each individual state to choose how its delegates are allocated, with some states allocating delegates proportionally and some giving all their delegates to the winner of the primary. Another difference involves what are known as “superdelegates” -- typically elected officials and prominent party members like former presidents or congressional leaders. These superdelegates are automatically seated at the party’s national convention and can vote however they like. Superdelegates are still used by the Democratic Party but the Republican Party eliminated superdelegates in 2012. In 2018, the Democratic Party reduced the power of superdelegates, allowing them to vote only in contested conventions, when no candidate has a majority of votes going into the convention. What’s the difference between an open, semi-closed, and closed primary? Some states have closed primaries, where the only people who can participate are those that have registered as members of a political party. Independents and members of another party are not eligible. Other states have semi-closed primaries, in which both registered party members and Independents can vote. Different states also have different rules about when voters must choose which primary they wish to vote in -- for example, registering with a party on the day of the primary or even at the time of voting. In open-primary states, any registered voter can participate in which ever party’s primary they choose. Why is Iowa first? Why is New Hampshire second? How is that order determined? It may seem odd that the first two primaries occur in tiny overwhelmingly white rural states -- and it is. But hey, here we are. Iowa’s caucus is first, by tradition. New Hampshire’s primary must occur at least seven days before any other primary, according to New Hampshire state law. Originally held in March of a presidential election year, the New Hampshire primary has repeatedly been moved forward in order to maintain its status as the first primary. What’s “Super Tuesday?” That’s the Tuesday during primary season when the greatest number of states hold primary elections. This year, Super Tuesday will be March 3 -- coming after the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada Democratic caucus, and the South Carolina Democratic primary. And Super Tuesday will be really super because two huge states with lots of delegates -- California and Texas -- have both moved their primaries to March 3. All told, 9 states will hold primaries that day, including 6 of the most-populous -- meaning almost 29 percent of the U.S. population will have a chance to get in on picking the presidential candidates that day. So once a state’s voters have decided on their candidates, how are the specific delegates to a party convention chosen? The national parties have left that up to their state parties, so it varies from state to state. Delegates are typically party activists or insiders who have been supporters of the candidate they’re chosen to represent at the national party convention. Do delegates to a national party convention have to vote for the candidate they've pledged to support? Both parties’ rules require that they do, at least on the first ballot. What’s a contested convention? A contested convention is one where no candidate has a majority of delegates going into the convention. When was the last contested convention? A while back, but we could see one again this year. In 1984, Vice President Walter Mondale entered the Democratic convention only a few delegates short of a majority. In 1976 Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan competed for the Republican nomination, and at the start of the convention neither had a majority. What’s a brokered convention? A brokered convention occurs when, after the first round of voting, still no candidate has a majority of delegates. If that happens, delegates are then free to vote for whomever they want. When was the last brokered convention? You have to go all the way back to 1952 to find a brokered convention. That year both conventions were brokered. Adlai Stevenson finally emerged as the Democratic nominee and Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican. But here again, it might happen in 2020. Which party’s convention comes first? And when and where? By tradition, the party that holds the White House holds its nominating convention after the party that seeks the White House. So this year, the Democratic National Convention will be July 13 through 16 in Milwaukee. The Republican National Convention will be August 24 to August 27, in Charlotte. Are vice presidential candidates chosen or announced at the convention? Not necessarily. Presidential nominees often announce their choice of running mates in the days or weeks leading up to the nominating conventions. So what do we do? Make sure you’re registered and be sure to vote -- in your state primaries or caucuses, and in the general election November 3!

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quakerjoe · 5 years

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You know how “I told you so” isn’t polite? Sanders supporters, warning you about how this is going to be a repeat of 2016, won’t be so civil about it.

Choosing Biden because you find him “electable” is a coward’s out. You’re no better than a conservative. You’re feckless and ball-less. Clearly, you fear change or have that good ol’ #Murican attitude of “I got mine, so fuck the rest of y’all!”

Going back to “normal” is Biden’s only real promise. Normal? You mean, like the era that led up to trump being elected because he was the outsider? You dumb fucks. Seriously. You’re all that fuckin’ STOOPID. Trump won because the nation wanted a radical; an outsider promising change to the nation- someone who was going to clean house. All the polling data back then reflected that Sanders would have kicked trump’s ass, but no... Y’all chose HRC; the woman funding and running the DNC back then. So, we got what we deserved. Now we’re paying for that ignorance, and even I swallowed a bit of pride and voted for her and, not unlike some of you today, I scorned and tried to shame 3rd party voters and those who chose to abstain. Well, I recant all that. I now see the light, and it’s shit-brown.

To defeat a radical like trumpnuts, it’ll take an actual, HONEST radical to counter him. Sanders’ record over decades has been the same. He’s been consistent. He’s been unbought and honest. If that’s not “electable” then I don’t know what the fuck is. Yosemite? You think Sanders didn’t achieve much? Clearly you didn’t bother to do ANY research. You probably heard the word “socialism” in there somewhere and peed yourself. “He’s not a REAL Democrat!” NO SHIT! That’s not the bug, sunshine, that the fuckin’ FEATURE! What has the Democratic Party done for YOU lately?

Has the DNC done ANYTHING to make Election Days holidays so we all get it off from work?

FUCK NO.

Has the DNC been open and vigilant about gerrymandering, exposing those who do it, and made serious attempts at stopping it?

FUCK NO.

Has the DNC been fighting to ensure safe elections?

FUCK NO.

Has the DNC been on top of making sure that there are enough polling stations for everyone in their districts and that they’re not being closed down?

FUCK NO.

Have they been vigilant about making laws to ensure that the minimum wage keeps up with inflation and the cost of living?

FUCK NO.

Where the unholy fuck were all of you sanctimonious motherfuckers during Obama’s tenure? You handed BOTH the House AND Senate to the GOP and fuck-all NOTHING got done. I was at the voting booth. Where the fuck were YOU?

This last election with this “Blue Wave” everyone was ranting about that won the House... AND... What about the Senate??? Nope. Still run by the GOP and they’ve been cock-blocking practically ALL legislation. The Democrats are SO feckless that they’re trying to offer a bill for table scraps during this epidemic while the GOP is offering 4X MORE. Well done, Pelosi- make the GOP look like heroes just so you can keep your own cashflow issues at bay. You jerkoffs couldn’t even do an impeachment right and you only made trump MORE popular because you allowed yourselves to be pushed around and defeated even though you had Rule of Law on your side. What a bunch of useless twats.

NOW you expect us all to just fall in line and back you up and vote for Biden? Screw that and screw you.

Not all of Sanders’ supporters will help you. More of US backed Clinton last time than did HER supporters did Obama- they backed McCain and that twat Palin. We didn’t forget that. Clinton supporters BACKED McCain!!! Did you forget that?

We are also well aware of how you look down your chicken beaks at us and what is going to happen either way here; let’s be real. If, or likely WHEN Biden loses to trump, you’ll blame us. If, by some miracle, Joe DOES win, you won’t mention us at all or give any sort of “thank you, Sanders supporters, for coming on board” and share that victory with us.

Many of us will hold our nose and vote for the turd of a babbling idiot candidate, but admit it; you’re not sure who I’m talking about really, do you- trump or Biden?

Many of us will go and vote downballot and just NOT vote for potus because we’re sick of being force-fed a hot plate of shit by the Democrats who are even right NOW, pushing for we voters to get sick and catch COVID-19 INSTEAD of postponing the primaries a month or so to keep us all safe. They KNOW some of us will get sick and die, but it’s a sacrifice the Democrats are willing to make to keep Joe’s head of steam going and keep a social democrat from recovering and maybe even winning the nomination.

Some of us won’t come out to vote at all for many reasons, but that you and your spineless party lost the faith of the people, and that’s on you and your establishment, bought-and-sold attitudes towards us. The growing numbers of Independents and the shrinking numbers of Democrats is telling, but party politics and cash flow and power are more important than actually fighting to help those you claim to represent. That’s on you, Democratic Party. You’re weak, you’re toothless and you’re spineless. The GOP knows this and so do many of your voters. Like the GOP, you offer nothing but platitudes and condescension, only the GOP will fight like a schoolyard bully to get what they want you and just sit around in your civil circle-jerks, sipping tea while you tell each other how great you are.

We Sanders supporters are also well aware that if things come down to it being a brokered convention that the ‘superdelegates’ have ALREADY vowed to NOT vote for Sanders and they’ll just screw him anyway. So, clearly you neither need nor want our support, so remember that before even thinking about running your cowardly mouth. Clearly, you don’t want any real change in the US. You’ll push for yesterday’s news while risking 4 more of trump. That’s on YOU fuckwits; not us. Take some goddamn responsibility for once; your GOP is showing out of your fly. You may want to zip up.

When the General Election comes, I’ll be voting for actual CHANGE. If it’s not on the ballot, then there’s fuck-all for me to vote for, is there..?

Lastly, for all the shit-talk people like to throw around about ‘unity’ and ‘vote blue no matter who’ and how anyone disagreeing with anti-Sanders snowflakes because “Boo-hoo! Someone was mean to me on the internet!”, y’all can pucker up and suck my ass. You’re uneducated, toothless bullshit has revealed that you “Biden Bros” are every bit as mean; the difference being that MY team wants change and to save us ALL. Your team is in it only to save your own asses, and you don’t realize that the people you’re trying to save it from is yourselves.

So, to conclude, if you’re pushing for Biden and not Sanders, you can go get fucked. I’ll be standing by watching it all Bern to the ground while YOU are the ones actually stoking the fires higher. God, you people are weak, stupid, and chicken-shit.

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 5 years

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a post about the Democratic primary, which I did not enjoy writing

I haven’t talked about the Democratic primary here for a couple of reasons. I think that wrapping our minds about what Trump is doing in power – and what he and his backers did to get him that power – is a lot more important than any campaign tactic his eventual Democratic opponent can use, or even who the Democratic candidate is. I don’t even know who I’ll be voting for myself.

What I do know is that above all other issues, I’ll be voting on democratic values. That includes more conventional voting rights and election integrity issues that we’re used to discussing in American politics. It’s also about pounding the brakes on democratic backsliding at home, and giving institutional and moral support to people around the world who want the same. If we make enough progress on this issue, we can make enormous strides on other progressive priorities. If we don’t turn back this authoritarian tide, we will lose on everything else.

And on my #1 issue, I’ve developed serious concerns about Senator Bernie Sanders.

This is a long post because it’s an attempt to articulate an uncomfortable pattern which requires a lot of context, but I hope you’ll take the time to read it, so let me assure you of a few things it’s not:

Concerns about Sanders seem to be collapsed into “is he as extreme and irrational a leftist as Trump is a right-winger” or “is he too kooky to win an election.” I’m not doing either of those. There is an argument out there that Sanders is too far to the left on policy. I’m … really not the person to do that argument justice. There’s an argument that, whether or not you like his policies, he would have a harder time winning a national election in a year that Democrats cannot afford any more disadvantages. I think this election really is going to be won or lost by the voters choosing to accept or reject Trumpistani autocracy, but it’s entirely responsible to consider that kind of thing. I have a substantive concern about Bernie Sanders, not because I oppose progressives but because I am a progressive, and I don’t pretend to have any insight into how it might affect his chances of winning a general election.

I don’t care a whole lot about what Senator Sanders feels in his heart or whatever. I tend to think this is more about being misguided than malicious, but that’s not make or break for the pattern I’m trying to describe.

I’m not trying to endorse someone else by process of elimination; like I said, I haven’t decided yet who I’m voting for myself.

I’m old enough to remember four years ago when only a few nerds had ever heard of superdelegates. Superdelegates, or unpledged delegates, are party activists and officials who get to vote at the convention along with the pledged delegates who are assigned in the state primary contests. They’re the backup plan put in place after the clusterfuck of 1968. We also got better at avoiding clusterfucks after 1968, so they weren’t an issue. Until 2016, when Sanders decided they were an issue for him because he was going to lose the old-fashioned way, and “superdelegates” were a convenient boogeyman he could use to turn progressives against the Democratic party. Then his campaign successfully talked itself into believing that this conspiracy theory about superdelegates going against the voters, so they started arguing that the superdelegates should take the nomination away from the winner and give it to him. This was always a pipe dream, but it did inspire Sanders supporters to dox a bunch of counterrevolutionary elected officials and progressive activists. Remember, he’s a member of the Senate Democratic caucus, so he’s talking all this shit as a superdelegate.

The sore losering only helped Donald Trump and his Russian backers, but it was delegitimizing enough that the Democratic National Committee felt pressured to revamp the presidential nomination process. Thus, a “unity” committee was formed to placate the feelings of those who were implacably infuriated that the person with the most votes had won the nomination. (The Republicans, whose party processes had allowed an unqualified, unstable, ideologically unreliable foreign asset to take over, made no such alterations.) The big concession on superdelegates is that they don’t vote on the first ballot. If someone wins a majority, then they win the nomination. If nobody gets a majority, then there’s a second vote where the pledged delegates are released and the superdelegates also get a say.

Presumably because pro-Sanders activists were so instrumental in drafting the new rules, they were all set to start gaming those rules before voting began. In early January, when it was assumed that former Vice President Biden would win more delegates than anyone else but come up short of a majority, groups supporting Sanders floated the idea that Warren’s delegates should be ready to join Sanders, or vice versa. The reasoning was that a vote for Warren or Sanders should be considered a vote for what they considered the relatively progressive wing of the Democratic party, and therefore pooling the two candidate’s votes together would represent the will of the electorate. Six weeks later, with Sanders having eked out a plurality in a few early states – more delegates than anyone else, but nowhere near a majority, and losing the popular vote – he’s out here warning that it would be very, very bad for everybody if the person who wins the plurality isn’t guaranteed to win the nomination. If 66% of voters split between two “establishment” candidates, well, that 34% who voted for the “anti-establishment” Sanders better get their way, or the party gets it!1

Sanders representatives also insisted states be allowed to keep holding undemocratic caucuses – until he was outplayed in the Iowa delegate count, at which point they realized the establishment $hills had been right about voter suppression being bad.

Look, real talk, small-d democracy is about trying to do what the voters want. If Sanders stays exactly where he is in the polls – winning a plurality of delegates with only about 1/3 of the voters – he will be getting a lot less support than he did in 2016. When he lost by a whopping 12-point margin, despite being propped up by the Kremlin, the Koch brothers, and thousands of years of patriarchy. If these trends hold (and they might not!) Democratic voters, who are the voters most likely to support his policies, do not want him. So – and I’m editorializing a little bit in this final assessment – spare me.

America is a big country and the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. There are going to be good arguments for and against a lot of different ways to pick a presidential nominee, but a key part of doing it as fairly as possible is to choose the rules beforehand and then stick to them. Campaigns making the best case for their candidate isn’t a bad thing, and a politician being able to change their mind is a good thing. But Sanders whips his supporters up with sweeping claims about the legitimacy of the process – until the opposite claim looks like it might be advantageous to him, at which point his campaign completely reverses itself on whether or not the rules of the election are fair. This is not acceptable. We cannot be playing this game when we are trying to defend the legitimacy of democracy itself against the most powerful person in the world.

On its own, I’d find that frustrating. But once a frustration starts overlapping with a genuine national security issue, it stops being a frustration and starts being a serious concern.

Senator Sanders was informed a month before the Nevada caucuses that the Russian government was supporting his campaign. Again. We still don’t know what kind of support they were giving him, though it’s probably more or less what they were doing in 2016 – pushing propaganda and making it harder for people to have productive discussions about the primary. He didn’t say anything about it, except to obliquely reference Russian trolls when he was challenged on the debate stage about some of his supporters being abusive online. (We’ll come back to that one.)

When this story broke, as it clearly would, Sanders reacted by attacking the newspaper. He claimed that the briefing his campaign received was classified, which a) it is unlikely to have been properly classified, which he would’ve known if he’d tried to work out a way to go public and b) didn’t stop him from using some of that information to his advantage during a debate. His campaign went around crowing about these great victories where he squeaked out pluralities knowing that those victories were tainted by a foreign government helping him and/or sabotaging his competitors. (Meanwhile, these competitors were not even told that they were at risk.)

He responded similarly to the Russian support he received in 2016. He failed to educate his supporters about the seriousness of the attack as it was happening. When asked later, he begrudgingly admitted to having known about it, falsely claimed to have tried to alert the Clinton campaign, and attempted to deflect criticism by literally blaming the victim. Admitting that he lost despite benefiting from the criminal sabotage of his opponent, rather than because he was the victim of some nefarious party establishment conspiracy, would have damaged the story he tells voters and been a blow to his ego.

Because he chose to deflect rather than face the issue, he has never dealt with the ways that the ways that the Russian attack probably did poison his movement. Nobody else has really wanted to deal with it either, so I’ll stipulate that this is my opinion, but I think it makes sense.

There is a qualitative difference between what Sanders tries to communicate to people and what his supporters do in response. I do not believe that Sanders wanted his supporters to vote for Trump, stay home, or discourage others from voting in 2016. I do not believe he wanted progressive organizers to be inundated with death threats. I do not think he wants people like anti-racist filmmaker Ava DuVernay or Parkland parent Fred Guttenberg to be swarmed with abuse online. I sincerely believe that if you hooked Sanders up to a lie detector, he would say that’s bad stuff and he doesn’t want any of it, and I am not inclined to be overly generous to Senator Sanders.

And yet it keeps happening, and it can’t just be blamed on Russian bots. Real people physically showed up in Philadelphia to heckle speakers at the convention in 2016. Abusive phone calls to perceived establishment enemies of Sanders really do slow down after he explicitly says he doesn’t want people to do that – which means that he dissuaded real people, who started down that ugly path because they thought it was what he wanted. There is an observable mismatch between what is being said and what is being heard. Something is jamming the signal.

Jamming the signal, incidentally, requires exactly the kind of stuff that troll farms do best. Post “edgy” guillotine memes and see who bites. Flood brutal criticism of mainstream Democrats with applause. When ostensible leftists use their independent platforms to spread disinformation or even just nastiness, toss a few coins in their Patreon – they don’t have to know they’re working for you, they just have to learn that pushing the envelope is profitable. Shout down even mild criticism by spamming it with garbage, so that skeptics withdraw or become defensive, while supporters internalize the idea that abuse is an acceptable response to dissent. Work hard enough to desensitize a campaign to that kind of behavior, and you might even get it to put a bunch of spiteful trolls in charge.

This is a theory, but I think it is the most likely theory. I certainly think it’s more persuasive than the alternatives, which are “those intelligence and disinformation professionals have spent the last few years shouting into the void and having no discernible effects on target populations, and also, all these people who say they’ve been hit with the exact type of toxicity that disinformation effort seems designed to provoke are actually all hallucinating and/or lying because the unbelievers of The Establishment(TM) are all conspiring to take Bernie down” and “this Russia thing is a fake news Democrat deep state witch hunt.”

I’m not saying I think Bernie Sanders is a Russian asset. I’m saying that the Russians seem to think he’s an asset to them.

The Sanders campaign has a complicated problem on its hands, and I don’t know what they should do about it. But it isn’t enough for Sanders to say “I don’t care who Putin is supporting.” It is his job as a United States senator who swore an oath to protect and defend the constitution to care about who Putin is supporting. It is his job as a presidential candidate to care enough to ask why Putin is supporting him. Even if he doesn’t care morally, he has to care politically, because plenty of voters care, and if he can’t give us an explanation we’re going to start trying to figure it out for ourselves.

Which makes it time to stop ducking the ugly question: why is Senator Sanders useful to people who are against everything he stands for?

Maybe, as the press and the Bloomberg campaign seem to think, whoever’s designing this strategy thinks Sanders is the most likely to lose to Trump, so of course they prefer him over the stronger competition. I hope they’re right. It would certainly be comforting to think that Trump’s Russian backers think we’re going to have a free and fair election based on how voters feel about the nominees, because it would mean they’re not relying on their ability to hack state boards of elections. And it would be comforting because the other possibilities get pretty depressing. Unfortunately, the Kremlin whisperers putting out this comforting explanation were also quite certain that the Russian government was just trying to cause chaos and didn’t have a preferred candidate in 2016 (they did), the Russian government only supported Trump because they hated Hillary Clinton (she’s not running and they’re still at it), that the propaganda campaign couldn’t have had an impact (it did), that the Russian government would never have attacked actual voting infrastructure because norms or whatever (lol) …. the mind-readers turn out to be big on the wishful thinking, is what I’m saying here.

Maybe it’s just a narrow convergence of policy. Sanders was one of only a small handful of legislators who voted against the Magnitsky sanctions that the Russian government is desperate to overturn. He failed to support further sanctions on Russia for the 2016 election interference – again, interference which helped his campaign. He’s called for neutralizing NATO against Russian aggression by letting Russia join. From the Russian government’s perspective, that’s as good as destroying it like Trump has been trying to help them do. Maybe those things are enough. I think those are bad positions and he should have to explain them. But he seems less committed to those things than Trump, who’s spent three years failing to deliver.

If four years of the Trump show have taught us anything, it’s that you can’t just write off the tinfoil hat conspiracy stuff; you have to acknowledge it and explain why it’s unlikely. So yes, it is theoretically possible that Russian intelligence believes they have some leverage over Sanders, either to manipulate him or to kneecap him at a moment they think is most advantageous to Trump. That doesn’t mean Senator Sanders has done anything wrong. It just means that there’s a bit of footage from when he visited the Soviet Union back in the day, and they might think they can use it to make a damaging deep fake. Personally, I think that’s pretty unlikely to be the motive here, because the cost-benefit analysis seems pretty thin, but we’re just trying to take a clear-eyed inventory about what’s possible.

A few hours after the Post broke the news about the Russian efforts to help him, his official Twitter account posted this:

I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.

If you’ve been paying a bit of attention to Sanders you’re probably not too startled by that comment, which is exactly the problem. In a few short words, it boosts some of the most insidious narratives that pro-Trump propagandists have also been pushing over the past few years. It’s framed as a belligerent defiance of “party establishments” - AKA, those same American institutions that we know our adversaries want to destroy. It sets up a nihilistic false equivalence between the Democratic and Republican parties. In this little story, it’s Sanders up against shadowy forces and their conspiracy against him – he’s the real victim here, but also the center of the universe. (Sound like anyone else the Russian troll farms like?)

This tweet may or may not have been in direct response to the Washington Post’s breaking the story about Russian intelligence helping his campaign again, but the timing sure looks like a great American newspaper was being lumped in with the big, spooky “establishment” trying to “stop” Sanders. (A week and a half later, he’s still sore at the Post about something.) That, too, would fit a disturbing pattern of Sanders world’s relationship with critical press, or even with criticism in general. While all this was going on, there was a Daily Beast story about the kind of alarming behavior that seems to keep happening in pro-Sanders circles. A low-level staffer was running a gross Twitter feed that reflected badly on the campaign. The campaign responded to the story by taking out the trash, but supporters responded to the story by swarming the reporter and sharing pictures of his home address. This wasn’t surprising. If you dip into Democratic-leaning podcasts or cable news shows, it’s really common to hear people preface any criticism of Sanders with a semi-jokey “don’t yell at me on Twitter, guys!” or respond to someone else’s criticism with a rueful “RIP your menchies [Twitter inbox].” Journalists and political commentators know to expect disproportionate retribution when they criticize the Dear Leader. (Sound like anyone else the Russian troll farms like?)

Maybe you’re the kind of person who likes to give the benefit of the doubt. Couldn’t all that be #ActuallyAboutEthicsInJournalism? I suppose a good test would be: what’s the response to negative feedback from a group of people, not just an individual who can be intimidated? And the answer is: conspiracy! Paid Protesters! Fake news, folks! That is not progressive, it is not healthy for our politics, and it’s exactly the kind of behavior that autocratic regimes around the world are always trying to normalize. Democrats, and all other small-d democrats, cannot start rewarding it.

That’s the context for this: Sanders has a long track record of defending authoritarian governments which call themselves socialist, communist, or otherwise leftist. Of course, authoritarian governments are more like gangster kleptocracies than “socialism” as Sanders sees it, but he just keeps rejecting opportunities to walk it back.

Too many progressive commentators with platforms have shrugged this off as some kooky Cold War thing that the media is blowing out of proportion, but it’s not just uptight Wall Street Journal opinion writers pushing back. A lot of Americans are Americans because their families ran for their lives from exactly these regimes. Five years of Latin American immigrants being Donald Trump’s favorite target, now we’re going to make people who fled Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela eat this shit sandwich? Mayor Pete Buttigieg was the first openly gay person running for the US presidency; was he supposed to add a bit in his stump speech about whether a dubious “literacy program” would help him in a concentration camp? The world is a complicated place where American leaders have to make hard decisions and don’t always get to work with nice people. That’s no excuse to be casual about rubbing salt in raw wounds.

I haven’t spent the past three years angry that Donald Trump fluffs up dictators because I’m looking for excuses to hate Donald Trump. Really, I’m good there. I’m angry about it because democracies are good and dictatorships are bad. When the American president is clear on that point, it really can make the lift just a little bit lighter for activists and freedom fighters and oppressed people doing the hard work of citizenship all over the world; when the American president fails to speak that truth, their work gets a little bit harder. I think their work is hard enough already.

You know that cliché about “Mussolini made the trains run on time”? It’s fascist propaganda. “Sure he locked up dissidents and inspired Hitler, but Infrastructure Week was a real success!” And he fucking didn’t even, because of course he didn’t, he was busy murdering everyone who could burst his narcissistic bubble. The Italian fascist regime polished up a few tourist-friendly routes and boasted to privileged visitors about how the trains were running on time. Then those visitors would go home with an innocuous sound bite to sanitize a brutal regime. Look, Prince Mohammad is letting women drive [and imprisoning the activists who made that a winning issue for him]! Sure, Putin is a heavy-handed old KGB guy, but he’s cracking down on corruption [as an excuse to imprison critics]. I’m not defending Castro, but hey, literacy program. Look, I’ve been to the Soviet Union, the bread lines didn’t look too bad on my guided tour!

Maybe the big money donors behind this Russian intelligence super PAC think Sanders will be susceptible to manipulation by their authoritarian regime because he keeps saying that he’s susceptible to manipulation by authoritarian regimes.

When someone seeking the United States presidency says that? Believe them.

I’m not saying Sanders is an aspiring dictator like Trump. I mean, I could be wrong, but that’s not my concern. A lot of politics is made up of civic habits. If we validate these tactics, we make bad habits that soften us up for a smart, focused Trump to come along in four or eight years. We can’t afford leadership that doesn’t understand, on a gut level, why those bad habits are dangerous.2

I’m not saying he’s the only flawed candidate on this issue, but he troubles me more than any candidate with even a slim path to the nomination. Representative Tulsi Gabbard is an exponentially more dangerous character – or at least she would be, if she somehow pulled ahead of “none of the above.” I have serious issues with former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg; I’m less concerned about those issues because people can criticize Bloomberg without anyone mocking them for having been raped.

Because I think democracy is the most important issue on the ballot, I’m not going to mislead you with false equivalence. Sanders would not be as bad on Trump on these issues. He would not be stacking the courts with right-wing judges who are overtly hostile to voting rights, he doesn’t stand to rake in cash by cozying up to autocratic regimes, and an administration which pays lip service to democratic values is preferable to an administration which is overtly hostile to them. A vote to reduce harm can be cast with a clear conscience. It’s still the primary, though, so we have the chance to cast a general election vote for real improvement rather than damage control.

If I haven’t convinced you of anything, fair enough. If I have convinced you that this pattern is serious enough to consider as you’re voting in this primary … this isn’t one of those posts where I try to wrap up with a concrete suggestion about something you can do, for obvious reasons. I have a suggestion about voting tactically, though. Primary delegates are awarded proportionately to every candidate who makes it over what’s called a viability threshold. Basically, a candidate who gets 15% of the vote wins something like 15% of the state’s delegates, while a candidate who gets 14% gets zero. A vote for someone with 3% support is a vote for whoever wins the state, whether you like that person or not. Check FiveThirtyEight to see which candidates are polling above 15% (preferably above 20% to get outside the margin of error) and then choose your favorite of those candidates.

1A good argument for this particular system is that it gives candidates two chances to prove that they can build a coalition, because that is something Democratic presidents need to do. You can win an outright majority going into the convention, which requires satisfying a lot of diverse groups of people. If nobody can do that, then the convention gives you another shot to show you can win people over. If you have a plurality then you have a head start. If you can’t get from a plurality to a majority, you probably shouldn’t be nominated, because you would be a shitty president.

2The topic of this post is democracy, not politics, so I don’t want to go too far into it, but I do want to shoot down the bullshit counterargument: “oh, blah blah, knife to a gun fight, Democrats are wimpy little girly-men who always play by the rules, Republicans are big strong daddies who understand power, blah blah.” Guys? Guys. You’re not going to out-shitpost the Republicans; they have unlimited money flowing into sophisticated propaganda machines. You’re not going to out-bully the fascists as a means to an end; bullying is the end for them and they have a lot more practice at it than we do. You don’t get into a pissing match with a drunk. IDGAF about sinking to their level, it’s about refusing to fight on their turf. We’re not going to win their game on their terms.

#democracy #voting rights #bernie sanders #election 2020 #democratic party

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solimavi · 5 years

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Just to be clear. Being completely okay with the candidate with the most votes not being the nominee-because we have the system that allows for superdelegates to exist-makes you anti-democracy. If the superdelegates pick the nominee, not only will the democrats lose the general election, the Democratic Party as an institution will die.

#democratic debate

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vettingsanders · 5 years

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Vetting Bernie Sanders

Sanders the Politician

Voted five times against the Brady Act which required universal background checks and a waiting period to buy firearms https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/13/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-voted-against-brady/

Voted against the AMBER Alert System http://archive.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2006/09/21/sanders_vote_on_amber_alert_emerges_as_key_campaign_issue/

Voted in favor of dumping nuclear waste on the poor and predominantly Latinx community of Sierra Blanca, Texas https://www.texastribune.org/2016/02/28/Sanders-Nuclear-Waste-Votes-Divide-Texas-Activists/

When asked if he would visit the site in Sierra Blanca, answered “Absolutely not.” https://archives.texasobserver.org/issue/1998/09/11#page=11

Voted against the Iraq War in 2002 but voted to fund both the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan https://www.alternet.org/2015/05/bernie-sanders-troubling-history-supporting-us-military-violence-abroad/

Voted for the 1994 crime bill https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bernie-sanders-has-dodged-criticism-crime-bill-vote-while-others-n1020726

Touted his vote for the crime bill on his website at least until 2006, as proof he was “tough on crime” and “strong on the cops” https://web.archive.org/web/20061018180921/http:/www.bernie.org/truth/crime.html

Supported primarying President Obama in the 2012 election cycle https://www.thenation.com/article/yes-bernie-sanders-wanted-obama-primaried-in-2012-heres-why/

Signed a resolution as mayor of Burlington affirming that marriage is between “husband and wife” https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/02/06/clinton-surrogates-pounce-on-sanders-over-82-marriage-resolution/

Argued same-sex marriage was a states’ rights issue in 2006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=kej9QAsS3uI&feature=emb_logo

In 2006, after same-sex civil unions had been legal in Vermont since 2000, responded to a reporter asking if same-sex marriage should be legalized in Vermont with “Not right now,” after the “very divisive debate” preceding the civil union legislation https://web.archive.org/web/20160407064606/http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060607/NEWS/606070302/1003/NEWS02

Has passed three bills in his twenty-nine years as a Congressman, two of which renamed post offices: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?sponsor=400357#current_status[]=28&enacted_ex=on

Is nicknamed “the Amendment King” for his reputation of sponsoring roll call amendments to bills during his tenure in the House of Representatives, but came second in House amendments passed during that time period to Rep. James Traficant, whose tenure was 5 years shorter than that of Sanders: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/24/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-was-roll-call-amendment-king-1995-2/

In total, has introduced 513 amendments in 29 years in Congress (averaging 17.69 per year) in comparison to senior Vermont Senator Leahy’s 942 amendments in 44 years (21.41 per year avg.), Secretary Clinton’s 296 amendments in 8 years (37 per year avg.), Senator Warren’s 180 amendments in 6 years (30 per year avg.), Senator Klobuchar’s 254 amendments in 11 years (23.09 per year avg.), and Senator Booker’s 140 amendments in 6 years (23.33 per year avg.) https://www.congress.gov/member/bernard-sanders/S000033?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Bernard+Sanders%22%5D%2C%22type%22%3A%22amendments%22%2C%22sponsorship%22%3A%22sponsored%22%7D

Oversaw the Department of Veteran Affairs as Senate chairman of the Veteran Affairs Committee during the 2014 scandal in which dozens of veterans died while waiting for medical care from Phoenix Veterans Health Administration Facilities https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-veterans-scandal-on-bernie-sanderss-watch

Sanders Campaign 2016

Breached the Clinton campaign’s voter data and harvested and stored voter information https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data/

Received a 645 page letter from the FEC detailing the campaign’s finance violations https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-bernie-sanders-donors-who-are-giving-too-much/482418/

Paid a $14.5 K fine to the FEC after receiving donations from non-citizens https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/376373-sanders-campaign-pays-145k-fine-to-settle-fec-complaint

The Nevada campaign director sought to rig the state’s caucus by urging staffers to buy double-sided coins for tie-breaking coin tosses http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sanderss-nevada-director-floated-two-sided-coins-for-tiebreaks-report/ar-AAhHiAI?getstaticpage=true&automatedTracking=staticview

Initially decried superdelegates as “undemocratic” (https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/opinions/superdelegates-democratic-party-kohn/) before attempting to persuade them to go against the primary’s outcome and back Sanders instead of Clinton https://www.npr.org/2016/05/19/478705022/sanders-campaign-now-says-superdelegates-are-key-to-winning-nomination

The Mueller Report confirmed that Russian interference in the 2016 election boosted Sanders’ campaign as well as Trump’s https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/read-the-mueller-report/

Had no reasonable path to victory after Super Tuesday (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/was-the-democratic-primary-a-close-call-or-a-landslide/) yet insisted on taking “our fight” to the DNC convention four months later https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/bernie-sanders-vows-continue-fight-convention-n588011

The campaign was accused by staffers of sexual harassment, demeaning treatment toward women, and pay disparity by gender https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-sexism.html

Weeks before the 2016 general election, Jane Sanders retweeted a video from an April town hall of her husband telling an attendee to “make these decisions yourself” regarding whether or not to vote third party if Secretary Clinton won the primary https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/26/retweet-bernie-sanders-wife-jane-raises-questions/91140254/

Sanders Campaign 2020

Appointed Russian interference denier and Jill Stein 2016 voter Briahna Joy Gray as the campaign’s National Press Secretary https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/888555665865814017?lang=en

Following promises to run a civil campaign, hired David Sirota, a man who’d spent months attacking other primary contenders online, as a speech writer. The campaign also confirmed that Sirota had already been serving in an advisory role prior to his official hiring https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/sanders-promised-civility-hired-twitter-attack-dog/585259/

Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray called for the doxing of a Sanders critic on Twitter. If there was any repercussion for this behavior, it has never been made public. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/14/1879124/-Bernie-Sanders-s-Campaign-Doxed-a-Critic-on-Twitter

Hired and fired YouTuber Matt Orfalea within 24 hours after being alerted of his sexist, racist, homophobic, and ableist content, suggesting he was not vetted before his hiring https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/bernie-sanders-matt-orfalea-mlk-youtube-video/

Hired and fired Darius Khalil Gordon after two days after being alerted of his sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and ableist Tweets https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/12/bernie-sanders-new-head-organizer-called-people-fgs-bhes/

Sanders National Campaign Co-Chair Nina Turner claimed that Biden’s strong support among Black voters is due to the voters’ “short memories” and “not a true understanding of the history” https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/473161-top-sanders-officials-hits-biden-over-riding-on-obamas-coattails

Paid staffers working 60 hours a week an average of 13 dollars per hour despite Sanders campaigning on a 15 dollar per hour minimum wage https://www.vox.com/2019/7/20/20700841/bernie-sanders-minimum-wage-staff-pay

Sanders Himself

Two days before the 2016 general election, Sanders tweeted “I do not believe that most of the people who are thinking about voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist” https://twitter.com/berniesanders/status/794941635931099136?lang=en

Unsuccessfully and habitually ran for office from 1972 until his election as mayor in 1982, during which time he held no steady job and could not afford to pay child support for his son Levi. In 1974, Levi’s mother Susan Mott was quoted in a Burlington Free Press article stating that she was refused apartments because she was a single mother on welfare: https://twitter.com/m_mendozaferrer/status/1093295853907922946

Despite conceding the 2016 primary and stating that “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and I congratulate her for that” (https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/index.html), he later made the Trump-esque statement “Some people say that if maybe that system was not rigged against me, I would have won the nomination and defeated Donald Trump.” https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-defeat-donald-trump-2016-rigged-primary-dnc-nbc-kasie-hunt-1446116

Stole electricity from his neighbors in the 70s https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-119927

Stole food from the refrigerator of the Vermont Freeman’s publishers https://newrepublic.com/article/122005/he-was-presidential-candidate-bernie-sanders-was-radical

Was asked to leave a hippie commune in 1971 due to sitting around engaging in “endless political discussion” rather than working https://freebeacon.com/politics/bernie-sanders-asked-leave-hippie-commune/

At age 28, wrote an article for alternative newspaper Vermont Freeman entitled “Cancer, Disease, and Society.” In the article, he argues that sexual repression can cause cancer, and women who are virgins, have fewer orgasms than their peers, or simply don’t enjoy sex are more likely to develop cervical cancer. The article includes statements such as “the manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develop breast cancer, among other things” and “How much guilt, nervousness have you imbued in your daughter with regard to sex? If she is 16, 3 years beyond puberty and the time which nature set forth for child-bearing, and spent a night out with her boyfriend, what is your reaction? Do you take her to a psychiatrist because she is “maladjusted” or a "prostitute," or are you happy that she has found someone with whom she can share love?” He also argues that the education system contributes to cancer, as does having “an old bitch of a teacher (and there are many of them).” https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2157403-sanders-cancer.html

Appeared to still hold these views as of 1988, when he stated "I have my own feelings on what causes cancer and the psychosomatic aspects on cancer." https://time.com/4249034/bernie-sanders-alternative-medicine-cancer/

Called Planned Parenthood “part of the establishment” for endorsing Secretary Clinton https://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/planned-parenthood-bernie-sanders-218026

In his 1998 autobiography, quoted an article calling his 1996 primary opponent Susan Sweetser “too brassy, too bitchy” https://books.google.com/books?id=_2YjBm2_JGUC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=sanders+too+brassy+too+bitchy&source=bl&ots=SWrIR5Xa8m&sig=ACfU3U2-Hj1-UXIOM0Zz274h6_Nu8juoBg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHhtObq6LmAhWvUt8KHc8mDVUQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=sanders%20too%20brassy%20too%20bitchy&f=false

In the same autobiography, repeatedly used the n-word and chose to keep the word in the text when republishing the book in 2015. Note that Lyndon B. Johnson was able to make this same point in the sixties without needless slurs https://www.inquisitr.com/5620596/bernie-sanders-under-fire-for-use-of-n-word-in-2015-book-clip-from-audiobook-version-goes-viral-friday/

After saying millionaire senators are immoral (https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/politics/bernie-millionaire-senators-immoral/index.html) and railing against millionaires and billionaires in his 2016 campaign, Sanders responded to criticism of his millionaire senator status by saying “if you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.” https://theweek.com/speedreads/834228/bernie-sanders-says-millionaire-like-write-bestselling-book

Was booed by women of color at the She the People presidential forum by being unable to say anything of substance regarding racial issues, instead just constantly reminding everyone that he marched with MLK Jr. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-met-with-boos-after-name-dropping-martin-luther-king-at-she-the-people-summit

As mayor of Burlington, fired the assistant city treasurer when she was jailed for an anti-war protest https://academic.oup.com/publius/article-abstract/21/2/131/1917641?redirectedFrom=PDF

Despite participating in a civil rights protest, never bothered to vote until he ran for election and voted for himself: https://imgur.com/gallery/mmS40Gq#460q6bS

Repeatedly accuses his female opponents of campaigning on identity politics, from saying “It is not good enough for someone to say, 'I'm a woman! Vote for me!” regarding Secretary Clinton’s campaign (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/21/13699956/sanders-clinton-democratic-party), to his 1986 governor race against Madeleine Kunin, who stated, “When Sanders was my opponent he focused like a laser beam on “class analysis,” in which “women’s issues” were essentially a distraction from more important issues. He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a “sexist position,” he declared.” https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html

Upheld a ban on rock concerts as mayor of Burlington like a Footloose villain https://i.redd.it/atpybo1rcwa31.jpg

Had a heart attack at age 78, making his continued life expectancy 3.1 years https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/acute-coronary-syndrome/study-65-older-mi-patients-die-within-8-years

#Bernie Sanders #Senator Sanders #politics #US politics #2020 election

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realshinjiikari · 5 years

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ARE YOU FICKING KIDDING ME

Trumpsky fucking won because people saw through the transparent plots by the DNC to secure the nomination for Clinton despite the support for Sanders, like using pre-pleged superdelegates, or like decreasing the number of polling locations in places likely to support Bernie. Example:

An article from 2016 looking at the weirdness the DNC kept pulling to help Clinton.

In addition to cutting polling places, they also decreased their hours of operation. And that was just Arizona. There were other examples, but for the sake of brevity, I'll let you use google for ten seconds to find out more. For a party that bills itself as anti-corruption and for the common man, they did and are still doing a lot of shady shit. There are democrat politicians and party figures who are hoping for a brokered convention so they can basically handpick someone like Bloomberg or Biden instead of Sanders.

The net result? People got turned off Clinton and the DNC. They either didn't vote or voted for third party candidates, allowing the vote to be split and reduced, securing the election of our first sexual assault and bankruptcy golem president. I'm a pragmatist. I have my preferred candidate, but I can swallow my pride and vote for whoever isn't Trumpsky and will secure his loss this year. There are of a lot of people who won't be like that. Sanders didn't get Trumpsky elected; the Democratic Party did.

And don't @ or anon me over this fucking garbage.

#political

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dendroica · 5 years

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It should be said that “following the rules” of the party does not have to necessarily extend to denying the top vote-getter. Having a bloc of delegates, enough to stop a first-ballot victory, confers leverage upon the rest of the field. They could make demands on Sanders—cabinet positions, planks in the platform, any number of concessions. We could see lots of horse-trading, pre-convention, that stops short of what may be considered an anti-democratic result. Moreover, superdelegates only represent 15 percent of the total delegates at the convention, and the pledged delegates would be free to go anywhere after the first ballot as well. So coalitions of delegates could easily defy a clutch of party leaders and back the top vote-getter. Ultimately, it still remains unlikely that it will come down to a brokered convention conspiracy in the end. The donor class won't bankroll three sagging moderates forever, and Bloomberg’s star is already dimming after a brutal debate performance—plus, he isn’t even on the ballot yet. But the recognition of Sanders’s position is notable. So, too, is the age-old dictum that politicians are in the business of practicing politics.

The Democratic Field Is Betting on Bernie - The American Prospect

I remain skeptical that there will be a brokered convention. Pundits speculate about it every election cycle, even though one hasn’t happened in decades.

#Democrats #election 2020 #politics

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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This day in history

#15yrsago Manga’s Japanese decline — and the copyright infringers who are stopping it https://www.wired.com/2007/10/ff-manga/

#15yrsago Scroogled in Russian and Persian https://memex.craphound.com/2007/10/23/scroogled-in-russian-and-persian/

#15yrsago Anti-counterfeiting treaty turns into maximum copyright free-for-all https://web.archive.org/web/20071025010213/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2318/125/

#10yrsago Original contract for Moby-Dick www.loweringthebar.net/2012/10/avast-tis-the-contract-for-moby-dick.html

#10yrsago Voter fraud is a fraud https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth

#5yrsago Portugal passes the world’s first reasonable DRM law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/portugal-bans-use-drm-limit-access-public-domain-works

#5yrsago The DNC picked a bunch of sleazy lobbyists as superdelegates, can’t figure out why no one is donating https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-18/democrats-plan-to-name-lobbyists-operatives-as-superdelegates

#5yrsago The Sackler Family: best known for philanthropy, they made billions promoting Oxycontin https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-family-oxycontin/

#5yrsago The MNT Reform: a modular, open source hardware, blob-free laptop inspired by classic PCs https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-personal-computer.html

#pluralistic

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mantra4ia · 5 years

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Elizabeth Warren pivots a constituent’s question about super-delegates - not by demonstrating her own substance - by making her response all about Bernie Sanders...

- which is consistent of her campaign values overall: political parody.

Q: Can you explain why the will of the voters should not matter if no one candidate reaches a majority of delegates? (referencing DNC second ballot)

A: So you do know that was Bernie’s position in 2016?

No, Elizabeth Warren, it wasn’t.

You are taking, out of context, Senator Sanders’ statements in 2016 on dealing with an establishment that has super delegates - on which Sanders states that if super-delegates are inevitably impacting the tally, they should be indelibly tied to the states’ popular vote aka the voters should decide like he consistently says in 2020 - while ignoring the fact that Sanders is anti-super-delegate by misrepresenting the Sanders had “a real hand” in the unity reform democratic platform rule change that maintained super-delegates.

Why you lyin’ girl?

#elizabeth warren #gross misrepresentation #bernie 2020 #bernie sanders #anti-superdelegate #topic: politics #political spin

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

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harris doing well i think is good for sanders. for the most part, dems at this point are relatively uncommitted and are saying biden because they know his name and he seems to be famous. same as jeb in 2016. the other candidates are basically being cycled through the news and getting bounces and collapses as “not bernie”, same as they were in 2016 as “not trump” and in 2012 as “not romney”. sanders holds a plurality of truly committed democrats, probably a floor of about 30% and a ceiling of about 45%. that’s similar to what trump held in 2016 among republicans, and if you look at his primary totals, they almost all fall within that range. harris and buttigieg, and for the most part warren even, don’t pull from that total, they pull from biden. the better harris does, the longer she stays in, which in turn means the anti-sanders vote is split more. she also has a very strong war chest so far, 4th highest (not counting dark money, which probably helps biden and hickenlooper the most). basically, sanders should hope that at least harris, biden, and warren, and maybe one or two more, stay in for a month after super tuesday and divide each other. at that point, he’ll look like the front runner and will be better able to hit the later primaries for the majorities he needs to pull through on the first ballot and deny the democratic establishment the chance to use their superdelegates.

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sufficientproof · 8 years

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So i’ve been an independent my whole adult life until this month when I switched my party affiliation to Democrat. I really don’t like the Democrats, i’m probably one of the most anti-establishment people you’ll ever meet. But Bernie Sanders has asked his supporters to reform the Democratic Party and that’s what i’m trying to do. I got elected as the vice chair of my precinct which means I get to go to the county convention this weekend. And at the county convention I’m going to run to be one of my county’s state delegates. State delegates go to the district convention and the state convention. The state convention is where all the important stuff is voted on, like Chair and Vice Chair and Secretary of the state democratic party. I’ve been strategizing with a few former national Bernie delegates from my state, people who were at the convention in July. And basically it looks like i’ll be elected as a state delegate. That’s pretty crazy to me. That I could just decide to join the party and climb up the ranks so quickly. This is something i’ve worked hard for, don’t get me wrong. But to do it so quickly is surprising. I’ve been working on the campaign for one of the candidates running for state party chair. That’s the ultimate goal, to get him elected. Because the existing state party chair was a Hillary Clinton superdelegate (despite Bernie winning my fucking state). God it would be so sweet to be part of voting that person out of office.

#politics #anti-establishment #reforming the democratic party #Bernie Sanders #superdelegates

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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JACOBIN MAGAZINE

In the wake of several recent successful challenges from the left to centrist, “establishment” Democrats, most notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders isn’t on record telling anyone “I told you so.”

But Sanders has long argued that “better than the Republicans” isn’t enough for Democrats (or anyone else) to win elections — a bold political vision is needed to excite voters enough to turn out for candidates. We can’t know what will happen with progressive challengers like Ocasio-Cortez and Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous if and when they take office. But their campaigns seem to vindicate Sanders’s basic argument about the appeal of unapologetic, “anti-establishment” politics.

In a recent interview with Daniel Denvir for Jacobin Radio’s The Dig podcast, Sanders discusses Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other recent shakeups within the Democratic Party, and why a bold political vision is good politics. You can subscribe to Jacobin Radio here and support The Dig here.

Daniel Denvir:

What do you make of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory? Do you think the Democratic establishment is honestly reckoning with what it means for American politics that a democratic socialist knocked off one of the most powerful men in Congress?

Bernie Sanders:

No, I don’t think the Democratic leadership fully appreciates the significance of Alexandria’s victory. She has gotten a lot of attention, and her victory was extraordinary. She ran a really smart, grassroots campaign. She knocked on a heck of a lot of doors. She had great volunteers. It was a brilliant campaign. But it’s not just Alexandria.

On the same night that Alexandria won, Ben Jealous took on the Democratic establishment in Maryland and became the Democratic gubernatorial nominee. On that same night, several young people in the Baltimore area, progressives, defeated incumbent members of the state senate in a huge upset.

We are seeing that type of activity all over this country: people who are running progressive, grassroots campaigns are doing very, very well taking on establishment politicians.

Daniel Denvir:

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi recently insisted that socialism is not ascendant in the Democratic Party. What’s your response to that?

Bernie Sanders:

Socialism, capitalism — these are big words that can mean different things to different people. If you look at what Alexandria was talking about, what I talk about, what other progressives talk about, by and large, they are very popular, not only among people who consider themselves Democrats or progressives but the American people as a whole. It’s important to understand that the ideas that I fight for, that Alexandria fights for, are very popular ideas.

For example, right now we have a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which is essentially a starvation wage. Nobody can live on that. When we advocate for a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, the American people support that.

When we talk about pay equity for women, the American people overwhelmingly support that. When we talk about Medicare for All — an idea which seemed kind of radical a few years ago — that is now mainstream, with a pretty good majority supporting it. The American people understand that health care is a right, not a privilege; that Medicare is working well for seniors right now, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be expanded to every man, women, and child, with the result of not only providing health care to all people but saving this country substantial sums of money on health care. Because right now, we spend far more per capita than any other country.

When we talk about the greed of the pharmaceutical industry — that you’ve got five drug companies last year making $50 billion in profits, paying their CEOs outrageous compensation packages while one in five Americans can’t even afford the drugs their doctors prescribed — the American people are with us. When we talk about demanding that the wealthiest people, who are doing phenomenally well, start paying their fair share of taxes, the American people support that.

When we talk about making public colleges and universities tuition-free, the American people support that. They support immigration reform. They support criminal justice reform. In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner has done a great job in that area.

You could label these things any way you want, but I call it basic ideas dealing with social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. The American people are there with us on them.

Daniel Denvir:

Your colleague, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, suggested on CNN that the ideas espoused on the campaign trail by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could not succeed in places like the Midwest. What’s your response?

Bernie Sanders:

Alexandria gave a good response. She said, in many of the Midwest states, we either did very, very well in the Democratic presidential primary in 2016, or we won them. We won Indiana. We won Michigan. We won Wisconsin. In a couple, like Illinois, we lost by very few. The ideas we are talking about make sense in every state of the country.

Four years ago, in the 2014 midterm elections, we had the lowest voter turnout in seven decades. We had something like 36 percent of the American people voting. When ordinary Americans get demoralized and give up on politics and don’t vote, Republicans do very well. Four years ago, if you recall, Republicans swept the House and the Senate, and they did very well in state legislators’ and governor’s races all over this country because we had the lowest voter turnout in seventy years.

When you ask people, “Is health care a right of all people?” people say, “Yes.” There’s no reason we don’t join every other major country on earth in guaranteeing health care for all people. When you talk about the absurdity of hundreds of thousands of bright, young people today not being able to afford a higher education, while millions of people leave school deeply in debt — I have talked to so many young people and middle-aged people who left school, $50,000, $100,000 in debt. For what crime? Getting an education.

These are not radical ideas. When you talk about the ideas, people say, “Yeah, that’s right. That’s what we’ve got to do.” Then they come out and vote, and progressives and Democrats win. When you don’t have a program that appeals to working people and ideas that get people excited, when you have low voter turnout, that’s the Republicans’ dream. That’s when they win elections.

Daniel Denvir:

This sounds like a strategy that emphasizes expanding the electorate instead of attempting to appeal to, say, suburban Republicans they hope are offended by something Trump says.

Bernie Sanders:

I don’t think it’s an either-or. There are many people in this country who are offended by the fact that the president of the United States is a pathological liar, that the president of the United States is a racist and a sexist and a xenophobe.

You don’t have to be a progressive to be disgusted and outraged when the Trump administration is tearing little children three, four years of age from the arms of their mothers. All across this country, conservatives feel that same sense of outrage. They understand that is not what America is supposed to be about.

There are a lot of folks out there, moderate Republicans, who are appalled by Trump’s behavior and are prepared to vote for Democrats. But most importantly, we have to understand that we have one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country. We have to speak to those working people who are white and black and Latino and Asian American and Native American and talk about issues that make sense to them. If we could raise the voter turnout up from the 36 percent it was four years ago, to a measly 50 percent in 2018, Democrats would then control both the House and Senate — that I am absolutely sure of.

The goal is to organize and educate, but you cannot do that unless you talk about issues that are meaningful to working people.

Daniel Denvir:

There’s always a lively debate on the Left over electoral politics. A lot of people in Democratic Socialists of America advocate supporting candidates in Democratic primaries, as they did for your 2016 run and with Ocasio-Cortez, but also believe it’s necessary to build a more radical, independent power base outside of the Democratic Party.

You rose up through elected politics as an Independent and remain an Independent. In Vermont, the Progressive Party, which formed to support your run for Burlington mayor, now has elected officials across the state. What do you think is the right balance to strike between building independent power and running within the Democratic Party?

Bernie Sanders:

It didn’t quite work that way in Burlington. Way back when, in times of ancient history, in 1981 — I know that’s kind of George Washington’s time — but when we won in 1981, we did what I believe in. We did coalition politics. We put together a coalition of workers and unions, of environmentalists, of women.

Out of that came the Progressive Party, which is doing quite well in Vermont right now. I’m sure the Progressive Party has more members in the Vermont state legislature than any other third party in America. That is because they have done a good job in focusing on the needs of working people.

There may be some exceptions to the rule in this or that community around the country, but the action has got to be within the Democratic Party. We have been trying, with some success, to not only open the doors of the Democratic Party to working people and young people, but change the party’s rules as well. In the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, you had superdelegates exerting an enormous amount of power. If my memory is correct, Hillary Clinton had five hundred superdelegate votes before the first real vote was cast in Iowa.

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