-4

I’ve a lot of discourse online about how the Democratic Party held back Bernie Sanders from becoming president in 2016 & 2020 during the primaries. But my question to that is, are primaries not decided by the voters to get the most delegates? If the people didn’t vote for him, how is that the Dems’ fault?

A counter I see for that is that Dems endorsed his primary opponent to sway the vote. I dont really think that would have much impact on committed voters. Trump got almost no help in the primaries in 2016 and still won.

Is this narrative true and I’m just oblivious?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] BadmanDan@lemmy.world -5 points 1 week ago

I understand all the underhanded tactics. But if Bernie was as popular as I believe he is. Wouldn’t the voters just reject Clinton and vote for him anyways?

[-] stoneparchment@possumpat.io 11 points 1 week ago

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in this and this is just my understanding of how to answer this question

You may or may not realize that most voters don't usually go out well in advance and research all potential candidates, selecting the one they feel represents their values the best. Many of them don't even check in to the conversation until the primaries are over and they can make a simple red vs. blue choice. Among voters that do participate in primaries, they mostly rely on information they learn about those potential candidates by watching advertisements, endorsements from other well known politicians, clips from debates, news and social media coverage, etc.

Creating that information (ads, debates, news coverage, social media, etc.) requires two things: money and momentum. Money comes first, and is disbursed according to the process the other commenter described-- the party talks with its donors and collectively they decide who to fund.

In Bernie's case, he was systematically deprived of money by the DNC as described above, in addition to his moral philosophy of not taking money from big donors. Instead, he funded his campaign through small donations-- which he earned a LOT of-- but he still had fewer funds to generate advertisements, to host events, to "get the word out".

Without this funding and support, Bernie couldn't generate momentum as effectively. The fact that he is as popular as he is despite the lack of support from the party illustrates how popular his platform is, but that isn't enough to get disengaged voters interested. Further, in his case, other party members actively wanted him to NOT be the nominee, so there were fewer endorsements, more intentional maneuvering by the party to convince voters to vote for other candidates, etc.

In essence, the idea that having the purest moral and policy philosophy is the most important element to winning the nomination is naive: it takes money and support from institutions, or else no one will ever even know what that pure philosophy is.

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Lots of great points here. I supported Bernie in those Primaries because long before he was looking at the presidency, he was the first politician that made me think "THIS guy is looking out for ME."

It's very likely that others who hadn't heard of him before then, didn't get to hear enough to think he could beat Trump.

[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes, but how do you think candidates get "popular?" With Hillary's and the DNC's thumb on the scales, Hillary's campaign had an unfair and underhanded influence on the public.

I'm not sure if anything Hillary's campaign did was "illegal", but it definitely broke things like the DNC's own bylaws.

this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
-4 points (45.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35806 readers
1417 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS