I'm constantly marveling at Trump's luck as a politician. He only won in 2016 because he ran against one of the Democrats' weakest candidates. In 2024 he ends up running against someone even weaker.
I'm a big Bernie supporter — knocked doors in 2016 and 2020, whole shebang — but a lot of people seem to brush aside the fact that he got, fair and square, significantly fewer votes than his opponents in both primaries
Yeah no offense to you but I was real confused at the Bernie bros claiming he was robbed when, in fact, he simply got fewer votes. It's just math, and not even "weird electoral college" math.
I'm not even talking about just Bernie. The party operated like 2016 was Hilary's by fiat to the point that Bernie was the *only* competition. And then in 2020 of course they cleared the slate to appoint Biden.
if Sanders' only path to victory was a fractured moderate vote it says more about his strength as a candidate that Biden's, imho (and again, I'm a Sanders supporter)
The Primary mostly gets settled by Iowa and South Carolina — states that won't go Democrat anyway.
Maybe the party should design a primary that actually reflects their EC roadmap to victory, plus find a way to engage voters who don't normally show up to primaries but do for the general!
I'd posit that Good At Party Primary and Nomination and Good At Getting Elected are not definitely linked, and are not mutually exclusive.
That being said, I'd have a hard time pointing to anyone in 2016 who would've done better in the general. Especially the guy I liked who SUCKED at primaries
That's a solid, incredibly relevant and important point.
The fact that PoC women Democrats get the lion's share of that crusading cannot be overstated, either.
It’s worse, true. But only a little bit. They’ve been trying to weaken and delegitimize Biden’s presidency almost from the outset. Certainly from the Afghanistan withdrawal.
I'm dubious Biden is actually weaker (except, you know, physically). As you're well aware, basically no one on Earth has the decades long track record of right wing abuse and craziness directed at them as Hilary Clinton - and related weird hatred from the general public.
Hillary was only weak because the media hated her and 15-20 percent of the broad Dem coalition engage in a kamikaze mission to sink her. You’d think people would learn, but here we are with every Democrat who has a political reporter in their Rolodex reaching out to dish hot goss on Biden.
Saying she was weak "only" because of media hate is a bit reductive... interested in seeing what you consider evidence for a broad "kamikaze mission to sink her." That sounds more like what happened to Sanders, TBH.
He lost the popular vote by almost 3 million after the FBI Director interfered in the election at the last moment. He got a massive assist and won on a technicality.
And luck that Democrats have a fairly longstanding belief in putting or maintaining conservative Republicans in positions of intelligence, law enforcement, and economic advising.
Got to show all Americans that we are above all this petty partisanship and have full faith that our dear, beloved, honored, respected, treasured Republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle should help us govern.
More Dem's lack of judgement. They were piling up votes where they did not need them and completely ignoring the people they had always ignored, unless it was to sneer. Numpties.
You mean the party that had broadly popular policies, many of which benefit those people specifically? Or, do you mean that they didn’t do enough racism? Because that is the only thing that Republicans did to appeal to them.
