If you don’t like the candidates we have then you have to participate in the primaries. Showing up in August for the general election is how we got here
PoliticalUh there was no one left on the ballot by the time it was time for my state’s primary election.
That’s actually a really good point. Why don’t we do all of the primaries closer together? Seems like it’d be much more fair so that way it isn’t the first handful of states doing the majority of choosing
Because primaries are the selection process of private organizations so they can do literally anything they want. We're lucky they have them at all...
Because most primary candidates don't have the funds to support a nationwide campaign right from the get go.
It’s All by design my friend
I mean there’s at least local and state elections. Those are arguably more important as the president can’t do everything. In some states like NY they might as well be the general since there’s no opposition in November like there is in the primary.
Americans put too much focus on the president and ignore that Congress is technically its own branch of government and just as important (let alone state level elections which are arguably more relevant to your day to day life). Want to get rid of Pelosi or McConnell and replace them with progressives or right-wing populists? Get out to vote in the primary (if applicable)!
Why are you writing all of this to me? This post is about presidential elections and I commented on the fact that I wasn’t given a choice. Where did I mention that I don’t vote in local elections?
I mean where does it specifically say presidential elections?
Congress isn't technically a branch of the government, it is a branch of the government. Executive, Judicial, and Legislative are all branches of the U.S. government, as established in the Constitution. Our Checks and Balances system ensures one branch of the government doesn't have more power than another.
I mean yeah it is its own branch of government though what policy the parties choose to write up and whether and whether they get signed into law or shot down by the courts is obviously independent of Congress. That whole “checks and balances” thing
Except that’s not really true. The Legislative Branch is by far the weakest as it requires so many people to agree on anything. The Judicial Branch is the most powerful due to lifetime appointments and the ability to do damn near anything they want.
And that's a LOT of states because you have to remember it goes the opposite way too with states like Florida where it's often just two Republicans running in primaries and Democrats don't even bother fielding anybody so by the time you vote in generals here's your one choice.
This is what I always hate about this argument. It assumes that anyone complaining just didn’t go their primaries. But then there’s also people like us, who live in states where the presidential candidates have already been determined by the time it gets to our state.
They had this all rapped up by the end of Feb and my states primary was months away. Gotta love it.
And nobody primaries against an incumbent president. The people who ran against Biden were unknowns and often registered only in a state or two at that.
The time to act if you didn't like Biden was 2020. Some of you were children. You de-facto had no say in it.
The only one you could've had an impact on was the Republican primary. But you also can only vote in the primary of the party you're registered as. I'm sure most of you are registered Democrat so you had no choice there either.
First of all, I’ve been able to vote in the last 3 elections
Second, I’m originally from a state that allows independents to vote in either primary and I miss that because I’m an independent at heart. Trump still won there, though.
That…probably means Biden was going to win there anyways.
I mean…think about it. If Biden was winning literally everywhere else, he was probably going to win where you live. That’s just basic statistics. Bernie and Warren split the progressive vote, and they were Biden’s biggest competition. The odds of anyone but Biden winning were pretty low everywhere.
Bro we litterally didnt even have a democratic primary this year and even in 2020 everyone had already dropped out by the time my state primary came
Yeah remember when Bernie was projected to win by plurality so EVERY SINGLE ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATE dropped out and endorsed Biden? The only candidate who didn’t drop out was Elizabeth Warren which was the only candidate which Bernie would have actually benefitted from a dropout due to their similar policy stances and voter base.
That was such an obvious "thumb on the scale" moment and liberals insist it never happened and that the Democratic party only responds to the "will of the voters".
We don’t “insist it didn’t happen” we insist it wasn’t a malicious plot.
First off, Biden was winning, Bernie was only projected to win in certain scenarios.
- Candidates dropping out to endorse another candidate is common in primaries. If you fight to the bitter end, you hurt every candidate’s chance of winning the general due to in fighting, but you also risk losing what power you have if you lose.
Candidates just quit, and endorse who they think they’ll win hoping to get a spot in their cabinet, it’s been happening since Obama. Whom was the underdog in his primary against Hilary, who ended up getting more party support once it was clear he was more popular.
Have you considered that the other candidate’s voter base just wouldn’t have voted for Bernie? Or that he wasn’t as close to winning as y’all thought?
Funny how everyone dropped out at the exact same time and endorsed Biden at the exact same time instead of the guy who had already won Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada by that point, consistently polled well ahead of Trump and proved he could deliver voters under 35.
Im sure that was all just a big coincidence and not a co-ordinated effort between big donors and establishment dems who obviously preferred a second Trump term over shifting one iota to their left.
Bro He polled worse then he did in 2016
He was consistently behind Biden
And he would’ve gotten cooked on M4A because people didn’t like the elimination of private insurance and increased taxes.
It’s not a coincidence, everyone online was just super hyped up on Bernie, not realizing that the general public, and majority of the Democratic voting block didn’t rock with him as much.
That was truly a turning point for the country. Super Tuesday 2020. What could have been.
Exactly like it was reported that Obama made a bunch of calls and they all magically dropped out one after another and endorsed biden
You mean politics happened??
Like I don't get how these kids don't understand the idea of political maneuvering.
They understand it, it just goes against their coping
so we've already abandoned the whole democracy schtick in the OP image, huh
Part of the issue is political illiteracy. Lots of people have the idea that if anyone goes against them, it ceases to be a democratic function. That’s not true and not how politics nor democracies work. The core of a democracy is voting. Regardless of what political maneuvering others do, it’s all for votes. If you can’t get the votes, you lose. That’s it.
Something isn’t shady or unfair just because it inconveniences your pet candidate.
[insert oblique references to the person I'm responding to not understanding the political process here] Wow that would be a really good point if there weren't a million shady things happening in the 2020 primary, actually. The core of a democracy is representation of interests, not spectacle tacked on to policies already decided by people much richer and higher-class that you personally aspire to emulate.
I’ve done more for leftist causes than you ever will, I assure you.
And the voters this meme blamed had nothing to do with it!
Except that they then voted for Biden after the field narrowed. Y’all really hate voting, huh?
It’s definitely not clear that Warren voters would have gone to Bernie. Anecdotal, but my entire circle was for Warren. None went to Bernie. Bernie has such a strong brand that if they were pulled away by Warren, that’s not a good thing.
It was pretty clear
The only other dropout that would have benefitted Bernie specifically would have been Biden himself
You’re joking right? This shows only 30% of Warren voters going to Bernie.
User deleted comment
1d
That her voter base was diverse and Bernie could only win by facing a split field. And that he probably never would have a reached a majority, which is bad. Most of her voters went to more centrist candidates.
That’s huge? Are you kidding?
Edit: there’s not a number higher than 35% in the matrix. Y’all are ridiculous
Less than 1/3 of the next most progressive candidate’s vote total is huge? Now that is some Bernie math. More than 2/3 wanted someone to the center of Warren if she dropped out. It’s the same effect. Bernie needed the field to be split to make it through. That’s not good.
Everyone forgets that Bloomberg dropped after Super Tuesday and only a day before Warren. Bloomberg took a significant number of votes from Biden just like Warren did from Sanders. Moreover, Biden did better from a delegate perspective in his best states than Sanders did in his. Using 538 projections there was about a week where Sanders was projected to beat Biden’s delegate count during the entire primary. And, even if Sanders had a plurality, he wouldn’t have won on the first ballot and then the unbound delegates could have behaved in any number of weird ways.
You can absolutely wish Sanders would have won, but two things are objectively true: Bloomberg was in the race for as long as Warren was, and coalescing around a candidate is a very normal and smart thing for candidates to do in presidential primaries.
Bloomberg was one of the most unpopular candidates at that time. He had around 5% support.
My point was not that Bernie won. It was that the entire system was built to ensure he didn’t. They all coalesced around the establishment candidate in Biden after fears of a Bernie win. It was more important to do that than it was to let the race play out.
That’s not even mentioning the onslaught of propaganda claiming that Biden was “more presidential” and “center enough to beat trump” when, in reality, Bernie’s poll matchups against trump faired better than Biden’s at the time. The list goes on, but it all points to an undemocratic system, which was the whole point of the initial comment in this thread.
That’s just not accurate, Bloomberg performed better than Warren in a majority of Super Tuesday states. Warren ended with 70 delegates and Bloomberg ended with 49.
In presidential primaries it is incredibly common to drop and support the candidate that you like best. Part of that is on the other candidates to curry that support. I guess it is part of a system in the sense that we have a system, but Sanders obviously did not succeed at either getting Warren not to run or getting her to endorse him. And, even if she had, by the time it was a 2 way race maybe her supporters split 2-1 to Bernie and maybe everyone else’s splits 2-1 to Biden, Biden still wins. Sanders never had a realistic path to more than about 35-40% of the primary electorate and was banking on a situation similar to Trump 16 where a divided but relatively equal field could not coalesce around a chosen candidate.
Campaigns are allowed to say someone has a better chance in November or that someone is going to be a better president. None of that is undemocratic. Calling something undemocratic when voters don’t support your preferred candidate is kind of more akin to undemocratic.
What's your point? The people that you disagree with working together is such an a low hurdle to get around that if he couldn't do anything about it, he wasn't going to be able to do anything as president? Like what, if Chevron, Exxon,the Saudis, and Dutch Royal oil started working together to protect your interests, would you just go "No fair :(" if he wants to climb the summit to the world he has to be better than that.
Politicians are supposed represent their constituents, not their party. The voters. A lot of these establishment candidates ran on policy positions that agree with the voters to boost their numbers. But those policy positions are the first to go if it means they can satisfy the status quo and those in power.
Bernie Sanders has always been an outsider who has been able to make some change with little to no leverage because of a money driven, corporate lobbied set of politicians running everything. As president he would have had more leverage than he’d ever had.
No chance you’d ever get me to believe that a person with the correct stance on policy and decades of experience in politics wouldn’t be able to do anything meaningful with the highest office in the land.
There was a primary this year but it's against an incumbent president so it was one sided.
Not in florida :)
DNC acted like Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr literally didn’t exist. No debate, not even put on polls for quite a while after they had declared their candidacy.
We did in NY. That's a state issue.
American history has repeatedly proven this untrue. By the time we make it to the polling location, several hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars have already been exchanged, hands have been shaken, and minds have been made based on a wildly different understandings of civics, economics, and public policy from schools and communities with various levels of resources. Electoral maps have been drawn and reviewed by a handful of people who may or may not have a political/racial agenda.
The candidates we get are almost always those who have the most money, connections, and clout. If an underdog is on the ballot, it is an EXTREMELY uphill battle to get the attention of your community and the endorsement of the key stakeholders of your party.
I'm not saying that we don't have responsibility as voters to educate ourselves and be involved in the political process, but the reality is that most people in this country are systematically overworked and undereducated on what the hell is going on politically, and the ruling class takes advantage of that. Substantive change to our political process or candidates is going to take a concerted effort by way more people than are willing or able to make the sacrifice for right now.
“American history has repeatedly proven this is untrue”
Why did you lead with this and follow with absolutely nothing to substantiate it with?
Because I don't feel like making a bullet list of every single closed-door political deal made, every super PAC donation or lobbyist agenda, every instance of political or racial gerrymandering, every effort to suppress voting, every instance of schools providing inaccurate or out of date history and civics textbooks, or every grassroots political candidate who was iced out by the major parties or otherwise failed to launch, all of which contribute to us having the system that we have today. I'd think anybody with a basic level of reading comprehension could get the overarching idea of what I said.
EDIT - Here, let me break it down as a TL;DR for those who didn't get it:
We are not in the predicament we are in just because "voters suck." We got here by an extensive history of backdoor political agreements, corporate funding and lobbying, gerrymandering electoral districts, and intentional disinvestment in public education that lowers our civic literacy and engagement. It is incredibly difficult to put candidates that better represent the average American in power because running a campaign takes money, connections, and prestige that most people do not have and cannot get access to. Thus, while we have a responsibility to actively participate in the political process and be as engaged as we can, our voting does not exist in a vacuum. In order for us to have a system where our candidates actually do represent us, there will have to be serious, substantive, and concerted efforts to get there by MASSES of people, and most people are not in the position right now to make the sacrifices that that effort will take.
Yeah I was like, yeah it's untrue and then they said some random mumbo jumbo
most people in this country are systematically overworked and undereducated on what the hell is going on politically,
i.e. they are not good voters…
This isn't exactly fixed by just telling people this. I'm pretty sure most people already know this.
There’s no fixing it. I’m just saying: the meme is accurate, and certainly not “untrue.”
all of the republican candidates dropped out lmao
GOP’s cooked. We just really need to get out in 2028
I will note that there wasn’t a real Democratic primary for president this year(basically nobody ever runs against the incumbent), but Republicans totally had the opportunity to pick somebody other than Trump to represent them(sadly not only were all the other options pretty bad the Trump cult has a death grip on the party still).
However vote in the damn primaries damn it, vote in the election, get out and vote! You might say your vote doesn’t matter, but it definitely doesn’t matter if you don’t vote!
Also, if you’re registered as an independent, please register as a Democrat or Republican so your voice is heard in your state’s primaries(disregard this if your state has an open primary. Also disregard if you’re registered to a 3rd party, you do you I guess)
Well, there was a “real Democratic primary” this year in nearly every state. Democrats even had a unique opportunity to vote for a current officeholder (Dean Phillips) but almost no one bothered to do it. Well, over 1M did (voted for Dean and others) but it wasn’t enough.
Dean Philips is a right-wing corporate puppet, of course nobody voted for him. He is literally just Joe Biden but worse.
Don’t underestimate the DNCs ability to sway a primary in the establishments favor. They made sure Bernie Sanders, Dean Phillips, and RFK jr. never had a fighting chance in their primaries. Ironic how this is the “save democracy” party.
And Williamson who was directly kicked off swing state ballots.
Winning a primary is about building a coalition within the party. If those other people couldn't build a strong enough coalition, then they didn't do what it takes to win a primary.
Also, Phillips is a nobody on the national stage and RFK Jr is a joke who never had a shot.
"Save democracy" as if it ever was lmao. Also, they're the ones who stood idly by and let it get to this point bc they support the same shit the Republicans do. Remember that the Democrats willingly conceded TWO Supreme Court appointments to Donald Trump btw.
I knew it would be a new account saying this. You win primaries by winning the most votes.
This is cope
Says the 12 day old account
Still coping, but you have a really fucked up view of the internet, by the way. Anonymous and pseudonymous communication is important, not a replacement for all other kinds, but really important to discourse. Account age is not a replacement for actual credibility and history, bad actors buy fake karma-laden accounts all the time.
Bro do you know what a superdelegate is?
Bro he won 42.2% of the vote to her 56.8%. Clinton got 3.8 million more votes than Sanders.
And your candidate is now unlikely to win the general
This seems like such a dishonest talking point.
Like even if we ignore that US decisions affect millions of people outside of ut who get no say in the matter and how primaries aren't always representative of the voters (Through stuff like super delegates). The campaigning process is stacked quite heavily against candidates without major financial donations. This means candidates that would prioritise public interest over those groups will have to work much harder for their message to have the same reach
So, claiming you deserve this doesn't sound right when the odds are stacked against most alternatives
I swear I’ve seen this message in like 10 different formats
The Voteps are out here in droves ONCE AGAIN NOT FUCKING LISTENING. I'm not gonna let these people gaslight me.
Gaslight you into participating in your right as a citizen to choose who runs the country?
Y’all doom posters are wild I swear…
Nah nah I been voting. The gaslighting is acting like we weren't sabotaged during the 2016 and 2020 primaries. I voted in both, my love. If my candidate lost fairly, that's one thing, but the DNC fucked him over.
They didn’t “fuck him over” he just wasn’t as popular as people thought.
It even makes sense, when people were polled about M4A when you bring up the fact that it removed private insurance, the popularity tanked
He simply wasn’t winning and the candidates wanted to back who they thought would win to earn a spot on the cabinet.
Edit: also glad you decided to participate despite your feelings towards how things played out. I disagree with you telling of events but I’m glad your one of the few people who actually tried voting before becoming disillusioned with it
I am not interested in arguing mid you. I had enough of this in 2020.
The fact that bringing up private insurance being gone makes M4A tank in popularity is just evidence that American voters are self-loathing morons and masochists
Don't know if your American or not, if you aren't: mind ya business, I doubt the voter in your area are any better.
If you are American: remember most of the active voters are old and financially well off. They don't have to worry about insurance, They get it from their job.
I am American, but most active voters are literally not financially well off, and the insurance people get from their jobs usually sucks fat dick and severely limits where you can get treatment, what treatment you can get, what doctors you can see, etc.
They literally are . The charts are a bit dated but I doubt it changes that much.
I'm not about to say the insurance most people get suck but still, the elimination of private insurance is a bit much. That means the government has to cover everything which I'd imagine ain't cheap.
Personally I would've preferred if they covered everything like checkups, Natal, medical emergencies, etc... But you could pay extra for like cosmetics or skip the line at the Dr. Office.
OP is absolutely right about this.
I’m loving the accountability from the posters on this sub. Not loving the discourse in the comments. A lot of both sides are bad doom and gloom comments. We’re in this situation because people didn’t come out in the 2020 primaries. At least Biden appointed his cabinet members full of the nominees. Sanders being in charge of the budget literally helps me sleep at night
So we're just pretending it's a democracy and working backwards from there to blame the electorate
No primary in FL, was cancelled, Biden was given state, so OP is wrong
Nobody is ever going to primary an incumbent nor will anyone put a dent in the Trump cult
Why not?
This belief relies on the naivety that the system we have works exactly how it's supposed to.
It does, we just don’t participate in it, so we don’t get what we want.
Just delete the post
I like Biden, he wasnt my favorite and he is far from the worst president but I'm also not dumb and know that he was too old to run a second term; but I and a lot of other Democrats wanted another primary but the party decided to not hold one. There is not much you can do besides write your representative and I did. Please dont assume all voters are the reason we have only Biden to choose over Trump. I would have liked someone else on the Dem's ticket.
the party decided not to hold one
The party doesn’t decide that. Nobody seriously challenged Biden. That was the decision of the prospective candidates. And the people who did challenge him were not more popular than him.
Ok, I wanna know how exactly they decided that, that they weren't as "popular." I dont really get how the polls work or how they are calculated. I only have the anecdotal experience of my friends, some political groups I'm part of online, and just chatting with the occasional stranger but where I live a ton of people were wanting Newsome to run. There was also a lot of murmuring amongst voters that Biden was getting too old, I dont think I remember very many dems with a platform saying that. I dont have enough knowledge about primary races to fully understand what happened but I'm not 100% sure they were being honest about what the people actually wanted.
I wish I could remember which of the CNN talking heads said it, and like 1/2 of that panel agreed; the media was lying about how there Biden actually is. The irony there of course was that they were some of the people saying Biden wasnt too old and was totally fine and everything is ok. I think if they had been more honest about what was going on with Biden there prolly would have been a primary.
I dont wanna judge Biden's performance based off 1 debate, but I'm not very confident at all and feel lied to.
I’ll explain everything that you said specifically, but first, when I say “more popular,” I mean “popular enough to be viable.” I’m not referring to polling. To get on the ballot in most states, you have to have volunteers working for you, circulating petitions. Anyone who can’t find enough volunteers to get on every ballot is inherently less popular than people who do—their volunteer network simply isn’t enough to win an election, and if people were more interested in these candidates than Biden, then they would have had the volunteers. But they didn’t, and so they aren’t, and so they didn’t really have a shot. Here I’m talking about people like RFK, Marianne Williamson, and Dean Phillips.
where I live a ton of people wanted Newsom to run…
For the major players, it’s a historical trend. Challenging a sitting president in a primary is hard. In an open primary, you really only have to consider if you have the money, time, and energy to run, and if you do, you have to make sure you’re not going to embarrass yourself. In a closed primary, you have to realize that whenever a sitting incumbent is challenged, the challenger loses, and that incumbent goes on to lose the general election. Those things are connected; because the incumbent is weak, a major party player may feel they can beat them; because the incumbent is weak, they’ll lose the general election. Of course, having to use resources to ward off a primary challenge also makes the incumbent weaker.
So when you’re considering primarying an incumbent, you have to weigh the likelihood of success against the likelihood that your party subsequently loses in the general election.
It’s not that every major Democrat got together and collectively decided “no primaries”; it’s that primarying an incumbent is hard and historically fruitless, and when that happens the incumbent tends to lose; and subsequently, no major partisan tried challenging Biden. Just like nobody seriously challenged Obama or Bush or Clinton or Trump during their reelections.
But also Biden is just more popular than you think. Setting aside polling, Biden’s popularity is specifically in the active Democratic base—county committees and more. The people you talk to aren’t demographics that are politically active—young people don’t vote—so to politicians, the opinions of the politically active demos are more pressing than the opinions of others’.
If you want to be more represented, you have to vote, and you have to organize your friends and family to vote. In general elections, but especially in primaries.
Thank you for explaining it. That makes more sense. I've worked the polling stations almost every voting year since I was 18, and have done canvassing for individual propositions in my state but I never bothered with national stuff because for the most part I was able to (in retrospect stupidly) trusted what the Dems had to say. This year though I've become more skeptical by the minute and hope they get it together.
Thank you for doing that work. Canvassing is brutal. Stay safe while you do it.
And hopefully this year is a lesson to not blindly trust parties. We do need younger people in office. I think Biden’s decline is pretty exaggerated, and one of my main reasons for being on Reddit lately has been going around correcting political and electoral misinformation. But my purpose in doing that is so people our age have the knowledge and desire to actively participate in things. We can’t get younger candidates if we refuse to interact with the political arena.
Another comment answered you much more thoroughly and well, but the simplest answer is that people like Newsome (or Whitmer, Sanders, Polis, whoever) didn’t run. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were the 2 best known challengers…
If I ran on the Democratic ticket the party should be under no obligation to put on a debate between myself and President Biden. And honestly, those two have about the same chance I did this year to be the Democratic nominee.
not how your political system works
Please tell me how it works. I really should learn, I’m sure it’ll help me the next time I’m working with election law and on a campaign.
Wrong cuck, it was literally cancelled in Florida
It was cancelled because only Biden was on the ballot
The state of Florida cancelled it, not the party. The party does not run primary elections.
Hope this helps!
And stop voting for who you think will win.
That’s not the purpose of voting. You’re supposed to be voting for the best candidate whether they’re considered electable or not.
The primaries aren’t part of the United States governmental process unfortunately, it’s only a political process. I think we should live in a country where the government processes like elections are not allowed to be conducted in such a privatised and colluded manner as having corporate sponsored elections to determine corporate backed candidates in the government’s general election.
Primaries are conducted by state governments.
Unless you voted for someone else, you effectively voted for them.
Exactly. Like in 2020 when the voters chose Bern—heyyyy waidaminit!
Which voters were that? I remember Clinton getting three million more.
in 2020?
2016…if you want the 2020 numbers, Biden beat Bernie by 10 million.
Do you not remember the fuckery in the 2016 and 2020 primaries? The issue is a little more complex than, show up for the primaries. I showed up... and both times my candidate didn't simply lose, but was sabotaged.
Yeah no.
None of it matters without media representation and campaign money.
Me voting for Mr. Moderate in the primaries isn't gonna matter if CNN, Fox, and MSNBC have their cameras on the sensationalists at all times.
GOP propaganda is strong in this sub
This would only be true if US democracy actually worked correctly.
Just look up any of the various studies and statistical analyses of how democracies around the world compare to each other: the US ranks consistently and significantly lower on key metrics than a lot of our developed democratic counterparts.
We should be looking at those countries for ideas on how to improve our systems instead of whatever the hell we're doing right now.
And sorry, I try not to post top level comments in this subreddit as a millennial, but OP is a millennial so whatever.
The problem is improving our system near enough requires changes to the Constitution which is almost impossible to change.
It can literally just be ignored though lol. The government does it all the time and has since its founding. There is nothing actually binding about the Constitution.
Right…
Ehhh they aren’t really a reflection of voters though. The primary system and general election region maps combined with gerrymandering pretty much guarantee only certain people are even allowed to run.
If the country vote system was implemented differently, you’d see different results with the same population
The primary system distributes delegates proportionally to the number of votes candidates get. It’s very democratic, more so than most other elections in the country. The only real issue is they’re sequential, but that’s not really that much of an issue.
Well yes and no. The primaries are much less regulated in terms of how votes “count”, so really they just pick the candidate.
Some primaries are literally like high school pep rally’s where the side that can yell louder wins. That’s not really a proportional distributiot
You’re referring to caucuses, and that’s supposed to be a head count, not a voice vote. Caucuses are admittedly trash, but they’re not quite that bad. They’re bad because they’re confusing and inefficient.
The formula for delegates is set prior to a primary election. In many states, the delegates are actually on the primary ballot. Delegates are chosen by the candidates they’re pledged to, so there’s not much of a worry that they’ll…vote for someone else.
Watchu talking about? The last real Dem primary was in 2016
The problem is people vote for a candidate they think will win for their party instead of a candidate that’s actually good.
Poor reasoning. The only options were Biden for the Democrats and Trump for the Republicans by the time the primaries came around in my state. The public had nothing to do with that.
The public had everything to do with that. The voters in the early Republican primaries chose Trump and made winning for the other candidates a mathematical improbability; the public in the Democratic primary didn’t rally around Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson, and they subsequently weren’t viable either.
No election is a singular event. The primary in New York is affected by the primary in New Hampshire. If a candidate drops, it’s because their path becomes too narrow. If they hadn’t dropped, they would’ve lost anyways. There’s a reason why you see candidates drop before the entire primary is through, every single cycle.
Just because you personally couldn’t cast a vote for anyone else by the time your state’s voting came around doesn’t mean the candidates aren’t a result of the voters’ will.
Everything that happens is democratic because America Is A Democracy, of course, how could I forget
"democracy is cringe" ass post, money in politics, and lack of education (bvecause of lobbying) thats how we got in this situation so plz dont blame the people...
america isnt a democracy, its a republic and that sucks and its supposed to suck for normal people like us, were gonna need serious grassroots effort if its ever gonna get better, not reddit posts saying "democracy is cringe yall voted for this" no we didnt, the electoral collage voted for this, lobbyists and super pacs voted for this.
Part of the blame does fall on the people for refusing to learn anything about their election processes, political systems, and alternatives though. I'm not claiming the U.S. is a democracy or that all blame lies with the voters, but the voters have time and time again shown they'd rather get herded by establishment talking points to go vote to fuck themselves over than take any time out of their day to consider what would be in their best interest or the interests of those around them.
That's because they were taught to be this way, our educational system breeds obedience and apathy by design
Ford explicitly wanted an educational system that taught us to listen and not think, and that's what we had.
Not to mention the super villan level quotes from I belive Eisenhower about how "common people have no reason to learn about polotics, they should be learning how to work in factories and follow orders"
People voted for their electors.
People directly voted for their party’s nominees.
Republics are a form of democracy.
SuperPACs can be annoying but at the end of the day, voters choose everything. Money doesn’t directly vote, lobbyists don’t directly vote. The only thing that determines the winner or loser of an election is who comes out of it with more votes, and the only voting population are individuals. I’ve seen SO many elections where the candidate who outspent the other ten to one narrowly won, or even lost horribly.
I don’t mean to pretend money in politics isn’t an issue. But I absolutely think the blame lies mainly in people—like you see in this post—quoting misinformation about how primaries work, about the 2020 and 2016 primaries, about the 2024 primary and Phillips and Williamson and RFK, about the DNC, and basically everything else under the sun that people don’t really understand.
You can say they’re uneducated because of lobbyists, but when you try to educate them, they double down. At the end of the day, if you aren’t voting for a younger option when one presents itself, you’re the one to blame. Not the regular people who just happen to prefer the eighty year olds.
The age isn't the problem lmao. The problem is the abysmal policies.
Substitute age for whatever qualification you like. The point is people our age aren’t voting for the qualifications we ostensibly like, and older people are. We’re losing because we refuse to engage, not because it’s rigged.
Why do we refuse to engage? Because we werenot taught civics? Why were we not taught civics? Because lobbyists write the laws wich dictate the educational requirements.
Why are you obsolving the rich of the role they play in hurting democracy, money is power.
Money is not an accurate indicator of electoral success beyond certain thresholds, and there’s no observed direct correlation between money spent and electoral success. Money helps, but votes help more. There are many cases where the outspent candidate wins.
None of this is to say that donating hundreds of thousands of dollars from a corporation to a candidate is good. But that doesn’t create any excuse for anyone to withdraw from politics. That’s incredibly defeatist.
Even with your lobbyists write the laws example—if we’re going to be heavily pessimistic and say that’s true regardless of who is in office, who we elect determines which lobbyists write the laws. Do you want that to be the private school industry, or do you want that to be the NEA? If you have a preference, and I assure you that you do, you can’t just ignore things because “money.”
Are you fixated on shifting blame away from courrupt politicians/corporations and onto the public? If so why what's your goal?
I never said people should not participate in democracy I said that they do not because the educational system is designed to fail (we don't learn civics)
"Money is not an accurate indicator of electoral success beyond a certain threshold"
Whats that threshold than buddy? Your taking out your neck, it absolutely is an Indicator, in so far as 2 party's have a duopoly on funds to raise awareness/spread their platform. And to no one's surprise, they are the only 2 party's represented in government.
The only 2 party's receiving massive corporate money are the only party's that win. (Unless yiu cherrypick extremely outliers)
"Who we elect determins which lobbyists write laws" yes buddy and I'm saying we keep expecting currupt assholes because the system has already been stolen by corporations. We keep electing bad people because we don't have an education, our education is refunded and poor (unless u gree up in a rich neighborhood) because the corporations actively belifit from having ignorant public. You see how the system self perpetuates? That's why I quoted Ford and I think Eisenhower but I'll have to google it,
That's why I quoted them. The system is working exactly as it's supposed roo (if your rich that is)
Now do yiu agree with me, are we on the same page? I'm under the impression you thought I was saying people shouldn't vote When really I was saying people DONT vote and diagnosing why that happens to be the case.
Your taking out your neck
I’m not. I do this for work. Do you think every Democratic and every Republican candidate receives corporate PAC money? They don’t. They get the same type of funding as third party candidates at the local level, and mostly the same is true for the state level. So why don’t third parties win locally? Because they don’t have the name recognition, the infrastructure, or the policies. They don’t have the votes.
That’s my fixation. It’s a democracy. Voting is everything. Several candidates throw money at the wall and end up losing. What people don’t realize is that, if a message is getting out to the tune of several million, amplifying it more isn’t gonna help. There are diminishing returns. It’s a studied phenomenon, with the clear consensus that there is no direct correlation between money spent and votes gained.
So, my goal is to fight misinformation that causes apathy, because apathy lowers turnout. And I need people our age to get off their asses and go vote, up and down the ballot, in primaries and in generals. Our votes count. Blaming lobbyists for making people stupid doesn’t help and is missing the point.
Vote harder!!!!
W
it’s SUPPOSED to work that way but it’s a little more complicated than that, unfortunately
What also probably doesn’t help is the fact that (in my state at least) people registered as “independent“ can’t vote in the primaries, I’m a registered independent, I literally can’t vote until the presidential elections. I do not have a say in who I get to vote for.
so no, it’s not always a reflection of the voters, most of the time yeah it probably is, but not all the time
just like everything in life the entire situation is a dull gray, not as black and white as some think
But if you don’t align with a party, why would you get to pick their nominee?
Imagine this from the perspective of a tiny third party. The Libertarians. If the primary were open, enough independents could be organized to just vote for the Republican candidate, because the Libertarian Party is so small. And then the Republican candidate gets an additional ballot line, or takes the Libertarian line off the ballot if ballot fusion is illegal in that state. And the Libertarian Party members that actually believe in their party just get fucked over.
Same happens with Socialist and Communist Parties, if that’s your cup of tea. In some states this issue could happen with the major party lines too.
If you don’t believe in what a party stands for such that you aren’t willing to register with that party, then why would you deserve the opportunity to directly influence that party’s nominees?
true, you do make a good point
also I’m still getting use to the whole voting system, this year‘s election is literally gonna be my first so I don’t know everything, don’t really got enough info to prove ya wrong
I don’t get all the downvotes for people shitting on the current partisan primary election system. The system is the problem
The DNC kept Dean Philips from primary ballots, and he barely got airtime. This is the most important election of our lifetime, and Democrats want to play games. The right to vote was blocked for many people.
Don’t vote for shitty candidates….ever. Whether it is the primary or the general. You don’t have to agree with every policy put forth by a candidate. But you should be able to trust their judgement and agree with most of their policies. Vote FOR someone. Don’t vote AGAINST someone. The two major parties have it rigged because people believe they have it rigged. If you vote for minor parties, maybe they will become major parties.
The primaries were as devoid of candidates as the general is.
The problem with primaries is that the radicals always win. Conservatives and liberals that are passionate enough to vote in their respective primaries are likely more deeply swinging to their side.
Frankly I'm surprised Bernie didn't win, but big media does what the DNC commands, and they didn't think Bernie would beat Trump, so they vilified him. They were right
Step 1: Buy a rifle
Step 2: Your friends buy rifles
Step 3: Armed PEACEFUL Protest
Step 4: be listened to
All you have to do is show you arent a pushover.
If every american reading this did this together, we could get every change we want.
We had Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips, and RFK Jr. The media smeared and ignored all three of them.
None of them could even make the ballot in every state. I don’t even think any of them are clear for most states except RFK, and RFK only is if you include write ins.
You’re mistaken. RFK dropped out of the primary and became an independent for the general. That’s why he needed signatures, for his independent bid.
Williamson and Phillips were on the ballot anywhere where a Dem Primary was held. They didn’t need signatures. And RFK would have been on it too if he didn’t go independent, no signatures required.
The signature stuff doesn’t have anything to do with the Dem Primary, those rules are for independent candidates.
No, you’re wrong. I do this stuff for work. Here is a list of signature requirements broken down by state and party.. It has other requirements too. Some states don’t have signature requirements for primaries. These are specifically for primaries.
Oh lol, the more you know
"If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders." -George Carlin
Jokes on you California already had their primaries back in march
this is the worst possible year to make this point lmao, the primaries were decided in 2020
There wasn't even a Democratic primary lmao
democratic party has these things called super delegates.
Also they argued successfully in court that they're allowed to rig primaries for their favorite corporate candidate.
Lmao we're still gaslighting the voters instead of an inherently undemocratic system, the boot must taste great
who is bankrolling these stupid ass posts
Primary in FL was cancelled, Biden was just given the state
"Ah yes I am so deeply intelligent saying everyone sucks"
ALL THE OTHER CANDIDATES DROPPED OUT BEFORE THERE WAS EVEN A CHANCE
Shit’s rigged but doesn’t mean I’m not voting
This is what happens when you have two corporations, the RNC and DNC, running the country.
Yes and no. Democratic debates should have been hosted in the Democratic primary. By the time I could vote in my state the primary was already a done deal.
This is true, just not in the way you mean. The DNC basically skipped primaries this election, and in 2016 and 2020 they suppressed Bernie votes.(There was a lawsuit.*) so they could prop up Hillary and Biden. People keep voting for the "lesser of two evils." Nobody will vote for something else so the parties are rewarded for their evil. That's the problem.
*The Judge said "Yeah they definitely did that, and it was definitely bad but they're a private party, not the government so its not illegal"
Also our campaign finance and electoral systems are fundamentally corrupt and dysfunctional.
Normal working people don't have the time, money, or energy to get into politics.
So the only people who get involved are those who are wealthy and/or those who serve the interests of the grotesquely wealthy.
"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society. -Lenin, "The State and Revolution"
"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them." -Lenin, "State and Revolution."
"Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor. -Lenin, "State and Revolution"
Yeah, in my state it was Biden or "non-committed delegates"
Gaslighting the voters is some real neolib bullshit.
Ugh....
This is my take as well. I'm so frustrated by people acting as if candidates are handed down from on high with no input from the voters. Primaries are for selecting the candidates, and only the most committed end up voting in those.
Yes, there are corrupt wheelings and dealings behind the scenes, but that's what naturally happens in a system that no one is paying attention to. I guaran-fucking-tee that if people actually voted in primaries with nearly the numbers that they do for the general then there would be enough of a spotlight on the primaries that corruption wouldn't be able to happen, or at least it'd have to be WAY more subtle.
Basically, I think people are angry with the wrong stage of the process.
Yes. Sorta. Kinda. But, not really.
This time around, Trump basically had no real competition, because he was a guy who barely lost last time, and has spent his time rallying up fervor for another go at it. Biden is an incumbent President. It would be a huge thing for him not to run for re-election.
Basically, this election is a no-win scenario for a good portion of the voter base. It basically just comes down to harm reduction, whatever that might entail for you.
Lmfao. This assumes the uS is a healthy democracy.
Its not. It’s an oligarchy. The political parties are in bed with industry leaders. Nothing political is set up with you in mind, it’s set up to protect those with money and power.
I'm 15, turning 16 in August, and you're telling me to participate in the primaries? What do I do? Vote illegally?
Not really, the rich pick who is on the ballot via campaign donations and media attention. With out the support of the rich, they don't make it to any ballots. They don't have the money to campaign and don't get any airtime on the news.
Voting for folks too old to vote for is how we got here.
Trust the science.
And the DNC clearly misrepresenting the POTUS mental abilities.
Because I had such great primary choices... Elections are a scam. Even if they go the "right" way, the entrenched bureaucracy and political class will ensure that things mostly stay on the same course. America's institutions have taken on a life of their own and have their own direction, independent of the results of a given election. Necessary change won't occur until the political system changes. It's not just one person or idea that's causing decline, it's the defective nature of republics and elected government. Monarchies are better; they avoid the problems of mob rule and oligarchic domination, while mitigating the potential for the generic tin pot dictator in the most cost-efficient way through better incentives and a more stable institution. Government has been made worse in practice, not better, by the so-called "enlightenment." If anyone thinks they can prove that republics are actually better, try.
This is patently false, the US presidency can be won with 20% of the popular vote.
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Full disagree. The candidates suck becuase these are the candidates that corporations and billionaires backed and are the ones they ALLOWED to move forward through their respective primaries.
You literally had billionaires running in the 2020 primary, they cratered because nobody liked them. Maybe the truth is more complicated?
They funded the entire turn to the right you're dealing with right now
What lefties need to understand is that funding doesn’t matter if no one likes your ideas. The problem is not that the 1% loves trump, but that so many other people do. We can’t just cop out every time like “oh the billionaires”. At some point we need to face that a third of Americans are fine with trump’s rhetoric.
Why? We didn't face that 2/3rds of Americans wanted mask mandates, we literally fed them PR from March 2021 against it. There is functionally no bottom-up media other than that which the Trumpists want to censor and ban lol. This amounts to announcing the game is over once one player is temporarily in the lead; facing the reality of PR, narrative control, think tanks shopping stories around, that's the only way to meaningfully engage.
They are not a monolith. And most don’t want the line light. Donating to the RNC and DNC is much more useful.
“Allowed”
Anyone can file to run. Many people tried. They all failed. It’s not the nominees’ faults that people didn’t want to circulate petitions for Dean Phillips.
You’re also ignoring that Trump beat three or four governors in his primary.
I didn't even get to vote in the primaries this year lmfao because the primaries were effectively over by the time they got to my state.
What do I do if I am not affiliated with either major party and live in a state with closed primary elections?
Ask yourself why someone not registered with a party should be influencing a party’s nominees, then go register with a party.
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