Democratic caucuses and primaries

[Segnosaur]

Who else is ever to blame? He's the candidate. A candidate that was supposed to attract Republican moderates. Go get them. Getting them means moving right. Just quit whining that this risks losing some left wing voters.

But... but... I thought Biden was already a right-wing Republican!

More seriously... I don't think Biden has to shift political positions. He has policies that are to the left of the political center in the U.S., but given the fact that Trump has demonstrated a tendency for going hard-right (e.g. with his tax cut policies) I think Biden will be seen as the less extreme/more moderate of the 2. (That wasn't the case in 2016, where Trump was partially an unknown, and people could 'read in' their own ideas into his promises.)

The Clinton/Obama administrations willfully neglected the interests of the left as a political ploy.

Under Obama:
- The government adopted more liberal positions on social issues (like gay rights or marijuana)
- New financial regulations were introduced (the Frank-Dodd act)
- Tax rates on the very-rich increased (https://www.vox.com/2016/6/9/11894794/obama-tax-increase-rich-one-percent)
- Millions of Americans were able to receive health insurance (some through subsidies, some through medicare/medicaid)
- Actions were taken to address climate change (such as improved fuel efficiency standards)

And, he did all that despite the fact that much of the time he had to deal with a hostile congress.

Granted, he wasn't as far left as Sanders, and he did adopt some business-friendly policies (such as various free trade deals). But the 'left' was not ignored, even if Obama was more moderate than hard-core progressives would have liked.

 

[d4m10n]

More seriously... I don't think Biden has to shift political positions. He has policies that are to the left of the political center in the U.S.

I'd say he's been tacking to the center of the Democratic Party at least since 2008, probably earlier. I'd wager he's indistinguishable from the platform on most policy points and stated values.

 

[wareyin]

My point is this.

Bernie's campaign brought in people that were never going to support a mainstream Democratic candidate. Now that Bernie is out, these people are probably gone too.

You know, there's a lot of whining on this board from the far left contingent whenever anyone talks about the mythical lost tribe of left wing voters. How big is this lost tribe that you're talking about here? 5 people? 5,000,000 people?

Whining about this makes no sense. These people were never in play for Biden. If Bernie had never entered the race, they still wouldn't vote for Biden. Bernie's going to go out and campaign for Biden, and these people won't care.

Complaining about these people makes about as much sense as complaining about people voting for the Libertarian party. These votes were never obtainable for mainstream party candidates.

Perhaps that's for the best, there really aren't that many of them, proven by Bernie's inability to successfully run an insurgency campaign.

What percentage of those who voted for Sanders were the "Bernie or Bust" and what percentage were people who voted for Sanders but were/are also willing to vote for the Dem candidate in the general even if it isn't Sanders? How can you tell which one you are talking to? I'd venture to guess that the Bernie-or-Bust-ers are far, far fewer in number.

If Biden loses, they are going to point at voters they had no reason to ever believe they were going to persuade and claim that was the deciding A factor, just like Hillary did in 2016.

ftfy, with the caveat that people should have every reason to believe they can convince people to vote for the candidate who most closely aligns with their goals.

It's a dodge to avoid confronting the real weaknesses and mistakes in their strategy.

Yes, yes, tell me again about strategy. Cutting off your nose, then shooting yourself in the foot certainly turned out well for Bernie-or-bust-ers last time, we know.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Yes, yes, tell me again about strategy. Cutting off your nose, then shooting yourself in the foot certainly turned out well for Bernie-or-bust-ers last time, we know.

I'm pretty pleased with the groundswell of progressive and leftist politics in the last decade. It's a long term project that is going pretty well. Bernie's campaign in 2016 and 2020 highlighting the failures of neoliberalism has played an important role in that project.

 

[wareyin]

I'm pretty pleased with the groundswell of progressive and leftist politics in the last decade. It's a long term project that is going pretty well. Bernie's campaign in 2016 and 2020 highlighting the failures of neoliberalism has played an important role in that project.

If a far right politician like Trump gets elected for a second term, what does that say about the size of this groundswell? If the party who is the antithesis of progressive and leftist politics is able to maintain control of the Presidency, the Senate, the Judicial branch, and makes any inroads to taking the House, what would that say about the supposed groundswell?

What sort of strategy do Bernie's people (supporters as well as campaign) have to prevent this potentially fatal blow to these progressive and leftist policies? Right now it appears some of them are more than willing to allow these policies to be thrown aside for decades rather than accept moving towards them at anything less than 100% implemented on the first day, which again seems like a bad strategy.

 

[Suddenly]

Right now it appears some of them are more than willing to allow these policies to be thrown aside for decades rather than accept moving towards them at anything less than 100% implemented on the first day, which again seems like a bad strategy.

Basically you are arguing for incrementalism over accelerationalism, which is not a new debate on the left. Accelerationalists could give a wet slap about Biden maybe getting a few token reforms done while protecting the status quo. They want the end of the primacy of capital, by economic collapse if necessary, and supporting Biden to them would just be slowing this down.

Those guys might take a flier on Bernie, but they will never ever ever chose Biden over Trump.

Just accept these guys are not on your side and move on.

 

[wareyin]

Basically you are arguing for incrementalism over accelerationalism, which is not a new debate on the left. Accelerationalists could give a wet slap about Biden maybe getting a few token reforms done while protecting the status quo. They want the end of the primacy of capital, by economic collapse if necessary, and supporting Biden to them would just be slowing this down.

Those guys might take a flier on Bernie, but they will never ever ever chose Biden over Trump.

Just accept these guys are not on your side and move on.

Gotcha. The guys in favor of economic collapse know that it's more likely under Trump than Biden, and so they favor Trump. Well, I don't think there is any way to reach out to the hopefully tiny group that wants our country to collapse, so yeah, not on our (collective our, Dem, Rep, Independent) side.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Basically you are arguing for incrementalism over accelerationalism, which is not a new debate on the left. Accelerationalists could give a wet slap about Biden maybe getting a few token reforms done while protecting the status quo. They want the end of the primacy of capital, by economic collapse if necessary, and supporting Biden to them would just be slowing this down.

Those guys might take a flier on Bernie, but they will never ever ever chose Biden over Trump.

Just accept these guys are not on your side and move on.

I don't think accelerationists wanted Bernie to win. If anything, Bernie would stymie left-wing accelerationism by delivering more moderate dem-soc reforms, rather that outright revolution. Accelerationists might prefer Trump to Biden in order to force such a crisis, but I doubt they'd have any interest in Bernie at all.

But your general point stands. There are more members of the farther left that normally would not treat electoral politics as something worth their consideration. To them, someone like Bernie might be a compromise candidate (to their right, mind you) that they might consider. With him gone, they return to their natural state of not caring about major parties in the elections.

The question is, who are these Bernie supporters who are bailing now that he is out? Is there any reason to believe they would ever support someone like Biden in general? Is there any point in getting made at these fringe cases that were not really up for grabs by a generic Democrat?

 

[Brainster]

Just thought I'd put this here for now; probably not worth its own thread since it appears that Biden is running for re-election in 2024. The Democrats have decided to change the primary lineup:

Feb 3: South Carolina
Feb 6: Nevada and New Hampshire
Feb 13: Georgia
Feb 27: Michigan

Iowa gets the shaft after the chaos the last time around. There are some obstacles; New Hampshire's state law requires them to have the first in the nation primary, and Georgia will need the GOP secretary of state to approve the date. The Republicans are sticking to their established schedule.

 

[ahhell]

Really, we need to get rid of the primary, but if we must have them, why not all on the same day or in several blocks of 10 states at a time. This weird thing where totally unrepresentative states go first and typically set the course for the rest of the states is just dumb.

Side note on super undemocratic processes. When I lived in WA, the Dems had both a primary and a caucus and the candidate was actually selected by the caucus. Almost everyone thought their vote in the primary counted.

 

[shemp]

Well, as an almost life-long resident of New Hampshire (there were three years in Massachusetts we'd rather forget), I would be very happy to see New Hampshire not only replaced as the first state to hold a primary, I'd be happy to be 50th! Why? Because then I wouldn't have to put up with the incessant politicking, the obnoxious political advertising, and the robocalls! Let's move it to mid-June and make it meaningless!

Of course, the real issue is that there's lots of people and businesses in New Hampshire (and Massachusetts too; Massachusetts' TV and radio stations have a lot of watchers and listeners here) who make a lot of money off this **** show primary!

I would agree with the previous poster who thinks the primaries should be in blocks of 10, or all the same day, but there's actually a good reason to have some early primaries and caucuses in small states one at a time: It gives lesser-known candidates with less money a chance to do well and make a name for themselves. If there were five groups of ten primaries, the biggest-money candidates would just run over the dark horse candidates. It's likely that the process would be effectively over after the first set of ten primaries, especially if several were in large states where it costs a lot of money to run.

Personally, I'd be happy to get rid of national primaries altogether. I don't think we get better candidates than we would if the party bigwigs picked them in a smoke-filled room like they used to! But if we must have them, then pick a few small states, and let three of them host the first three primaries on a rotating basis. Then have most of the remaining states' primaries on one or two days in the spring.

 

[Brainster]

The current primary system has really only been in place since 1972. Prior to that, primaries were mainly for show, to prove to the party bosses that you could actually get people to pull the lever. Candidates often bypassed primaries and many primaries featured a "favorite son" candidate (a local politician who would get the official votes of his state's delegation, then go to the convention and use his slate to negotiate the best deal he could). If you see a copy, I highly recommend the classic Poli Sci book, The Making of the President 1960, about Kennedy's race that year; you will think you are reading about another country.

ETA: Lumping the primaries all together would make it very hard for an insurgent candidate to get attention. Really the big advantage of states like Iowa and New Hampshire is that they are small enough that candidates can make personal appeals rather than relying on TV. South Carolina is a bit bigger than Iowa and New Hampshire combined, so it will be harder to pull that off. Also, it would make it much harder to derail bad candidates; in the current system as other candidates drop out that bad candidate faces a tougher and tougher field every week.

 

[Segnosaur]

Really, we need to get rid of the primary, but if we must have them, why not all on the same day or in several blocks of 10 states at a time. This weird thing where totally unrepresentative states go first and typically set the course for the rest of the states is just dumb.
.

Problem with having all primaries on the same day: since you will likely have more than 2 candidates it is unlikely you will see any candidate obtain a majority. Also it would be hard to focus on who might be the top candidates in a large field of contenders. (You might have to further design a series of runoffs, which would make things more complex.)

At least if the primaries are split across multiple days/weeks, the non-viable contenders can be weeded out early and later primaries can focus on a smaller number of potential winners. And when the field gets whittled down to just 2 or 3, one candidate will more likely get a majority.

(Splitting the primaries into blocks of 10 states would not be a bad alternative.)


Sent from my moto e using Tapatalk

 

[Suddenly]

Just thought I'd put this here for now; probably not worth its own thread since it appears that Biden is running for re-election in 2024. The Democrats have decided to change the primary lineup:

Feb 3: South Carolina
Feb 6: Nevada and New Hampshire
Feb 13: Georgia
Feb 27: Michigan

Iowa gets the shaft after the chaos the last time around. There are some obstacles; New Hampshire's state law requires them to have the first in the nation primary, and Georgia will need the GOP secretary of state to approve the date. The Republicans are sticking to their established schedule.

Biden has a solid hammerlock on South Carolina. It's a smart move if the party wants to run him again.

Has they been first in 2020 we'd have been saved from any illusion that Sanders was ever going to win the nomination. Just as in 2016 he lost because he was repellant to southern Black Democrats to the point where he was never going to mathematically overcome getting blasted in the south. He did nothing to change that in 2020 and he deserves criticism for not staying out of the way because of that.