Politics ‘What Are You Doing?!’ CNN’s Enten Warns Democrats Are In Trouble Ahead of the Midterms

Yeah, that's nonsense. Parties don't win or lose presidential elections, candidates win or lose elections.

Nobody thought "gee, I really like Hillary/Kamala, but I don't like the democratic party so I'm going to vote for Trump".

barfo

 

Bruce Springsteen Rips Democrats: “We’re Desperately in Need of an Effective Alternative Party”

 

Bernie got fewer votes than Hillary. That's just math.

Anything else is just whining. Bernie would have gotten the nomination if he'd gotten more (delegate) votes. Hillary would have won the general if she'd gotten more (electoral) votes. Trump would have won in 2020 if the election wasn't rigged, er, I mean, if he'd gotten more electoral votes. It's a bummer, but not a conspiracy, when the preferred candidate fails to win.

Then why don't they? Nothing is preventing them from running on whatever platform they feel is appropriate.
And if you say 'the party is preventing them', I think that's BS. The party has zero power to prevent someone from running, or to prevent them from saying whatever they want.
The party, after all, is just a large bunch of individual people, and they all have free will. There is no all-powerful CEO of the party who can control votes, platforms, or much of anything else. It's all just politics and turtles, all the way down.

The truth, as I see it, is a lot more pedestrian.
Candidates believe that taking positions in favor of radical change is a way to lose votes - being incremental and middle of the road is the accepted wisdom on how to win elections.
That might actually change now, given the wreckage of the country currently going on, and the success in the other party of a candidate who promised to burn everything down - but that has been the rule for the past several decades, and that's the main reason candidates haven't done what you want, and also why candidates who do do what you want haven't won.

barfo

 

The latest orders from DNC HQ have arrived!

"DNC Chair Ken Martin says recent special election results show Democrats are on the right track for 2026, and tells detractors to "stop bitching" and help the party's efforts."

Clearly, Democrats will obey the party boss, as they must, and no bitching will be heard henceforth.

barfo

 

I think I might have addressed that point.

barfo

 

Well, yeah, and that's a very good thing. Do you disagree?

What was/is the "Obama situation"?

You make simple politics sound so nefarious. Yes, different people have different preferences about candidates.
And some people have more power than others. Some people are more persuasive than others. Some people have more money than others. Some people get to sleep with supermodels.
All of that is 'unfair' in some sense, but it's also reality.

Yep.

And I have no objection to that, if it creates a winning non-fascist coalition.
I'm not advocating for middle-of-the-road-ness, I'm just saying that our system of politics has historically encouraged it.
Maybe that era is now over, we'll see.

barfo

 

Are you saying it's good to let someone like Trump get elected if it's what people want? Should we have a system that self-destructs? We do, but is that really a good thing?

Oh, I see. Not buying what you are selling there. Obama won because he collected a sufficient amount of support. Bernie lost because he didn't collect a sufficient level of support.

Both things can be true. Yes, there was some stupid cheating stuff that happened. It pissed off Bernie's supporters, and rightly so.

But he clearly wouldn't have won (the nomination) anyway. He didn't have the votes.

barfo

 

There's nothing unfair or shady about the superdelegates. It doesn't involve the party putting a thumb on the scales.
It may not have been a good system, but it was the system in place that year, and everyone knew the rules, including Bernie.
Bernie should have either lined up more superdelegates on his side, or done something else to minimize their impact. That was his job. He didn't do it well enough to win.
And it wasn't the party that publicized the superdelegate counts, it was the media. There's nothing shady about that either, any more than reporting on any preference poll is shady.

The fact that the superdelegate system wasn't great for either the party or Bernie doesn't make it crooked. At all.
Yes, if the rules had been different, Bernie might have won. Lots of things could possibly have happened if reality was different.

barfo

 

If he's convinced you of that, then he's doing his job well. He needs to win back people who have been angry ever since Bernie failed to win.

So the 'bad system' has already been fixed, as you've acknowledged, so what's your problem with the party now?

barfo

 

What remains to be fixed, rule-wise, in your view?

barfo