No, they’re trying to make it better by pulling leftward. A perfectly reasonable, legitimate, and beneficent goal.
But you won’t accept the the responsibility of implied reciprocity. You expect that if you pull it leftward, the more centrist voters will still come along and vote for your candidate in the general. (If you don’t, then you really are trying to destroy the party.)
So if you’re a Republican and opposed to Trump, and think he would be a disaster for the party and the country, you are thereby obliged to sit out the primary and by that very inaction help his candidacy? Are you seriously saying this?
I expect that everyone will vote for the candidate in the general whom they believe will result in the best government, according to their standards. I don’t expect them to follow some sort of Miss Manners Guide to pint-swapping or whatever you’re expecting them to do.
Of course, you only seem to expect this behavior when it benefits your candidate. Purely coincidental, I’m sure.
And in teaching progressives to know our own strength, Sanders already has accomplished something of greater importance and greater value than any American pol has ever accomplished since LBJ.
Look, whatever Sanders is, he is not naive. He has been in the Senate for decades. He knows all about, and far better than most people – possibly even better than most senators with less seniority – how things get done and how things do not get done in Washington. No one can tell him anything about the challenges he would face that he did not think of first, and before he even announced. As to what he could do by decree, or executive order . . . in that regard, W and Obama between them already have very effectively pushed the envelope far beyond what would have been thinkable before 2001, and Sanders knows that too.
I confess that I’m having difficulty following this thread. Sanders will pivot to the general this summer. He will bring along the large majority of his supporters. Those of his group that don’t vote Democratic aren’t really Sanders supporters anyway. Because Sanders understands politics.
I can understand a Sanders supporters wondering about next fall, given the heat of this campaign. But I think it’s going to be hard to voice an articulate case for Stein/Ryan in August. Some will do that I suppose. But they will be small in number.
Far more will take a mid-way position and not actively campaign for Hillary while supporting certain down-ballot candidates.
Like many discussions, this would be moot if we didn’t have this bizarro 2 stage voting system, with eligibility for first stage voting varying state by state. The idea that Joe Blow or MfM should be asked to weigh electability along with ideological preference in the first stage is a little much.
I stand by what I said earlier. If there were multiple parties vying for election, there could be some validity to your over the top loyalty stance, Dangerosa. But since America has such a rock solid two party system it’s simply outrageous to expect politically active people to either abstain from the first half of the election or be locked in to the second. I mean seriously, you are saying that anyone who votes based on individual candidates qualifications rather than voting blindly straight ticket is acting unethically. How can that possibly seem rational to you?
This is absolutely the key question.
I agree that crossing party lines specifically for purposes of sabotage is a bad thing. It’s unethical to vote for a candidate in a primary election if you do not actually prefer that candidate to the other choices available in that primary election.
There are some weird corner cases. For instance, suppose I rate the candidates as follow:
Sanders A
Clinton A-
Kasich B+
Trump, Cruz: F
In that case, if I lived in an open primary state, I might vote for Kasich, because far and away the biggest difference between candidates is, to me, the preference for Kasich over Trump or Cruz. In this case, I’m not going to vote for Kasich in the general election no matter what, but it’s an honest vote, I’m doing it out of candidate preference, not in an attempt to sabotage the Republican party.
He did? Like so many other people in this thread, I just don’t see it. You’re continuing to compare things that people said and did after the primary election was over with things said and done during the primary election.
Which voting in a party primary is not. Contracts impose obligations on all parties to the contract, and voting in a primary – or in a general election – imposes none whatsoever, legal or ethical.
Starting with the candidates, all of them. Clinton is unhinged by her opposition, Sanders is unhinged by his success, and all of the Republicans, even the best of them, are unhinged by being Republicans.
Short of rape or very loud masturbation, that’s pretty much the least offensive thing people do or can do in a public restroom. Even washing one’s hands is kindasorta nasty, as it indicates a perceived necessity to wash them.
:mad: Ogdammit! There was a time, you know, when American party affiliations were more . . . tribal than ideological. I recall reading that one of the Kennedy family, I think it was a woman, remarked back in the early '60s that it would be very difficult to explain to a foreigner the difference between Democrats and Republicans. And it was true at the time, each party had its liberal and conservative wings. But since Nixon got going with his Southern Strategy, and there was a significant exchange in party constituencies, the two parties have more or less sorted themselves out along clear ideological lines – and no good and decent American should regret that. And ideological politics are not tribal or family politics, they’re better.
It ain’t foolish. The Democratic Party very definitely has an Establishment and it very clearly favors Clinton over Sanders. The preferences of the voting base, including minorities, are a completely different and largely irrelevant discussion.
IOW, husbands. 
Having an establishment and everyone with views differing from Bernie’s supporters being painted as part of that establishment are completely different things, though. Which is exactly the mistake I’ve seen several Bernie supporters make just in the past week.
Hell, I’m not even a Democrat and I’ve been charged with being a part of their establishment twice. Oh yeah, and entitled, too, as if I don’t work for a living. Personally I think the entitlement is a lot more on the other side based on the ages of the vast majority of Bernie supporters.
No, “spite” is not the word. The right word begins with “r”.
So you’re saying either that Bernie will win the nomination or that he’ll run third- (or fourth-) party.
Correct, in my case.
Yes, and now we must teach centrists to know our strength.