Well, he’s been a Senator for decades, he should have been aware of this, if it’s so damn unfair.
At least out here in CA, the Primary has plenty of stuff on the ballot besides the Party nominees.
Yeah, I’m having a hard time being sympathetic to the independent voters.
My main point was that Sanders was not in any position to mount a New York party registration drive last September. And I fail to see why a Vermont Senator (not for decades, btw) would know the peculiarities of the New York presidential primary rules.
My main point was that Sanders was not in any position to mount a New York party registration drive last September. And I fail to see why a Vermont Senator (not for decades, btw) would know the peculiarities of the New York presidential primary rules.
So? Somehow that makes it legitimate for a “private party” to piggy back on the tax payer’s dime?
He’s been a Congressman for 26 years.
He can read, and it wasnt a issue until now. He’s the one making it an issue. If it was so super unfair now, it would have been unfair four, eight, twelve, 16 and 20 years ago.
Since that’s the way the voters want it, yes. All parties get to hold their primary that way.
A Vermont congressman should have complained about New York primary rules years before he was even thinking about a presidential run? What a positively ridiculous criticism to lay on Sanders.
Because he is running for President and should know about these things, or at least have a staff that can explain these things to him. Knowing “peculiarities of… primary rules” is merely part of the job. If he declared in May, well, he had plenty of time to designate a staff member to learn this and inform the candidate.
What he should have done was put someone (or several someones) to researching election procedures in all the states to avoid such surprises.
The excuses for Sanders sound a lot like the excuses for Trump. The point is that part of running for president is knowing HOW to run for president and that means either knowing the rules or getting someone who does.
In the political world, five months is a perfectly appropriate amount of time in which to launch a “re-registration” drive.
By August, Sanders was quite well known and had a large group of supporters. He certainly had sufficient people power to handle door-to-door canvassing at that point. He had people who were very savvy about getting him media interviews, finding spaces for him to do rallies, advertising the rallies, using social media… Any campaign is an amalgamation of lots of people with different, hopefully complementary, skills. I don’t really believe he had no one near him who knew anything about the NY primary laws.
So Sanders COULD have paid attention to the issues in NYS. I really don’t know why he didn’t. If I had to guess, I’d say that his campaign was focusing much more on the broader “get out the message” than the nitty-gritty of “get out the vote.” But I don’t know for sure.
In any case, May to October is plenty long enough for a serious candidate with a big following to undertake a bigger project than a re-registration drive. Heck, Bill Clinton didn’t announce his candidacy (the first time around) till October of '91; the NH primary was just four months later. He put together an entire campaign in that time, culminating in votes that actually counted. Time is not necessarily an enemy.
Well, there’s Senator Boxer’s seat, the usual other offices, and, if I am reading this right, just one ballot proposition, and it’s a “meh” one; it gives the state legislature the right to suspend one of its members, rather than being limited to the current choices of expelling someone or a slap on the wrist.
The ones eligible for the November ballot:
[ul]
[li]Overturning the ban on plastic bags in stores[/li][li]Requiring a 2/3 vote of the legislature to repeal an existing fee on hospitals that qualifies for matching federal funds[/li][li]Banning the state from paying more for a prescription drug than that the federal Department of Veterans Affairs pays[/li][li]Requires all men in porn films to use condoms[/li][li]Prohibits the legislature from authorizing bonds worth $2 billion or more without submitting it to a vote of the people first[/li][li]$9 billion in bonds for K-12 and junior colleges[/li][li]plus, there’s one that would eventually raise the minimum wage to $15, but I have heard that this is going to be withdrawn in light of the recent bill that does the same thing, albeit taking one year longer[/li][/ul]
Get real, guys. Last October, Sanders was polling under 30% and probably had hardly any money. Even if he had spent the money to research New York primary rules, he could not have changed them and could not have mounted any useful party registration drive. Oh, but if he had at least started complaining he wouldn’t be such a fraud by complaining now? Come on.
Just him, or left-progressivism in general?
Seriously? You don’t know why he didn’t expend limited resources to work the system in the 38th primary before the first one had even happened? Basically, it’s confusing that one of the first priorities wasn’t to start a New York registration drive?
Okay. First of all, you don;t need to spend any money at all to research NYS rules. You can find them right on the internet. To say otherwise is silly.
In July, August, and September, the Sanders campaign raised $26 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/us/politics/bernie-sanders-election-campaign.html?_r=0.
Agreed that Sanders could not have changed the rules by October. But he certainly could have canvassed to change registrations by then. Canvassing isn’t the cheapest thing a political campaign does, but it does rely heavily on the work of volunteers–and Sanders had no shortage of folks who were very enthusiastic about him.
–Alternatively, he could have made common cause with progressive organizations already active in NYS, who would have office space, knowhow, etc., and a corps of active members that he could have tapped into. (Most of my fellow canvassers yesterday were union members, brought out by their leadership.) I don’t know if he availed himself of these opportunities. I know he has been endorsed by many fewer of these organizations than Clinton, but he has been backed by some. Did they offer help? I’d be surprised if they didn’t.
Would changing all those registrations have been easy? Nope. Would it have been the smartest use of his resources? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever. He made a choice, informed or out of ignorance, not to try to turn independents in NYS into Democrats, and the consequences of that decision really are on him.
Of course it’s “on him” but I have a feeling most reasonable commentators would have asked back then “why is he spending so much money in New York?” if he had started doing that in August. And I think it’s reasonable to wonder if we would even be talking about his campaign right now if he had spent huge efforts on New York in August instead of the earlier primaries like he did.
It would have shown he was taking the campaign seriously and was aware of the challenges ahead of him. Instead he screwed up and is complaining about having to pay the price now.
There is simply no excuse for any campaign that is serious to not be aware of the ballot procedures for each primary/caucus state and to take steps to use them to maximum advantage.
I maintain that’s a ridiculous standard to hold him to. He was an underdog candidate from the beginning and thinking it’s reasonable that he spend a lot of his resources on a party registration drive on a state that was over half a year away is grasping at anything to criticize him.
A lot of hay was made in 2008 when it appeared that Clinton’s campaign manager, Mark Penn, thought that California was a WTA state and that a Clinton win there would turn the race back in her favor, and planned her campaign accordingly. Clinton won California all right, but only with a margin of 40 delegates, not the 400 or so she could have banked in a WTA contest. Oops.
You got to know your shit if you’re gonna play on this field.
People aren’t so much criticizing him as they are rolling their eyes at the sudden pearl-clutching about how unfair NY’s primary rules are.