Reading their statements on facebook is getting bothersome:
Hillary was not coronated, nominated or chosen by party elites. We had an election. Your/our candidate, Bernie Sanders, lost that election. Losing an election is not the same thing as saying your opponent was coronated. Barack Obama wasn’t coronated in 2008, he won an election. Same with Hillary. Did she have support that Sanders did not like name recognition, superPAC money, DNC support, etc. Yes. But none of that would’ve mattered had Sanders won the election. Sanders didn’t win. Hillarygot 13.5 million votes, Sanders got 10.5 million. I’m not sure what the numbers are now that we had elections on Tuesday, but she is probably ahead by closer to 4 million votes now. Had Sanders won more votes and pledged delegates than Clinton than all the superPAC money, DNC support and probably superdelegates wouldn’t have made a difference.
There was not widespread voter fraud that could explain why Hillary won. Maybe there were irregularities here and there, but Hillary did not steal the 3-4 million votes she won over Bernie Sanders. I admit that voter irregularities, unfairness, suppression and outright fraud does exist (Kathleen Harris purging 90,000 black voters in Florida in 2000, handing the state over to Bush for example. GOP efforts at voter suppression are real). But if you have evidence that Hillary won 3 million votes via fraud, please provide it. Some of them are starting to sound like republicans. They can’t accept that the rest of the electorate doesn’t agree with them, so they invent fraud to explain why they lost. ‘Our ideas are awesome and 100% of the public agrees with us. If we lose an election, the only reason it could’ve happened was electoral fraud since everyone agrees with us’. Fox news has been pushing this narrative for years, now some Bernie supporters are pushing it. Progressives (which I am one) are nice, but we are only about 15-20% of the country. The other 80-85% of the country are not progressives. You can’t claim fraud every time 15-20% of the electorate doesn’t get their way.
Bernie or Bust is very short sighted. If you want to make the perfect the enemy of the good, you are going to end up sidlined while the country is run by people willing to compromise. Either way, even Sanders is not 100% progressive and he has votedfor crime bills, gun bills, immigration bills, etc. that progressives would not agree with. Fighting against the corrupting influence of money in politics is a laudable goal. But I fail to see how sitting on the sidelines unless you get 100% of what you want will achieve that goal. We lost this election, learn from our mistakes and prepare for the next one. Saying you will stay home or vote for Trump unless you get everything you want is not going to fix the major problems in this country, many of which come down to the fact that financial interests have captured the government and pull the strings now.
When the election started some Bernie supporters were talking about how unfair superdelegates were. Then when Sanders started losing and there was no realistic path for victory for him, they started talking about how the superdelegates should support Sanders. This is just petty, opposing undemocratic values when they hurt your ideological goals, but then turning around and supporting them when they help you achieve those goals. You can’t rail against superdelegates as being undemocratic when the election started, then say they should overturn the will of the voters when your candidate starts losing.
The point is that, we lost. We had an election, we lost by several million votes. If progressives want to do better in the future, then cast a wider net, find a candidate who appeals to more voters (had Sanders appealed to black voters he probably could’ve won), and build a stronger grassroots and fundraising movement.
All this talk of massive voter fraud, or pretending we didn’t have an election (pretending she was coronated like Humphrey in 1968 is disingenious), or saying you will sit out unless you get 100% of what you want after working for 6 months is not helping. It is making progressives look bad. It makes us look like hypocritical sore losers who have no real world experience or common sense. Sanders did far better than anyone expected him to, he got about 45% of the vote and there is a massive generational shift in younger people supporting his views. The fact that 2016 primary was lost isn’t the end of the world, the electorate in 2028 will be far more friendly to progressives if the demographic trends continue.
I hope the people who believe this stuff are just a minority and temporarily upset.
Talking to Bernie supporters in person or listening to them being interviewed on the radio is much the same experience as you describe. One person I heard immediately before Tuesday’s primaries, when tasked with the unbreachable mathematical near-impossibility of a Bernie nomination, sneered that she was talking about something more important than math, then followed up with assertions about how momentum was more important than delegates, and nothing was settled until the convention, and so on. She didn’t even seem particularly interested in getting Bernie’s stuff into the platform, just that it wasn’t fair that this dark horse should come so close to winning only to be denied what was rightfully his.
One thing I think Bernie supporters overlook: Bill Clinton may have been a big disappointment to progressives as he sold out nearly every left-of-center principle during his tenure. But I think with Hillary we know exactly what we’re getting. She may waffle a little here and there, but there won’t be any big surprises. I think that’s worth something.
Bernie supporters are chaffing under the delegate thing, I guess I can’t blame them for that.
Even if he can’t win, Bernie staying in regardless makes it more likely a progressive voice will be louder in the administration of a moderate president.
It’s been a competition, the winner is clear now, passions run high but settle down. Bernie is getting over it, Hillary is getting over it. It won’t be long before anyone still talking about Bernie is clearly a crank.
No. It’s pretty clear, but there seems to be room for interpretation in some states. It’s not fair by my definition, but that’s largely because I think major party control of the primary process is unfair in the first place.
Don’t know how that relates to anything here though, those are the rules, anything unclear about them didn’t affect the results.
I do not understand how you can hold these these two opinions at the same time. Nearly every delegate went to Hillary day one and only a few changed their minds later then it became obvious the race was closer than anyone predicted.
I’ve seen FB posts today saying that Bernie will win California when all of the mail-in and provisional votes are counted. Another said that Obama was trying to trick Bernie into conceding before those votes can be counted. It’s sad.
My main complaint with the process is how if you’re an independent voter, you were not allowed to cast a vote in the primary, in many states, and the deadline for registering as a Democrat for the primary was a ridiculously long time before the vote took place.
It locks people out of the process who would need to make up their mind which party to end up supporting well before debates or much of the campaigning would take place.
And Bernie, obviously not an establishment Democrat, appeals to independents.
I understand why you have to pick Democrat or Republican to vote in a primary for that party, so the Republicans can’t come in and wreck the Democratic nomination, and vice-versa. But how do independent voters have a voice without committing to one party well in advance?
The system isn’t rigged against Bernie, per se. But if you’re an independent voter, you’re fucked. And that’s fucking stupid.
I think this was only true in a very small number of states. Maybe just one. In most of the closed states, the party-switching date is the same as the voter registration deadline, usually 30 days in advance.
I keep asking- what rules changed between 2008 and now? Hillary, under the same set of rules, lost to Obama, but beat Sanders. You never heard a word from her campaign that it was rigged and she quickly supported Obama when became clear he was going to win. As did Sanders, by the way, in part based on super delegate commitments.
I’d really like to know what Sanders supporters think changed?
It’s quite simple really, my opinion about the fairness and clarity of the rules has nothing to do with which candidate has won or which candidate I wanted to win. I don’t shout “unfair” just because my candidate loses. If we were talking about sports that would be another matter. Clearly my teams only lose because other teams cheat, but this is politics.
I don’t understand why independents (and I am one) think they should get a say in who THE PARTY runs. If you are left leaning, and want to vote in the primary - register as a Democrat. Political parties are basically clubs - if you want a voice, become a member.
