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Democrats Now Openly Admit They Pushed Biden to Block Bernie (jacobin.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Joe Biden was not picked in 2020 because he was the only person that could beat Trump. He was picked because he was the only person that could beat Bernie Sanders, rightly or wrongly. … That conclusion was made, okay? “Oh my gosh, coming out of Nevada, Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee!” And people, just like they are now, said, “Ahhh, I don’t think that’s going to work,” so they were looking for an alternative.

I have a hard time understanding how "the party" "picks" the candidate.

We have primary elections. There's months of publicity and news reports. There's debates. There's polls. What mechanism(s) does the DNC have to "pick" the candidate? What's the point of the primary if the DNC can overrule what the people want?

I presume the DNC gets to choose where to spend their campaign dollars and can shift marketing one way or the other. Is there some other way they can pick the candidate?

I actually just picked up "Primary Politics" by Elaine C. Kamarck. I'm sure the answer lies in this book I've yet to read.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

In 2016, there were superdelegates who went exclusively for Clinton, but in 2020, the superdelegate system had been changed, and Biden just won. Most of the other candidates pulled out of the race and endorsed him, making his coalition bigger than Bernie's. Some people on this thread would have you believe that's some grand conspiracy rather than just politics. I voted for Bernie twice, and he was done dirty in 2016, but he just lost in 2020.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah, sorry you don't see it, but 2020 was as bad as, if not worse than 2016 for the dirty tricks against Bernie. Sorry, but for all the candidates who were contending for the same voters as Biden to drop out at once, but the one candidate who was contending for the same voters as Bernie not dropping out for the the same reason (they couldn't win) stunk to high heaven. That wasn't "just politics" any more than the Superdelegates were in 2016. Both were pure, undemocratic manipulation.

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