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1992? 2000? 2004? 2008? 2020?
2008. They were NOT expecting Obama to oust Hillary, and took steps to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. Allegedly the new DNC head or whatever his title is wants fair primaries, so I guess we’ll see.
They orchestrated Obama's upset, that was Schumer and Pelosi's plan they went behind Hillary's back and got the party to back Obama.
What about 2008? It wasn't fair?
As far as I know/remember it was, at least as fair as any primary with superdelegates can be. Or rather, it was still using an unfair system and enough people turned out so that the system to keep nominations “in check” didn’t work.
Cynthia McKinney was elected as a Democrat in Georgia around that time. iirc she was looking at a presidential run. You might have seen her on here yesterday for her latest tweet. (Spoiler: super bigot)
Which is to say, if you open the field to everyone in the country you will spend a certain amount of time winnowing the contenders from the stunt candidates. Republicans don't do that because they're all the same candidate. So they spend almost zero time (since Perot) dealing with that.
Superdelegates aren't great, but an alternative to achieve that aim of not having to platform every trust fund kid with a boot on their head might be good.
She ran as a Green Party candidate, not a Democratic one. I’m not sure how she’s relevant?
She was pretty suspect even in 2008, so I’m not sure I buy that if we don’t have superdelegates and let voters decide who the candidates are, then the stupid masses will just pick whoever.
Oh man you’re right I’d forgotten that.
I don’t think superdelegates are to prevent popular candidates (see Obama), I think they’re to get a comprehensible slate of candidates to focus on issues and themes and not on turning the Iowa caucus into something bizarre by claiming to be a Democrat who just happens to demand we all live in the sea or something.
Again, republicans don’t have this problem, and they’re well known to fund ‘spoiler candidates’ with the intention of wrecking momentum or message or other campaign aspects.
They can't remember.
Even 2016 was pretty fair. The nomination went to the person with the most votes and the majority of the non-super delegates. Bernie lost because people didn't want to vote for him because of a variety of reasons but not because the primary wasn't "fair". If more people voted for him he would have won.
Clinton literally controlled the DNC treasury during that election. The party was low on funding due to mismanagement during the Obama years, she lent it money in return for control, next thing you know, media is flooded with articles talking up Clinton having all the superdelegate votes so being so far ahead before any real votes were cast...even when Bernie won states, it was all "doesn't matter he still can't make up for the SDs"
Uh oh
(I agree, although DWS really screwed up everything including discussing this)
Yeah this is something that really bothers me about my fellow leftists and is pure revisionism about the 2016 primary. Bernie lost fair and square and all we had to do to make sure that didn't happen was get more people to vote for him. But according to many people on here if the candidate fails to win then it's their sole fault because they couldn't convince voters to go with them. But I guess that doesn't apply to Bernie.
Also I hate how DWS screwed up talking about this all because she was biased as fuck towards Clinton. Her bias wouldn't have mattered if more people had voted for Bernie but her having a bias at all must mean Bernie was cheated out of the nomination.
[Citation needed]
I think where a lot of this comes from is that HRC had locked in the vast majority of the superdelegates right from the start. The media consistently represented Bernie as having no chance to win, due to all the superdelegates being in the bag for Clinton, regardless of how people voted. This depressed progressive turnout, as a Clinton victory was apparently a foregone conclusion. Absent the superdelegate system, and the lopsided media coverage it engendered, many would argue the result would have been different. Obviously, there's no way of knowing at this point, but it's not as if these claims have no basis in reality.
See now that's an actual conversation to have! Not saying that Clinton cheated and/or was always going to be the candidate but that how the media represented the race depressed turnout. That's a thing that continues to happen from the media trying to suppress progressive turnout and it often works. But those things still don't change that if those progressives hadn't been so easily suppressed and had continued to go out and fight and vote regardless of what the media said, just like trump voters did, then Bernie would have won the primary and the super delegates wouldn't have mattered. And then likely would have won versus Trump, in my opinion.
Indeed. Conversely, if the GOP had had superdelegates, Trump may never have won the nomination. Superdelegates are inherently anti-populist, which cuts both ways.
If you call wall to wall Propaganda about how it doesn't matter how Bernie is winning all these states, all the superdelegates are going to Clinton and she wins basically by default?
Like that wasn't designed to dissuade voters?
Does this mean if Trump enforces voting via Real ID, and millions of people get removed from their right to vote, and Trump wins in '28, that more people should have voted for Democrats or that Trump shouldn't have purged the voter rolls of as many people as possible that wouldn't vote for him?
It’s so nice to see a sane take on that. Thank you.