this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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Remember that the party interferes with the primaries. Any progressive that wins has to successfully fight both parties.
All you have to do to defeat that is to fucking vote. Bernie lost the Presidential primaries in 2016 ans 2020 because more people voted for Clinton and Biden.
Yeah, there was talk about them rigging the 2016 primary for Clinton with the superdelegates if Bernie was ahead, but it never reached that point because Clinton secured the nomination before the convention.
I teach at a university and I had a ton of students praising Bernie who couldn't be assed to change their registration to a local address or drive home for a day to vote for him. And then they refused to vote in the general because they were protesting that the person they couldn't be bothered to vote for didn't win the nomination.
I caucused for Bernie both times. The first time, Clinton's staffers misdirected and intimidated a bunch of Bernie supporters to stand on her side of the room. No one realized what had happened until after the count was taken, but by then it was too late, and the person running the caucus turned a deaf ear to our complaints. We were told that we'd be thrown out/arrested if we continued to make a disturbance.
The second time, we didn't have enough people for Bernie to be considered a "viable" candidate, and that's only because the people from the Biden side of the room convinced half of our group that we were not viable (we were, but that was the first caucus for most of the Bernie supporters and they didn't know how it worked)
If you're not familiar with caucuses, I don't blame you; they are an antiquated, easily manipulated system that needs to be thrown out.
And in places where the party's fuckery succeeds, you'll pretend that the primaries are fair because you like the results.
The party successfully argued in court that it could decide the nominee in a smoke filled room without the input of the voters if it wanted. Then it did just that in 2024. And you pretend it was fair because a genocide candidate was nominated.
The establishment Dems didn't support Mandami, but he still won in the primaries. You know why? Because people showed up to vote.
How many have lost because the party plays favorites?
Who showed up to vote for harris in the primaries we were cheated out of?
The results of crooked primaries are not reliably indicative of the electorate's will.
Who said it was fair? But you've got to use every tool at your disposal. Don't make it easy for them.
Centrists argue that we should ignore progressives and point to primary losses as a reason.
Primaries centrists run dishonestly for their own benefit.