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“They really did screw Bernie”: Here's what 2016 can teach Democrats today
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2026
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politics
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It's a long-honored tradition that liberals fuck over progressives.
I get downvoted every time I call out establishment liberal dems for things like backtracking on trans rights, etc, in order to entice conservative voters, who will probably never vote for them, based on their so-called effective campaign platform of “Orange man bad,” without any message of changing material conditions for citizens.
Dems willing to compromise in order to get elected and maintain their seats will absolutely join with GOP on issues like trans rights. I don’t know how the “vote blue line” gaslighters can’t comprehend this.
The reason the hold so much responsibility in this is they’re supposed to be the buffer against crazy alt-right fascism, but so many capitulate to it, like Hakeem Jeffries. They should be the ones fighting things like genocide in Gaza. Instead, they take the same AIPAC money, when they could be championing human rights and trying to pull anti-Zionist GOPs towards their direction, not the other way around.
Case in point: Reagancrats and Clinton. Liberal Dems don’t stand up for workers, they just go with the zeitgeist of the times. Because they inside trade and take bribes from special interests, too. They are not pro-worker or pro-social justice, they are pro-status quo.
I believe in voting. Vote! Don’t sit at home. Vote for candidates who are truly leftists and pro-worker and pro-human rights.
they absolutely do, what they're wary of is the myriad of other issues that can also be much, much worse under the GOP. Exhibit 1, DJT. Sure go hard at primaries AND keep calling those Dems out but... you're choosing to hurt everyone else as well by not voting.
vote in the damn primaries first!
100%. Primaries are the most important, way more important than the general elections.
Ppl also forget local elections
They're probably trying to entice their own centrists and not MAGA.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/08/11/most-americans-are-uncomfortable-with-transgender-athletes-on-sports-teams-that-dont-match-their-birth-sex/
This stupid ass obsession with sports permeates everything in American culture in stupefying ways.
Especially when no one in the US pays any attention to women’s sports. All of a sudden, it becomes a big issue when scapegoats are needed to perpetuate the cultural war. 😂
I don’t understand how people devote so much time to staring at sports games on a TV, when you could be enriching your life with family, hobbies or constructive things like meal prepping on Sundays, so one doesn’t have to shove expensive convenience junk from Mondelez, Nestle and Monsanto in their mouths during the week.
Hey! Queer women pay attention to women's sports! That's not no one!
"Uncomfortable" does not mean "is an important voting issue". There are policy questions that would affect people's lives that have much greater support in left-inclined voters that get disregarded because "people only care about kitchen table issues".
Republicans care about this because there's a constant culture war being pushed by their propaganda to distract from everything else being unpopular and it's all they have left. The guy who leans Democratic and is uncomfortable has other things that matter to him. When it comes to voting and vibes, most Republicans probably do too.
What you people don’t understand is that we are at a point now where “voting blue” is a life-or-death vote against fascism. We are WAY past your little purity tests. We are fighting for our lives.
In 2024 when the Russia psyops had all the kids crying gEnOciDE! we lost. And every excuse the non-voting and 3rd party morons had boiled down to- “well, the candidate didn’t jump though my every hoop and meet my demands perfectly, so I stayed home/voted for a loser”.
To simplify what I’m trying to say, if you have cancer- YOU TAKE THE CHEMO! You take the chemo, you get sick, then you hopefully get better and then you beat cancer.
You don’t pass on it just because it will make you sick and you don’t happen to like the idea that your hair will fall out.
You take the chemo so you have a chance to live. End of story.
What you are all doing is essentially fucking over everyone else because your entitlement affords you the luxury of taking a seat when others need you to stand up for them.
(If you voted, then this isn’t entirely about you personally, just those with the ideology that good is the opposite of perfect)
And other liberals. They mainly enjoy the fucking anyone over part.
Established rich people in the Democratic party did this
If leftists and progressives actually voted in primaries none of the fuckery would have amounted to anything, but they don't.
I'll just leave this here.
https://prospect.org/2024/06/18/2024-06-18-former-dccc-leaders-incumbent-house-democrats/
https://abcnews.com/Politics/campaigns-cry-foul-national-democrats-interference-key-house/story?id=53622017
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/08/abhorrent-and-anti-democratic-outrage-dnc-panel-blocks-vote-dark-money-ban
None of that addresses my point that none of you fuckin people vote in the fuckin primaries. If cons can tea party the republicans into fuckin nazis, goddamn leftists can tea party the dems into something halfway socialist, BUT THEY DON'T FUCKING VOTE IN PRIMARIES.
The Dems cheat heavily in the primaries. As someone who votes in them and pays attention to the minutia of rule changes and who's in the bureaucracy, I know. The most obvious cheating was with Bernie in 2016, if you feel like learning about this fact.
When it comes to your false equivalency about the tea party, what you're leaving out is money.
See, the Pubs cheat in primaries too. Normally, the tea party would never have gained power. What got the tea party to the position where they could take over, was billions and billions and billions of dollars in funding, over decades.
Can you think of some hundred billionaires who'd like to donate heavily to the long-term goal of destroying their own power? Then we could easily take over the Democratic party in only the span of a generation. Without the billions, forget about it. There is a buy-in to go to war.
The fact that you don't know any of this, brings into focus why you believe as you do. I love your passion. We need your passion fighting the right things at the right times. So you'd benefit us all and yourself if you looked into everything I'm saying.
Vote, vote in primaries, but neither will fix the issue so you should be doing other things too, and definitely not attacking allies as if they're simply not trying hard enough to bang their heads against a brick wall.
The "cheating" (prove that shit, by the way) wouldn't amount to diddly fuck if goddamn progressives and leftists actually goddamn voted in the fuckin primaries.
Your attitude makes the whole viewpoint you espouse, look puerile and foolish. Not only are you not converting anyone, you are actively driving people from your cause. Which I can only assume now is your goal.
After 2016, the DNC got sued and stated in court that they are a private entity that does not have to abide by their primary results, that their primaries are just for show. It's part of the public record.
There is plenty of other information for you to find on the 2016 DMC shenanigans leading up to that court case, but you come of as terribly disingenuous. So this pointer in the right direction is all the labor you'll get from me.
Hey, vote in the fucking primaries or shut the fuck up. Tell me specifically how telling people to fucking vote since it's the bare fuckin minimum political engagement is actually trying not to get people to vote. You got some fuckin republican logic here. Vote in the fuckin primaries. If you didn't vote in the fuckin primaries then you are part of the problem. Once fuckin again my position consists of VOTE IN THE FUCKING PRIMARIES. Fuck the rest of your bullshit.
Lol "fucking show me fucking proof" "argh! Fuck! fuck your fucking proof motherfucker!"
Waking up into the hell where you don't have power in the bureaucracy you were taught was why America made so many people suffer, is hard. I understand why you don't wanna wanna wanna!🫂
Prove they vote in primaries once you learn reading comprehension.
Got so mad you losted yo wors!
I mean, I agree, but there's big astro turf money in tea partying repubs into Nazis where the opposite is true for the left.
Leftists do vote in the primaries. They vote more then centrists do. That's not in doubt. The question is how we are supposed to handle the traitors. What do you do with snakes that hide their colors during the primary, but then betray the base during the general? You could say, "just vote for the traitor now, and vote them out next primary," but that's tone-deaf advice. First it rewards traitors. Second, when the next election comes around, suddenly the same exact people telling you "wait til the next primary" change their tune to "we can't give up an incumbent seat in Ohio, this primary challenge is irresponsible!"
For liberals, there simply is never a proper time to punish libshit dems that betray their voters.
No they didn't. If they did, we'd have a large progressive wing of the Dem party. We don't, because leftists don't fucking vote. Got any numbers to back up your bullshit? Gonna report this comment too so you you can try to look like you're engaging in good faith? We both know better though don't we?
I think one point of the article is that progressive and leftist candidates have the odds stacked against them by the party itself. We see this repeating now for candidates like Angie Nixon. The silver lining is that leftist candidates are 10x better because they have to be in order to win.
That's why it's so important for leftists and progressives to vote in the primaries. But it's pretty well too late now, innit.