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Biden reportedly regrets ending re-election campaign and says he’d have defeated Trump
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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I don't know why you're so focused on Bernie when I only side discussed decades of primaries, but OK if that's the only primary that matters in all of history, then let's discuss it.
Clinton took a bunch of money she promised to give a significant amount of to state and local Democratic parties and then a bunch of what she didn't take went to the DNC instead and less than half a percent of the $80+ million went to the state and local candidates. And this was fine with the fund raising agreement technically because the DNC wrote it that way, but definitely unethical considering the donations were made with the assumption that it would help the Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, not just Hillary and the DNC. Bernie didn't take part because of the mismanagement of the DNC and the agreement language that allowed for such things.
Additionally, Warren, Biden, and several other candidates were prevented from running through pressure from the DNC leadership. If they had been allowed to run, it was said, it would have split the vote too much away from Hillary. Again, it's easier to control the narratives with a two sided competition so they could get who they wanted.
These are just two examples of problems with the way the primary was conducted. Unfortunately, because a lot of the financials and other business of political parties is considered proprietary, much more like a corporation than something representing the people who it purports to represent, there is less evidence of a lot of the other issues. Fortunately, Hillary's campaign was more forthcoming with financial data than the DNC, so we do have some data at least.
I'm not a Hillary hater and while I think she did some things wrong, and while I admit I'm biased against her from her taking a bunch of money to drop the healthcare reform during her husband's term that could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps a certain CEO assassin's severe pain, it's the responsibility of the party to make the primary elections fair, not the candidates, beyond basic ethical standards at least.
Bernie was one of many, not the most important.
The tangents are what you're asking for because you keep focusing on one prepositional phrase in a whole paragraph. The whole point of the post was the issues of the electoral college and how it causes a necessary two party system if it ever hopes to actually elect without resorting to the contingent election system which then gives the election to the house, where more representatives per person are given to low density areas, much like the electoral college votes are distributed.
I already answered how the primaries are unfair. Funding agreements are corrupt as proven by the data from Hillary's campaign. The party doesn't allow true primaries to occur in years with an incumbent president. And in other years, candidates that might be competitive are limited to one, or at most, two strong candidates one of which is more strongly supported by the party, despite there being many others who want to run (much like how Warren, Biden, and Hickenlooper in 2016). Keeping the others out actually benefited both Sanders and Clinton, but due to the power of money and the fact that those in the party had already decided on Clinton and actually had no intention or even an obligation to allow anyone else to win, it made it much easier to sabotage just Bernie rather than having to sabotage many candidates.
The fact that the parties are allowed to be biased for a specific candidate and have no real obligation to hold primaries, much less listen to them, and the fact that there can only be two parties, means there is no true democracy (representative or otherwise) by design. Votes are rarely for something, but instead voting against something and thus selecting the "lesser evil" that is selected by a small minority. This is the point of the original post. The primaries not being fair is just a side note, and not even part of the constitution, nor is it illegal for the primaries to be biased, so it's just obfuscation of the real issue. The fact that the electoral college creates a necessary two candidate system. That doesn't mean we have to have political parties, but we do, and those are corrupt, but outside of the purview of the constitution. No matter what system is put in place, it will always be no more than two options.