HiHo ChiRho posted:

I've no problem with closed primaries, but in the year of our Lord 2017 where I can make a voter registration change online you can make the cutoff period to change your party be something reasonable like 2 to 4 weeks before the primary date if it's closed.

Nanomashoes posted:

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/828427378586157057

Concerned Citizen posted:

46

HiHo ChiRho posted:

I've no problem with closed primaries, but in the year of our Lord 2017 where I can make a voter registration change online you can make the cutoff period to change your party be something reasonable like 2 to 4 weeks before the primary date if it's closed.

Ace of Baes posted:

Primaries should be open and a week long.

Concerned Citizen posted:

month long

Concerned Citizen posted:

superdelegates are undemocratic, but caucuses are still pretty bad. they're an enormous voter suppression machine. for example, nebraska's binding democratic caucus had 33k voters. the meaningless non-binding primary in may had over 80,000 voters. that's a hell of a lot more suppression than even voter id.

logikv9 posted:

i'm all in for buttgeig

HorseRenoir posted:

vote buttgieg to make america hole again

Error 404 posted:

Trump/Clinton are symptoms
Capitalism is the disease
Revolution is the cure

Guillotine 2020

Concerned Citizen posted:

mcgovern was far worse

Condiv posted:

Condiv posted:

also looking forward to the clintons making up with trump

Concerned Citizen posted:

do you really think otherwise? he was never even close to competitive with nixon, even remotely. which was by design, since nixon ratfucked his opponents.

Gene Hackman Fan posted:

lol if you think that hasn't already happened

Condiv posted:

yes. mcgovern was stabbed in the back by his own party, had a funding disadvantage, and was up against an incumbent that was abusing his office to ratfuck his opponent

hillary had the full support of the dem party, a massive funding advantage, and her opponent was reviled and treated as a joke by almost all media.

mcgovern's loss is understandable and even forgiveable. on the other hand, hillary's will probably be used as an example of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" for generations to come. so yes she was far worse

Concerned Citizen posted:

mcgovern was definitely stabbed in the back, but this isn't some event that just happened, like it's a natural disaster and mcgovern was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. it happened because of he was so completely ineffectual and he was up against one of the most canny political minds in american history. like hillary, he was the wrong candidate for the wrong time. also like her, his messaging was utterly ineffectual and focused on nixon's corruption and the vietnam war, both of which went over like a lead balloon with the electorate. unlike hillary, he was unable to keep his allies from defecting to his opponent, he was unable to fundraise, he couldn't even pick a vice president without loving it up. there was literally no part of his campaign that you could point to and say "well, at least they did that right."

hillary might have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, but mcgovern was a universe away from victory. he couldn't even keep labor from defecting to nixon. he literally did worse than barry goldwater.

Condiv posted:

again, not really hard to imagine mcgovern losing considering the dem establishment absolutely refused to support him and some major dems even started endorsing nixon. it is completely unsurprising his campaign did poorly after that

meanwhile, hillary had everything going exactly right for her and she still did not pull out a win she absolutely needed and was able to make. she didn't bother to try and that makes her worse than mcgovern

Concerned Citizen posted:

i mean, yes major dems and labor endorsed mcgovern, but like i said before you're making it sound like this was a natural disaster that mcgovern played no part in. major dems & labor abandoned mcgovern precisely because he was such a terrible and unpopular candidate. i mean, nixon was a divisive president entering 1972 and there is no reason why any democrat shouldn't have been able to make at least KIND of a race of it.

hillary, as you mentioned, managed to bottle an election where she had all the advantages. mcgovern was such a bad candidate that he was never in a position to have any sort of advantage, at anything. he can be forgiven for losing to richard nixon, but losing by 23 points is pretty bad.

quote:

Many traditional Democratic groups such as organized labor and big-city political machines had small representation at the convention. Their supporters challenged the seating of relative political novices, but for the most part were turned back by the supporters of McGovern, who during the presidential primaries had amassed the most delegates to the convention by using a grassroots campaign that was powered by opposition to the Vietnam War. Many traditional Democratic leaders and politicians felt that McGovern's delegate count did not reflect the wishes of most Democratic voters. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter helped to spearhead a "Stop McGovern" campaign, while at the same time trying to become McGovern's candidate for vice president. The stop-McGovern forces tried unsuccessfully to alter the delegate composition of the California delegation.

Condiv posted:

no, they ditched him because he won in a way he wasn't supposed to, and over a candidate the establishment favored. the dem establishment then decided that they'd rather lose than win with mcgovern and a good number started calling for nixon.

quote:

Democrats aim to make Steve Bannon a scarier Karl Rove

Republican operatives say that branding Steve Bannon as a racist mastermind of White House decisions may fire up liberals in the short term. | Getty

Democrats spent years turning George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove into a boogeyman whose mere mention sent liberals' blood boiling. Now, members of Congress are doing the same to top Trump hand Steve Bannon — but in much darker terms.

Increasingly, Democratic lawmakers are labeling the former Breitbart chief a "white supremacist" who has no business at the highest echelons of American power.

Story Continued Below

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) used the term Thursday, and several Democratic members quickly grabbed the baton. It's a sharp escalation in rhetoric that coincides with Bannon's outsize influence in the early days of the Trump White House. And those same members are casting Bannon as a shadow president.

"It is bad enough that the president has put someone who is a pure partisan who’s clearly the puppeteer here, and the president is the marionette," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesman, described Bannon's influence as "Karl Rove on steroids.”

Republican operatives say that branding Bannon as a racist mastermind of White House decisions may fire up liberals in the short term. But it's both incorrect and certain to backfire with the voters Democrats need to bring back into their fold, they add.

"My guess is, the more the Democrats and news media go after Steve Bannon, the more powerful he becomes within the administration, and the more endearing he becomes to Donald Trump," said John Brabender, a Pennsylvnaia-based GOP strategist.

"It is further alienating conservative and blue-collar Democrats who are thrilled with everything Trump is doing right now," he continued. "I do not believe there is any buyer remorse among Trump voters, and when you look at the battleground states for 2018, that works to President Trump’s advantage."

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment. Press secretary Sean Spicer has previously defended Bannon's role, citing his experience as a naval officer. "He's got a tremendous understanding of the world and the geopolitical landscape that we have now," he said at a Jan. 29 press briefing.

Bannon himself has long denied he's a racist.

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Ugh how the gently caress could these democratic leaders be so bad at speaking the truth

Ban on is not like Karl rove at all. It's almost like they're incapable of creating new ideas and instead just recycle all their old trash. Get rid of them. It's the only way we'll win.

Jazerus posted:

maybe not trump himself, i'll give you that, but you can't convince me that a dangerous candidate literally can't win a democratic primary. any party can be taken over if there aren't safeguards.

bernie doesn't come close to the threshold where they risk civil unrest and basically throw the election dude, that's a paranoid fantasy. a superdelegate revolt is a tool that can only be used when losing in the general by a lot is better than running the winner of the primaries, especially because the superdelegates are actually individuals who would each weigh the decision and you need more of them in proportion to the winner's margin of victory among the regular delegates."

Jazerus posted:

democracy is not the highest possible good. it's a very fair method of decision making and should be the norm in almost all political situations but if neoliberal hitler runs there should be a way to disavow him as a party.

find me a better safeguard and i'll endorse eliminating superdelegates wholeheartedly. in the mean time you can't just run on faith that the dems are the good people party who obviously can only select virtuous candidates.

i'm guessing you folks are the ones wringing your hands about punching nazis too