I disagree with Greg Sargent who thinks the party has to lobotomize itself to please Bernie Sanders and get him to not push for an open convetion. That is absurd. Sargent greatly overestimates his amount of leverage here in any event.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/04/11/heres-one-way-the-clinton-sanders-brawl-could-end-well/
Bernie will be mathematically in a worse position than she was in 2008 in any realistic scenario. Yet she didn't get such huge concessions-neither did she ask for them.
And most of the concessions Sargent has in mind would be very bad concessions. No way should the Democrats basically try to make it easier for the next Bernie Sanders to be successful
There has been nothing wrong with this process. Bernie in no way has been ripped off. As for perceptios, the Berners have a totally misguided perception on virtually everything. If they don't like the result of things, then they have all these conspiracy theories of corporate shills.
My theory is that Hillary does not need the Berners to win in the general. By 'Berner' I don't mean everyone who voted for Bernie Sanders, I mean that small group that is so dogmatic and rigid that they say #BernieorBust.
You have to remember, most of the Berners don't normally vote anyway-most of them didn't vote for Obama. I didn't notice that hurting him against Romney.
Here are the huge concessions Sargent wants to give to Bernie:
"It’s possible that the party could discuss doing away with super-delegates, or at least scaling down the number of them. There are currently over 700 super-dels in a process that requires 2,383 overall delegates to win. It’s more likely that the party would discuss limiting them rather than eliminating them, given that the Donald Trump challenge has got elites talking anew about the perils to a party of not having any at all."
First of all, the SDs are not why he is losing anyway. Secondly, he himself has talked about getting SDs to vote for him in states she got a majority of pledged delegates. This tells you that his opposition to the SD system is purely opportunistic and hypocritical.
I don't see a reason why you reduce the SDS by one. I don't care about optics. To me the system is working.
"It’s also possible that the party could discuss doing away with closed primaries. Clinton is heading into a stretch of closed primaries — which only permit voting by registered Democrats — and she’s very likely to win big in New York in part because of overly restrictive voting rules that make it harder for unaffiliated voters to register as Democrats."
“Independents are the fastest growing political affiliation, but they are often shut out of the nominating process,” Ari Berman, the author of “Give Us The Ballot,” a history of the struggle over voting in America, tells me. “Many younger voters have less of a party affiliation. We should look at how the process is shutting out these voters.” Such a reform would help the Democratic Party stand for engaging these voter groups."
I disagree. We want Democrats to decide the Democratic primary. These aren't groups that are needed. Hillary has the Obama Coalition. Democrats, not independents should decide the nominee.
"Another possibility: Limits on the number of primaries that can be held on one day. Clinton won big on days (such as March 1st and March 15th) that held many contests at once; that automatically favors the candidate with more national name recognition and establishment support, because an insurgent struggles to catch up in many states at once."
“Having a bunch of states go all on one day creates an unnatural advantage for wealthy and high-name-ID candidates, and disadvantages insurgents,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg says. “The contests should be more spread out. It should be the principle of the Democratic Party that we’re not advantaging privilege."
Nope. A party is not about trying to make it easier for an insurgent to highjack it. Look at the GOP. Do we really want to figure out ways to be more like that?
To me, this primary has shown the Democratic party and system in a very good light.
Sargent seems not to know the history of the SD system. It was put in place to make it harder for someone like Bernie to highjack the entire party. In 1972, George McGovern highjacked the Dems, in 1976 it was Jimmy Carter.
The idea of a party is to nominate a candidate who is broadly satisfactory to the majority of voters and constituencies. Not to give the purists a leg up. We don't want to empower the Tea Partiers of the Left.
"Also: A more rational, transparent process for setting debate schedules. The Sanders campaign charged early on that the Democratic National Committee was rigging the Dem debate schedule to minimize exposure to Clinton’s challengers. That was to some degree unfair, but the DNC did to some degree bow to the demands of the Clinton camp for fewer debates. While the Clinton camp and DNC did ultimately agree to more debates, the end result was still far fewer eyeballs on Dem debates and a fair amount of uncertainty about the legitimacy of the process."
"Sanders might push for some kind of reform (perhaps a commission to recommend changes to how the debate schedule is set) that would make this process more rational, transparent, and more obviously geared towards the good of the party overall."
What is the good of the party? Is it making it easier for a Bernie Sanders to win or harder? The answer is obvious. What is not in the interests of the party is to become a weakened party. That is what would have happened if Bernie had been successful in highjacking the party. It would have led it to splitting in two. We would have descended into factions like the GOP is. Sargent has it exactly backwards here on what would be in the interest of the party.
Here is one thing I do agree the Dems should change.
"And, finally: An end to caucuses. Here a nuance intrudes: Sanders, too, arguably benefited from a less-than-democratic element to the process, since he overwhelmingly won caucus states, which require a greater commitment from voters. “One reform should be getting rid of caucuses,” Berman says, adding that their sheer inconvenience ends up excluding lower-income voters, particularly those of color."
Yes, do away with the caucus system which is highly undemocratic. But no to the other changes. If the Berners stay home and pout, that's fine. Truth be told, with the number of GOPers who will either stay home with Trump or with GOP women who may even pull for Hillary, we don't need them.
Here's my theory of what Bernie Sanders gets. Let's give him what the Godfather gave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPmTp9up26w
Look, I have no objection to letting Bernie have some voice on the platform. A voice, though not the final one. But the scale of concessions Sargent is considering are just humongous.
Let me be very clear: Bernie can hold his breath as long as he wants. He is not going to somehow steal the nomination. And he is not going to get to lobotomize the party in the process.
The Democratic party has no interest in making the party easier for the future Bernie Sanders to highjack. If you want to know the difference between the two parties it is this:
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The Dems resisted Bernie and Trump took over the GOP. You think the GOP wouldn't switch sides with us in a heartbeat?
The Sanders campaign has been hinting that he will move to peel away un-pledged delegates — so-called super delegates, who are not bound to a candidate by the voting in primaries and caucuses — from Clinton, even if he’s trailing in the battle for pledged delegates (who are bound). Mark Murrayhas a good post spelling out why this is unlikely to happen: Going back to the advent of super-delegates in 1984, they have never sided with the candidate who trailed in pledged delegates, and Clinton is all but certain to be leading in the pledged delegate count when it’s all over, even if she doesn’t have an outright majority of all the delegates (pledged and un-pledged together) at that point."
But even so, if Sanders can keep Clinton short of a majority of delegates going into the convention, he could still try to use whatever leverage he has — after all, he’ll have the support of voters across the country that Clinton wants in her corner — to prod the Democratic Party to make changes to the way it selects its nominees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/04/11/heres-one-way-the-clinton-sanders-brawl-could-end-well/
Bernie will be mathematically in a worse position than she was in 2008 in any realistic scenario. Yet she didn't get such huge concessions-neither did she ask for them.
And most of the concessions Sargent has in mind would be very bad concessions. No way should the Democrats basically try to make it easier for the next Bernie Sanders to be successful
There has been nothing wrong with this process. Bernie in no way has been ripped off. As for perceptios, the Berners have a totally misguided perception on virtually everything. If they don't like the result of things, then they have all these conspiracy theories of corporate shills.
My theory is that Hillary does not need the Berners to win in the general. By 'Berner' I don't mean everyone who voted for Bernie Sanders, I mean that small group that is so dogmatic and rigid that they say #BernieorBust.
You have to remember, most of the Berners don't normally vote anyway-most of them didn't vote for Obama. I didn't notice that hurting him against Romney.
Here are the huge concessions Sargent wants to give to Bernie:
"It’s possible that the party could discuss doing away with super-delegates, or at least scaling down the number of them. There are currently over 700 super-dels in a process that requires 2,383 overall delegates to win. It’s more likely that the party would discuss limiting them rather than eliminating them, given that the Donald Trump challenge has got elites talking anew about the perils to a party of not having any at all."
First of all, the SDs are not why he is losing anyway. Secondly, he himself has talked about getting SDs to vote for him in states she got a majority of pledged delegates. This tells you that his opposition to the SD system is purely opportunistic and hypocritical.
I don't see a reason why you reduce the SDS by one. I don't care about optics. To me the system is working.
"It’s also possible that the party could discuss doing away with closed primaries. Clinton is heading into a stretch of closed primaries — which only permit voting by registered Democrats — and she’s very likely to win big in New York in part because of overly restrictive voting rules that make it harder for unaffiliated voters to register as Democrats."
“Independents are the fastest growing political affiliation, but they are often shut out of the nominating process,” Ari Berman, the author of “Give Us The Ballot,” a history of the struggle over voting in America, tells me. “Many younger voters have less of a party affiliation. We should look at how the process is shutting out these voters.” Such a reform would help the Democratic Party stand for engaging these voter groups."
I disagree. We want Democrats to decide the Democratic primary. These aren't groups that are needed. Hillary has the Obama Coalition. Democrats, not independents should decide the nominee.
"Another possibility: Limits on the number of primaries that can be held on one day. Clinton won big on days (such as March 1st and March 15th) that held many contests at once; that automatically favors the candidate with more national name recognition and establishment support, because an insurgent struggles to catch up in many states at once."
“Having a bunch of states go all on one day creates an unnatural advantage for wealthy and high-name-ID candidates, and disadvantages insurgents,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg says. “The contests should be more spread out. It should be the principle of the Democratic Party that we’re not advantaging privilege."
Nope. A party is not about trying to make it easier for an insurgent to highjack it. Look at the GOP. Do we really want to figure out ways to be more like that?
To me, this primary has shown the Democratic party and system in a very good light.
Sargent seems not to know the history of the SD system. It was put in place to make it harder for someone like Bernie to highjack the entire party. In 1972, George McGovern highjacked the Dems, in 1976 it was Jimmy Carter.
The idea of a party is to nominate a candidate who is broadly satisfactory to the majority of voters and constituencies. Not to give the purists a leg up. We don't want to empower the Tea Partiers of the Left.
"Also: A more rational, transparent process for setting debate schedules. The Sanders campaign charged early on that the Democratic National Committee was rigging the Dem debate schedule to minimize exposure to Clinton’s challengers. That was to some degree unfair, but the DNC did to some degree bow to the demands of the Clinton camp for fewer debates. While the Clinton camp and DNC did ultimately agree to more debates, the end result was still far fewer eyeballs on Dem debates and a fair amount of uncertainty about the legitimacy of the process."
"Sanders might push for some kind of reform (perhaps a commission to recommend changes to how the debate schedule is set) that would make this process more rational, transparent, and more obviously geared towards the good of the party overall."
What is the good of the party? Is it making it easier for a Bernie Sanders to win or harder? The answer is obvious. What is not in the interests of the party is to become a weakened party. That is what would have happened if Bernie had been successful in highjacking the party. It would have led it to splitting in two. We would have descended into factions like the GOP is. Sargent has it exactly backwards here on what would be in the interest of the party.
Here is one thing I do agree the Dems should change.
"And, finally: An end to caucuses. Here a nuance intrudes: Sanders, too, arguably benefited from a less-than-democratic element to the process, since he overwhelmingly won caucus states, which require a greater commitment from voters. “One reform should be getting rid of caucuses,” Berman says, adding that their sheer inconvenience ends up excluding lower-income voters, particularly those of color."
Yes, do away with the caucus system which is highly undemocratic. But no to the other changes. If the Berners stay home and pout, that's fine. Truth be told, with the number of GOPers who will either stay home with Trump or with GOP women who may even pull for Hillary, we don't need them.
Here's my theory of what Bernie Sanders gets. Let's give him what the Godfather gave.
Look, I have no objection to letting Bernie have some voice on the platform. A voice, though not the final one. But the scale of concessions Sargent is considering are just humongous.
Let me be very clear: Bernie can hold his breath as long as he wants. He is not going to somehow steal the nomination. And he is not going to get to lobotomize the party in the process.
The Democratic party has no interest in making the party easier for the future Bernie Sanders to highjack. If you want to know the difference between the two parties it is this:
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The Dems resisted Bernie and Trump took over the GOP. You think the GOP wouldn't switch sides with us in a heartbeat?
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