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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

I disagree, Democratic voters again did not get to choose their candidate. A candidate was selected for them. Even better one of the worst candidates during the primary was penciled in as Vice President; she is a good little party follower having the approved opinion and not one of her own.

If anything it shows that the party rules above all.

The lesson of Trump is that we have two political parties so immune to outside challenge it took someone of his level of money, fame, and more, to beat both parties and make no mistake, be beat both.

Hence going forward, when Congress tells you they want to pass laws preventing certain monies from entering politics always understand it is to prevent anyone challenging their two party rule

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Democratic voters again did not get to choose their candidate

Didn't Joe Biden get most of the votes in the primaries? After Super Tuesday he was leading in delegates, and once the race came down to 1-on-1 with Bernie he did even better. This tells me there is significant support for very liberal policies like those from Bernie, but the party as a whole is still much closer to the center.

Bernie was the front-runner until the week where every single candidate simultaneously dropped out to endorse Biden. I think this is what people mean when they say the establishment rose to fuck Bernie when it became clear that he could actually realistically win the nomination.

Biden wasn't my first choice the primaries, but if Bernie had more support he could have beaten Biden in a head-to-head race. Though I think part of the cause for this accusation is that Bernie does well among non-voters. Thinking back to 2016 Clinton clearly had more support in the primaries than Bernie, but Bernie had a lot of support from people who didn't normally vote. So it does make sense that when Bernie lost, that group didn't feel represented by the democratic party.

This isn't a hypothetical problem. Trump is dead politically, but the dissatisfaction that made his brand of populism electable is still there.

And if Biden - or Harris - don't take steps to address it by 2024, someone much worse than Trump will appear.

And they may well win.

The reality is voters on both sides vote how the various media outlets tell them to vote. There's plenty of media noise, but the available narratives are carefully curated, and voters don't get to generate their own from the grassroots upwards.

This has become far more dangerous as Facebook and the various other online platforms have moved towards microprofiling and microtargetting.

This was a huge issue during the Brexit campaign, when disingenuous single-issue ads aimed at very narrow demographics with specific vulnerabilities put the result over the top.

Trump spent more on social in this election than Biden did, and the result was a good collection of surprise wins in states like Florida, and the second biggest voter turnout in US history.

If Trump had been even slightly more competent and focused and if Covid hadn't been happening this would have been a bloodbath for progressives.

The reality is voters on both sides vote how the various media outlets tell them to vote

I think it's a viscous feedback loop. Media outlets construct & present narratives based on what they believe will get people to tune-in/click etc., mostly a financial consideration. That content guides the audience's beliefs in the direction of the narrative. Media outlets are then locked in to that narrative, and must present content that coincides with or pushed it even further, and the cycle continues.

I agree with you on social media. I think Facebook targeting engagement has led to an extremely damaging level of polarization.

America has a ton of issues, but I think some democratic reforms are critically important. Voting rights are being attacked, and I don't think most people are represented well by the two party system.

That perspective seems like it is just trivializing the reality that most Democrats do not like Bernie’s policies. It’s not some phantom scary “establishment” cabal rising up, which makes it sound like something unethical happened. Rather, it’s just sensible consolidation that is part of the process.

The Democratic Party apparatus, particularly the DNC, logically lends its support to Democratic candidates, individuals who over time have demonstrated their loyalty to the Party. Like it or not, that's how political parties work. Sanders is not a Democrat. By all rights, he should've run as an Independent. If he had been able to successfully execute control over the party by appealing to the rank and file, good for him. But it is unreasonable to have expected the DNC lifers to have actively lent support to what was effectively a hostile takeover attempt. I don't see that as fuck Bernie, just as self-preservation.

But it is unreasonable to have expected the DNC lifers to have actively lent support to what was effectively a hostile takeover attempt.

I viewed it much the same. I also saw it as very similar to what President Trump did with the Republican party in 2016: Tracking his registered political affiliations and statements of political belief over the years put him all over the map. And he also faced similar pushback, probably more forceful, from the Republican establishment as Bernie did from the Democrats. I think that reveals a deep division between traditional the conservative platform and everyday Republicans, or at least that everyday Republicans were deeply cynical about the desire & ability of the Republican establishment to deliver.

Again, probably a similar mechanic was underlying support for Bernie. Which means (no surprise) that a very large group of Americans are completely disillusioned with the political establishment.

> Bernie was the front-runner until the week where every single candidate simultaneously dropped out to endorse Biden

That's not true.

https://i.imgur.com/EnsuC7N.jpeg

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-presidential-delegat...

The field narrowed after the results of the contests on 3/3. Biden had the lead at the end of that day and it only grew after that.

It's more likely they endorsed him out of self interest because it was clear he would win and they wanted to be considered for the VP pick or other posts. Conspiracy is much less likely and viewing it through that lens (without evidence) is more a reflection or one's beliefs than the actual events.

Bernie was still behind in delegates at that point, though he might have been picking up steam. He wasn't really ever a majority choice though: With the exception of Vermont and North Dakota, when he placed first in a primary it was with a plurality but not a majority of the vote. Collectively a majority seemed to be voting for a moderates, but the moderate vote was split among multiple people. When those other moderates dropped, that entire moderate majority coalesced around a single person. At least that's my interpretation when adding up % of voted by candidate.

However, I think a majority might not have wanted a moderate. They might have wanted a progressive, but voted moderate because their priority was to get Trump out, and they believed (maybe falsely, we'll probably never know for sure) that a more progressive candidate could beat Trump. The party establishment was certainly pushing that narrative.

I think Americans will super liberal or progressive policies, but not the labels that come with them. Socialist, atheist and defund the police is still not how you get elected in the USA.

I think this is spot on.

The way people in the US behave resembles atheists more than they resemble any religion. Generally people don't want to defund the police, including African Americans (people want police to be more accountable and empathetic), and really no mainstream politician is very close to socialism in this country. But its just the labels that stick.

The term "socialism" is thrown around a lot but I think it is most often used as a shorthand way to describe the desire to use the power of the federal government to address issues as contrasted with the desire to avoid using the power of the federal government. Broadly speaking "big government" approaches vs "limited government/free market" approaches, specifically with respect to the federal government.

In generally I think state government solutions don't receive enough attention in policy discussions.

This is so important. Symbols matter and these words carry too much symbolic baggage.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so let us just rename the rose and get on with it.

Biden absolutely dominated the primaries once the voting began.

The staggered nature of the primaries combined with the inanity that is FPTP makes for poor fairness. ~No one will vote for their preferred candidate if they find out he/she is doing poorly - they’ll vote for the most electable candidate that they can stomach.

I think that's the point of the comment you replied to. Biden did quite badly early on in the primaries, and only after a large chunk of other candidates dropped out and threw their weight behind him with endorsements that he did significantly better. In a sense, the party has made up its mind on the candidate it wants.

By 'quite badly early on in the primaries' you mean the first two where Pete won one and then tied Bernie in the state next to Bernie's home state, and then one that Bernie won, right? After that was South Carolina where Joe won handily, then Super Tuesday where Joe basically ran the table and never looked back.

The party did not decide, the people clearly indicated who they wanted. They wanted the person who could win the general election. Turns out they were a lot smarter than you give them credit.

I would have thought that's clear when Hillary used campaign funds while running against Bernie https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/dnc-leak-clinton-team...

>>I disagree, Democratic voters again did not get to choose their candidate. A candidate was selected for them.

This is quite wrong. Biden crushed Bernie in the primaries.

No, Biden had never won a single primary (while Bernie had multiple during this campaign alone) until SC, when most every other candidate dropped out while endorsing Biden in a span of a week or so in a (successful) attempt to deny Bernie the nomination.

And then there are things like the Iowa caucus where Mayor Pete decided to crown himself winner before one was officially declared (gee, sound familiar?) because the Iowa Dem party crapped the bed.

Bernie only won a single primary, Nevada, prior to South Carolina. He lost in Iowa and tied in New Hampshire. Just prior to Super Tuesday several candidates who were polling in single digits dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden. Maybe it was because they agreed with Joe's policies, maybe the party put a gun to their head, and maybe they just didn't like Bernie.

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