So long as there’s a proper primary I don’t see the harm in this, not really. I can’t see her running a good enough campaign to make it through the primaries, at least not without also having a good enough campaign to beat the fascist party after Trump.
the key here is “proper primary.” I can’t remember a time when they’ve had one that wasn’t fucked up in some way.
2024 was the only year recently we didn’t have a primary.
neat. i have been voting for longer than that. there have been years where there was only one person on the primary, which efficiently means “primary votes are cancelled” - when the dnc say they want the incumbent.
that is a de facto cancellation. telling the people who could vote that they are ignored.
my point stands: the dem side needs to do a better job.
I’ve been voting since I was 18 and I’ve never seen that in the past 16 years. 2024 was skipping because Biden was the incumbent at the time. Incumbent are almost always given the primary. The GOP does the same and is entirely different.
yeah. see. i disagree that incumbents should be given anything. earn it. primary every time.
i have been voting since 1997.
I agree with you, but as devil’s advocate, why would a political party vie against itself for a seat it already holds. At best, it would only slightly sully the incumbent’s name. Take Biden for example: either he’s doing a good job, or he needs to be replaced because he’s not doing a good enough job.
So primaries are only so politicians can choose their voters, and not the other way around? I was told only MAGAts are the cultist?
Parties shouldn’t have that kind of operational control over our elections.
why? imho because its supposed to represent the current situation and overton window not be a reminder the parties are “clubs” that set their own rules.
From what I’ve read the reason primaries aren’t done on incumbents is because every single time it’s been tried the incumbent lost the actual election and the seat went to the other party.
? If incumbent wins the primary its the same as if they didn’t have one but at least the party members chose.
primaries are separate by party.
Sure, but a proper one? 2020 and 2016 were both ratfucked. 2012 was an incumbent year. So we’ll be at 2 decades since the last time we had a proper primary.
What was ratfucked about 2020? 2020 didn’t feel that different from 2008 or 2004.
In 2020 Bernie and Biden were the front-runners, and then all the other candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden. So it wasn’t ratfucked in an illegal way, but in a “torpedo a popular leftist in favor of a right-of-center establishment neolib” way.
Biden wasn’t even in the top 5 for the first like 4-5 races. He did ok in one, then the whole orchestrated dropout occured to manufacture consent
Nope. Bernie should have won the primary but the dems decided it was “Hillary’s turn” so they fucked Bernie.
Bernie didn’t have the votes. Period.
I voted for Bernie, but most people I knew at the time voted for Hillary because of the name recognition.
Argue all you want, but facts are facts.
[Citation Needed]
2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
On July 22, WikiLeaks published the Democratic National Committee email leak, in which DNC operatives seemed to deride Bernie Sanders’ campaign[12] and discuss ways to advance Clinton’s nomination,[13] leading to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other implicated officials. The leak was allegedly part of an operation by the Russian government to undermine Hillary Clinton.[14][15] Although the ensuing controversy initially focused on emails that dated from relatively late in the primary, when Clinton was already close to securing the nomination,[13] the emails cast doubt on the DNC’s neutrality and, according to Sanders operatives and multiple media commentators, showed that the DNC had favored Clinton since early on.
The Dems fucked Bernie. From your own sources.
All I was talking about was 2016.
That’s absolutely not true. I’ve been voting since 2012 and the only presidential primary I’ve voted in that had more than one candidate was the Hillary-Bernie primary. That’s the only one.
It absolutely is true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
In 2012 Obama was the incumbent, which again as I mentioned, incumbents typically aren’t primaried if they are doing a decent job and up for re-election.
Since then there was 2016, 2020, where both years had a primary for the DNC. 2024 was just a fluke because Biden should have dropped out. Or even stuck with his original campaign promise of not running for re-election. You’re young and your sample size is 4. My sample size is 5, but it’s been consistent in years prior.
Depending on your state. In mine, there was a single candidate. That’s a primary in the same way the USSR had elections. If you lived in one of the states that had two candidates in 2020 then good for you. I didn’t.
1992? 2000? 2004? 2008? 2020?
2008. They were NOT expecting Obama to oust Hillary, and took steps to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. Allegedly the new DNC head or whatever his title is wants fair primaries, so I guess we’ll see.
What about 2008? It wasn’t fair?
As far as I know/remember it was, at least as fair as any primary with superdelegates can be. Or rather, it was still using an unfair system and enough people turned out so that the system to keep nominations “in check” didn’t work.
Cynthia McKinney was elected as a Democrat in Georgia around that time. iirc she was looking at a presidential run. You might have seen her on here yesterday for her latest tweet. (Spoiler: super bigot)
Which is to say, if you open the field to everyone in the country you will spend a certain amount of time winnowing the contenders from the stunt candidates. Republicans don’t do that because they’re all the same candidate. So they spend almost zero time (since Perot) dealing with that.
Superdelegates aren’t great, but an alternative to achieve that aim of not having to platform every trust fund kid with a boot on their head might be good.
She ran as a Green Party candidate, not a Democratic one. I’m not sure how she’s relevant?
She was pretty suspect even in 2008, so I’m not sure I buy that if we don’t have superdelegates and let voters decide who the candidates are, then the stupid masses will just pick whoever.
They orchestrated Obama’s upset, that was Schumer and Pelosi’s plan they went behind Hillary’s back and got the party to back Obama.
They can’t remember.
Even 2016 was pretty fair. The nomination went to the person with the most votes and the majority of the non-super delegates. Bernie lost because people didn’t want to vote for him because of a variety of reasons but not because the primary wasn’t “fair”. If more people voted for him he would have won.
Clinton literally controlled the DNC treasury during that election. The party was low on funding due to mismanagement during the Obama years, she lent it money in return for control, next thing you know, media is flooded with articles talking up Clinton having all the superdelegate votes so being so far ahead before any real votes were cast…even when Bernie won states, it was all “doesn’t matter he still can’t make up for the SDs”
Bernie lost because people didn’t want to vote for him because of a variety of reasons but not because the primary wasn’t “fair”. If more people voted for him he would have won.
Uh oh
(I agree, although DWS really screwed up everything including discussing this)
Yeah this is something that really bothers me about my fellow leftists and is pure revisionism about the 2016 primary. Bernie lost fair and square and all we had to do to make sure that didn’t happen was get more people to vote for him. But according to many people on here if the candidate fails to win then it’s their sole fault because they couldn’t convince voters to go with them. But I guess that doesn’t apply to Bernie.
Also I hate how DWS screwed up talking about this all because she was biased as fuck towards Clinton. Her bias wouldn’t have mattered if more people had voted for Bernie but her having a bias at all must mean Bernie was cheated out of the nomination.
I think where a lot of this comes from is that HRC had locked in the vast majority of the superdelegates right from the start. The media consistently represented Bernie as having no chance to win, due to all the superdelegates being in the bag for Clinton, regardless of how people voted. This depressed progressive turnout, as a Clinton victory was apparently a foregone conclusion. Absent the superdelegate system, and the lopsided media coverage it engendered, many would argue the result would have been different. Obviously, there’s no way of knowing at this point, but it’s not as if these claims have no basis in reality.
See now that’s an actual conversation to have! Not saying that Clinton cheated and/or was always going to be the candidate but that how the media represented the race depressed turnout. That’s a thing that continues to happen from the media trying to suppress progressive turnout and it often works. But those things still don’t change that if those progressives hadn’t been so easily suppressed and had continued to go out and fight and vote regardless of what the media said, just like trump voters did, then Bernie would have won the primary and the super delegates wouldn’t have mattered. And then likely would have won versus Trump, in my opinion.
If you call wall to wall Propaganda about how it doesn’t matter how Bernie is winning all these states, all the superdelegates are going to Clinton and she wins basically by default?
Like that wasn’t designed to dissuade voters?
Does this mean if Trump enforces voting via Real ID, and millions of people get removed from their right to vote, and Trump wins in '28, that more people should have voted for Democrats or that Trump shouldn’t have purged the voter rolls of as many people as possible that wouldn’t vote for him?
Bernie lost fair and square…
[Citation needed]
It’s so nice to see a sane take on that. Thank you.
Just to terrify you a little bit. In the 2020 election, Harris and Biden only had one candidate that regularly polled worse than they did, which was a culty Tulsi. And if you remember, out of that large field, Biden won.
The DNC has a gigantically fat thumb on the scales.
Remember when the media decided that Biden winning the south Carolina primary was basically a coronation.
Three words: Hillary Rodham Clinton
It sure looked like Bernie was gonna kick her butt until the DNC decided they didn’t like a Democratic Socialist possibly winning. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned for a reason.
I don’t trust the primaries to be fair. There is too much money and power at stake to let “the people” actually decide the candidates. To me it’s the major reason everyone says both parties are the same. It’s because both candidates are picked by the same people, at least at this level. Yes I know they aren’t the same, especially now. But have you ever noticed how feckless the Democratic leadership seems to be? It’s because the billionaires are really the ones in power.
If there’s a form of Ranked Choice Voting in the primaries, such as STAR Voting or Ranked Robin, then the DNC will have a much more difficult time pulling shenanigans.
First Past the Post voting in the primaries favors moderates and extremists, but an issue with moderates is that they don’t excite voters with big life changing policies. So no one, except people already bought into preventing the worst option, show up to vote in the general elections. Which makes it harder for everyone.
More states need to get forms of Ranked Choice Voting implemented, specifically STAR or Ranked Robin voting if we want to see more progressive wins.
Which is why several states are banning ranked choice voting…
Notably all red states as well. There’s other voting systems I’d suggest but I believe it’s worth waiting till they can’t ban them first.
If there’s a form of Ranked Choice Voting in the primaries, such as STAR Voting or Ranked Robin, then the DNC will have a much more difficult time pulling shenanigans.
Shame the fascist GOP is making RCV illegal wherever they can.
a regular primary with enough debates, and where superdelegates are shun till the end, should be bare minimum
How about just no super delegates and the people decide.
How about a primary where superdelegates get no more/better votes than anyone else?
What am I thinking? That might result in someone who isn’t on the corporate teat!
Why would the Democratic Party operate like that when it risks allowing a Bernie-style candidate to go all the way to the general?
They’re going to crowd the field with slop candidates, like Tulsi Gabbard and Liz Warren and Beto were in '20, then consolidate the rest of the field around whatever neolib shithead demonstrates a significant popular appeal. The roadmap was laid out in '76 and repeated in every open primary since then.
Keeping populists like Jesse Jackson and Paul Wellstone and Bernie Sanders out of the top ticket slot is absolutely a feature, not a bug.
If the dnc had proper primaries we would have had Bernie.
So long as there’s a proper primary
Hahahaha. Good one. That’ll totally happen.
If there is a primary hopefully she will perform the public service of prompting the others to distance themselves from Bidens handling of Gaza
Are you fucking stupid? You lost to Donald Fucking Trump—you know, the racist, fascist pedophile rapist? You lost to that guy, and you’d be running against his specter and his legacy, the racist and xenophobic sentiments that still run deep in this country.
What is uniting the American people, however, is a rising class consciousness, not establishment Dems like you. We already tried voting for “not-Trump,” and y’all squandered the opportunity to appease the wealthy, expand the police state, send more bombs to Israel, and treat all the people shouting “Danger!” like children, rather than securing our democracy and standing against genocide.
Fuck. Right. Off.
As long as we have a primary, I don’t care who runs. The more the better in fact.
I mean, she’d be better than Trump. But that’s such a ridiculously low bar.
Surely the Dems can come up with a better candidate that her, Gavin Newsom, or some similarly uninspiring/greasy candidate. Right? Right???
That isn’t the question, the question is over whether the DNC and the ruling class allow any other candidate to run against Trump.
Well, we’re in luck, the new chair of the DNC (Ken Martin) wants more candidates like Zohran Mamdani, and he has complete control over the DNC until August 2029.
He’s also pouring money into local races, supporting the local democratic parties the previous few DNC chairs mostly ignored.
He does???
He’s backed progressives in the recent state elections. I don’t know if he actually cares or not, but he seems to want to win, and that’s how you win these days.
There’s this interview;
I was going him saying he wanted more zohrans rather than him smartly endorsing him.
Oct. 11, 2025, 11:05 AM CDT / Updated Oct. 11, 2025, 2:53 PM CDT
Or something more recent from Ken. Couldn’t find anything other than his campaign slogans for why he should be next dnc chair
Fair point.
But Harris is the best candidate… For the interests of the wealthy members of the DNC.
She will keep things exactly how they are, but act like they have changed for the better. The rich will get richer, and the poor will get assaulted by police.
Why would the DNC give a single fuck about the desires of anyone but themselves? They suffer no consequences for their actions.
A chimpanzee with a switchblade would be better than Trump. At least it wouldnt start a war in Iran … or participate in a child sex trafficking ring.
Your opponent being ass is no excuse to slack off.
The trafficking ring are the ones sending the monkeys into the fight.
Yeah but can you name Any One Candidate who’s better and would win?
Bernie Sanders or AOC, for a start.
Bernie Sanders
WTF is this US fetish for old people. Saunders will be 86 by 2028, if he gets to that age.
America will not elect a woman. Not a young woman, and not a young, latina woman. Pale, Male and Stale or its another 4 years of the GOP. Stop pretending you are some progressive European country.
Even so, he would be better. Also shut up with your sexist racism.
Cool well I guess we will just stay in our lane then.
Your argument against Bernie is that he’s an old white man, so no AOC? Are the Trans-investigators getting to you?
Jesus Christ woman, get a fucking clue. You lost the presidency to the worst piece of shit on the face of the planet. Why in the fuck do you think you have any chance against anyone else?
Yeah I knew Democrats were in on this shit but if they run Kamala in 2028 then they’re 100% complicit. There’s 0% chance she wins
People that lose to Donald fucking Trump should fuck off forever.
At this point, that’s pretty much all of us
So this means JD Vance will be president in 2028?
They’ll do everything but what will actually get them elected willingly. Neo-liberals need to wake up and realize it’s either going to have progress away from capitalism or just all of us drowning in fascism because they refuse much needed and necessary change.
Or progress back to it … modern corporatism is a long way from the rights-respecting free trade that was originally meant by capitalism.
Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian school of economics, writing in the 1920s …
No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid to waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified. The dominion of Europeans in Africa and in important parts of Asia is absolute. It stands in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism and democracy, and there can be no doubt that we must strive for its abolition. The only question is how the elimination of this intolerable condition can be accomplished in the least harmful way possible.
name a more iconic duo than libertarians and clinging to a dead ideology
Libertarians and wanting to reduce the age of consent?
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
No.
Edit: Actually, let me be less succinct. Capitalism has always been about exploitation of the many to benefit the few and there’s not a thing you can change that would stop that from happening. So absolutely not.
I’m once again reminded of the secret attack plan from Blackadder 4.
Capt. Blackadder: We all climb out of our trenches and march slowly across no man’s land?
Capt. Darling: How do you know that Blackadder? It’s classified information.
Capt. Blackadder: It’s what we did the last time, the time before that and the previous fifteen before that.
General Melchit: Precisely! The absolute last thing the watchful Hun will expect is for us to do the exact same thing as the past seventeen times thus catching him entirely by surprise!
Baldrick and Blackadder are easily far more wise, empathetic, and pragmatic than the loons running our asylum. I want to get off this ride. 😒
Get. The. FUCK. Out.
Don’t come back. The country, or what’s left of it, can’t afford her. She’s fine as a milquetoast corporatist, but she has proven she can’t do it.
Cute that US still think they will have elections after the orange buffoon. November will be very interesting, and maybe an eye opener for the remaining septics: I’ll say it here now, trump is a fascist, a pedophile, a narcissist, and a dictator. He will not leave. He will use putin’s playbook. The rest of the world needs to wake up now and consider the US as an antagonist, same as Russia and China. I would be delighted to be wrong, wait and see I guess.
Let’s say that he won’t run for a third term.
JD Vance becomes POTUS.
Trump wouldn’t accept being VP.
What position can he take within a cabinet, assuming that no one prosecutes him and throws him in a cell where he belongs?
Trump cannot serve anywhere in the line of presidential succession, because he can’t be eligible to rise to a role he is Constitutionally incapable of accepting.
A former president who has served two terms is only barred from becoming the vice president. They could otherwise hold any other position in the line of presidential succession, and would be passed over if something happened to everyone in front of them. Same thing applies to the other conditions for being president such as a natural born citizen, 35 years of age, etc.
What position can he take within a cabinet, assuming that no one prosecutes him and throws him in a cell where he belongs?
Why would he? He had zero interest in politics. He just likes being president because it’s the top job. Anything less than that is worthless to him.
He’s already looking to disenfranchise many tens of millions of voters if he’s unable to cancel the midterm elections wholesale.
I’m sure that if there ever will be elections again, they will be purely performative and with a foregone conclusion, just like how North Korea has “elections”.
you are not wrong. What many people are missing here is that Trump is currently the most powerful human being on earth and everyone outside his power circle is wasting their time if they think they can influence his decisions. He has routinely demonstrated the law does not apply to his government and may even run for 3rd term or outright, cancel the elections because “we are at war”. He already replaced the president in Venezuela, and will do the same for Iran and Russia. China and India are actual paperweights with the illusion of a billion count human population each. That will not faze him.
People seem to have forgotten the only reason she was the candidate was because Biden dropped out and she was the VP.
She got practically no votes in the primaries.
To be completely fair, Biden dropped out after almost all of the primaries had happened. Harris didn’t get many primary votes because the person she was replacing dropped out after the primaries.
She wouldn’t have won any of the primaries though. Ive reminded my friends irl before that she ran in 2020 and dropped out really early because no one liked her campaign a lot of dem voter in 2024 were under the impression she made it a lot further in 2020 then she did because that was the only way that her campaign to cope with the fact that she wasn’t that well liked and it was the only way that people could be hopeful leading up to the election.
Eh, I don’t think comparing 2020 to 2024 is a fair comparison. In 2020 she was extremely disliked due to her political past and her general demeanor. In 2024 she had had several years out of the lime light and a concentrated effort to improve her image. If, from the get go, Biden had stepped out of the way, and the Democratic political machine had been behind her, I believe she would have had a better chance.
We’re in a bit of the same situation now. Whoever is going to be the next candidate the party kind of needs to coalesce around now. They need to be having pre-primaries, they need to be publicaly building a candidate. If they wait until the primary season they will already be 3 years behind.
Eh I dont see a reason for anything like a pre primary. They just need to choose someone that the working and middle class will like. The issue with the dem party is that they have super votes that allow those with money to get more of a say in who is the dem candidate. That’s a HUGE issue because it leads to these mediocre candidates being chosen that won’t change anything. One of the big reasons why trump won was because the dems kept saying things are ok and that the status quo is fine but the issue is that it’s not. people are not making enough money and the rich keep getting more money. Trump was able to lie and say that he would fix the broken system this led to a lot of people voting for him because he atleast is saying he wants to change the broken system. The dems just need to choose the person that is popular and wants to change things to improve the lives of the people. Literally if someone ran on a plan to give Medicare for all, break of mega corps, and raise taxes on the rich they would easily win because those are very popular ideas across the country. The issue is that the dems won’t choose someone like that because their corporate donors and super voters will choose the boring person.
I agree with the statement about supervotes, but I think if Democrats wait until the primary to find out who is their go to candidate they will lose too much time in leading up to the election. The Democrats need to pick a successor now to begin laying into Trump and his campaign so that when we get to the primary they are already being attacked. Right now the GOP has 2 years to pump Trump or JD while Democrats need to be pumping their candidate.
How would this pre primary work? Would it still be a vote or would the dems establishment choose it? Just based off of how the dem establishment is currently wanting. I dont think its would be a good idea for the pre primary because if it’s similar to how they are pushing Gaven Newsome then we will be in the same boat that we were in 2020 with a mid candidate that will only win because people are upset with trump not because people really want him
You’re too hung up on the terminology. My point is that they need to put someone up now and begin pushing them, by the time we get to the primary that person should be such a forgone conclusion that the primary is barely necessary. This probably means the DNC would pick someone and it’ll probably be a shit choice for leftists, but the alternative is that we get to the election and they are tripping over their own feet like the last couple primaries.
I’m not fond of Newsome either, but I would much rather have him than Vance or somehow Trump. The last thing I want is for the Democrats to fumble the next election because they weren’t organized and tried to decide who to support 7 months before the general election.
I don’t know that there was enough time at that point. Wasn’t it AUGUST when he lost the debate/his mind?
If the Democratics run Harris or New some I might actually lose my mind. have we learned nothing from the past decade?
absolutely not
