Are People Being Distracted From a Larger Issue?
Hillary has always been the presumptive nominee, that was the whole point of lining up all the superdelgates in advance of any primary in the first place - to clear the field and scare/warn off any upstart who might think they had some chance to run in an open election like we were a Democracy or something. It was/is Hillary's turn, most qualified person to ever run in the history of the world, a "historic" ceiling breaking nomination, yada, yada yada.
So okay, let's concede that Hillary is/was a done deal from the getgo. So what's the big deal and why the sudden need to suppress votes and tamp down the Bernie revolution? What's the big rush? Where I see all the energy focused in the media and the Democratic Party is not so much in declaring HRC the nominee, what I see is the concerted effort to get Bernie out before the convention. We're being told the Party has to unify and Hillary has to be able to focus on Trump without being distracted by Bernie. So Hillary, IGNORE BERNIE. There are no more debates and very few primaries left and you supposedly have it sewed up. So who cares if Bernie stays in until the convention?
I think there may be another underlying motivation beyond unity. This is just a theory, but I'll go ahead and throw it out. Perhaps the Party believes that the black swan event of a Hillary indictment could actually happen, because too much is out there in the public record for it not to happen and too many people have been following the server issue closely despite the efforts of the campaign and the media to mostly bury it and ignore it. Perhaps it's critically important for the Party to continue to choose, as opposed to elect, the alternate nominee if and when Hillary is forced to suspend her campaign. If Sanders concedes, he's just the loser of the primary and has no more standing than a parachuted in candidate like Biden or even Warren.
My advice to Bernie is to hang in until the convention and to NEVER concede or suspend his campaign before the convention. He can go inactive or remain low key if he chooses or he can still hold his massive rallies to point out the hunger that remains for a non-status quo candidate. Really that doesn't matter to me. But I think him remaining an official candidate has great value in simply annoying and derailing all the attempts of the Democratic Party to ignore a significant percentage of their own voters. Bernie's always been an iconoclast and I think he should remain one until the end.
The only people who would excoriate Bernie for staying in never cared for his issues or his voters anyway, so who cares if the people who have scorned and insulted you as racist, sexists, and misogynists previously continue to do so, only adding "bad loser" to their list of character flaws? Weren't we just called "toast" by a gloating Bill Clinton? Good luck Democrats in trying to make a club sandwich without the toast.
Comments
Are you kidding?
They named Trump the presumptive nominee before what maybe 40% of states had even voted?
John McCain was named the presumptive nominee after Super Tuesday in February '08, but he clinched the # in March -- again, there were a lot of states that hadn't voted. When Kerry clinched in March in '04, there were a lot of states that hadn't voted. That's how you get stories like you've been hearing the past couple of months about how unusual it is for Californians to voting in a meaningful primary.
Don't take my word for it -- here's a piece by someone who researched it:
https://newrepublic.com/article/133223/makes-presidential-nominee-presumptive
Representing the 99% at the Dem Nat'l Convention in Philly.
No, I wasn't kidding - that's why I asked the question.
I didn't say they had never done it - I said I didn't remember them doing it.
Calling a presidential election when polls are still open once a critical number of electoral votes has already been met is different from calling an election before votes have even been cast.
They have been calling Hillary the "presumptive" nominee for months. I am specifically talking about saying someone has "clinched" something before the votes are even cast.
Hillary does not have the required delegate count and won't until July 25th. They can continue to call her presumptive until then, which appears to be what happened in the article you quoted, unless I'm misunderstanding it.
It's entirely possible they have previously said someone had clinched a nomination prior to reaching the required delegate count. Maybe that's what that article is saying. I simply said I don't remember it happening.
ETA: It's a little different when no other candidates are still in the race, don't you think? As in the case with the Kerry example.
It's not very different.
This race is effectively over. You're not going to get super delegates to switch their votes -- and you shouldn't try. The votes have been cast, and Clinton got a lot more. Maybe the thumbs were on the scale from the beginning, but the weight is the weight now. Putting your own thumb on the scale isn't the answer.
As for this situation -- it's basically exactly what happened 8 years ago...except the margin was a lot closer and there was still a mathematical possibility of changing the result on that last big day of voting.
Representing the 99% at the Dem Nat'l Convention in Philly.
It is not the same as 8 years ago
Seriously?
And what does this even mean?
in
1980 the networks called the election for Reagan, with the polls still open; in 1988, the networks called the election for Bush, with the polls still open.
With the polls still open is still different from no voting yet
If a candidate reaches enough delegates to win, it doesn't matter if the polls are still open, they are going to call it. They are also going to call it if they think they can get away with it based on exit polls. Yes, they've been doing that forever.
We are talking here about a case where the "polls" - such as they are when you are talking about super delegates - have not even opened.
Hillary has not clinched anything - she DOES NOT HAVE THE VOTES YET. Will she? Most likely. They can say presumptive nominee - they HAVE been saying it already for weeks, if not months. "Presumptive" and "clinched" are two different things.
I do not understand this endless repetition
of a false idea. What's going on?
MSN has been pulling this crappie for years.
They would hide it behind so-called exit polling analysis. It has been going on for a long time. I learned to tune them out. Funny, they will not do exit polls on this one. Ironic.
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
bah
duplicate comment
When it looks like this much of a damned duck
the conspiracy is looking at me. I ain't looking for it.
Yeah, there is meaning there. The blatant fixing has moved into the mainstream because who is going to stop them?
Yes, that is exactly what they did. They did that and published it and made sure it got repeated in tandem, knowing--KNOWING--that it was
a liefactually incorrectat best,because whoever said whatever is irrelevant and does not fucking matter before the convention. Therefore what they did was not based on fact, not appropriate and would be more helpful to Candidate Her than Candidate Him.Now, that is not "News". That has Deliberate Propaganda written all over it. So please--please try not to pretend it's just a big nothingburger, because that's simply not true.
Attempts to minimize this behavior--whether intended or not--are really insulting. The strident demand that others "stop discussing it that way" doesn't really help.
Meta: observations on rhetorical dominance behavior
Some moderation meta observations:
Of the many comments attached to this essay, only one has a subject line in the imperative — the one this comment is a reply to, beginning with “Stop”.
1. Use of the imperative suggests psychological dominance (“Listen up, it’s my place to tell you, both essayist and readers, what’s what”).
2. Essayist and readers who agree with the essayist are accused of “looking for conspiracies” — an insult, as the word “conspiracy” carries derogatory connotations.
How about avoiding these rhetorical pitfalls? They tend to make the atmosphere in the thread (and ultimately the site as a whole) more rude, aggressive, and insult-laden.
Just my opinion but I think any
repercussions of HRC won't happen until she attains the WH. Obama may be pissed off at Hillary mixing State's business with the Foundation's, but he had a few years to nip that in the bud and that was not done. Obama is nothing more than an empty shirt Republican. I would bet that he still believes that his smarts gained him the presidency. Whoever gains the Executive Position for the next term is going to have economic, social and political problems, and we, the people, may just have to watch the whole neoliberal system collapse on its own. The only trouble with that is we were "lucky" the last time with FDR. Next time this country might just go pure fascist. Time will tell.
Bernie refused to run as a
Bernie refused to run as a Democrat because he did not want to be beholden to the large donors of the party. Put another way, he cannot and will not be bought. In 2016, someone who cannot be bought is threatening to the rich and powerful. Oh, and he wants to reduce wealth inequality, too.
Heh,
relative to the title, absolutely. Just not in the way depicted. This election is distracting (some) people from the larger issue which is it's all a farce.
Hillary will win the nomination.
Likely tonight. Sadly, there's just no way she doesn't. We fought the good fight, Bernie fought an even better fight, but Hillary wins. End of story. Sometimes the bad guy wins. I submit bad guy Bill Bellechick who has won Way more than he deserves. It happens.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Phoebe. Bernie needs to stay in it to the bitter end. HRC and DWS don't like it, tough titty.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
There is no winner until the convention
Please stop perpetuating a fallacy in print, even if you actually believe it. Nobody gets the nomination tonight.
I think we should wait until
I think we should wait until the day after the convention and then all exit the Democratic Party. We need to start fighting immediately for a new party. The Democratic Party may not want to or feel it needs to court our vote but, I think, they still need the cover of legitimacy that large numbers of members confers. If we leave in large numbers, their credibility is damaged. And maybe a new party is born. Let's do it.
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