I’ve a lot of discourse online about how the Democratic Party held back Bernie Sanders from becoming president in 2016 & 2020 during the primaries. But my question to that is, are primaries not decided by the voters to get the most delegates? If the people didn’t vote for him, how is that the Dems’ fault?
A counter I see for that is that Dems endorsed his primary opponent to sway the vote. I dont really think that would have much impact on committed voters. Trump got almost no help in the primaries in 2016 and still won.
Is this narrative true and I’m just oblivious?
Yes, voters choose the candidate when they participate in the primary. But before the primary ever happens there’s a lot that goes on in terms of determining who will run in the primary, and what resources they have to run a viable campaign.
Political junkies talk about the “invisible primary,” which Vox’s Andrew Prokop, in an excellent overview, describes as “the attempts by important elements of each major party — mainly elites and interest groups — to anoint a presidential nominee before the voting even begins. … These insider deliberations take place in private conversations with each other and with the potential candidates, and eventually in public declarations of who they’re choosing to endorse, donate to, or work for.”
Clinton dominated this invisible primary: She locked up the endorsements, the staff, and the funders early. All the way back in 2013, every female Democratic senator — including Warren — signed a letter urging Clinton to run for president. As FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement tracker showed, Clinton even outperformed past vice presidents, like Al Gore, in rolling up party support before the primaries.
Not only did the DNC go out of its way to steer resources toward Clinton, there were leaked emails wherein party officials were brainstorming ways to undermine the Sanders campaign with negative messaging.
I understand all the underhanded tactics. But if Bernie was as popular as I believe he is. Wouldn’t the voters just reject Clinton and vote for him anyways?
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in this and this is just my understanding of how to answer this question
You may or may not realize that most voters don’t usually go out well in advance and research all potential candidates, selecting the one they feel represents their values the best. Many of them don’t even check in to the conversation until the primaries are over and they can make a simple red vs. blue choice. Among voters that do participate in primaries, they mostly rely on information they learn about those potential candidates by watching advertisements, endorsements from other well known politicians, clips from debates, news and social media coverage, etc.
Creating that information (ads, debates, news coverage, social media, etc.) requires two things: money and momentum. Money comes first, and is disbursed according to the process the other commenter described-- the party talks with its donors and collectively they decide who to fund.
In Bernie’s case, he was systematically deprived of money by the DNC as described above, in addition to his moral philosophy of not taking money from big donors. Instead, he funded his campaign through small donations-- which he earned a LOT of-- but he still had fewer funds to generate advertisements, to host events, to “get the word out”.
Without this funding and support, Bernie couldn’t generate momentum as effectively. The fact that he is as popular as he is despite the lack of support from the party illustrates how popular his platform is, but that isn’t enough to get disengaged voters interested. Further, in his case, other party members actively wanted him to NOT be the nominee, so there were fewer endorsements, more intentional maneuvering by the party to convince voters to vote for other candidates, etc.
In essence, the idea that having the purest moral and policy philosophy is the most important element to winning the nomination is naive: it takes money and support from institutions, or else no one will ever even know what that pure philosophy is.
Lots of great points here. I supported Bernie in those Primaries because long before he was looking at the presidency, he was the first politician that made me think “THIS guy is looking out for ME.”
It’s very likely that others who hadn’t heard of him before then, didn’t get to hear enough to think he could beat Trump.
Yes, but how do you think candidates get “popular?” With Hillary’s and the DNC’s thumb on the scales, Hillary’s campaign had an unfair and underhanded influence on the public.
I’m not sure if anything Hillary’s campaign did was “illegal”, but it definitely broke things like the DNC’s own bylaws.
Yeah man, I understand that. But the end of the day, why didn’t he get more votes?
…because fewer people voted for him than for Hillary?
Not quite sure what kind of answer you’re fishing for here.
He just wasn’t “as popular as you believe he was.”
I think what they are trying to ask is why did all the DNC undermining still stop people from voting Bernie. The point being that it came off that he was so popular that even DNC with all their undermining shouldn’t have gotten in the way of him winning the nomination.
I feel like we’ve said this to OP already too, but:
…it came off that he was so popular…
However it may have come off, not enough people voted for him to win him the primary. He wasn’t that popular. For reasons mentioned elsewhere.
It’s possible some people who favored Sanders over Hillary voted for Hillary in the primary anyway fearing that she was more likely to win the primary and not wanting to chance unintentionally boosting the chances of someone other than Hillary or Sanders getting the nomination. I don’t know of any polls or anything that might have indicated that was or wasn’t the case. But that still means people didn’t vote enough for Bernie.
The Clinton machine was in full operation.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donna-brazile-leaves-cnn/
Donna was just one blatant cheating going on. There was multiple things going on and every thing was in favour of Hillary, weird…
The 2016 republican primaries were like a game of plinko. I forget the exact number, but it was something like 40 people trying to get the nomination. And they were all mostly heavy hitters in the republican world. My guess before everything played out, was it would be Jeb Bush. I thought that made the most logical sense. My mistake was thinking the 2016 republican nomination had any logic involved. People kept dropping out, and eventually trump was the only one not stubborn enough to drop out. He had no political career it could harm, and he wasn’t expecting to win. So fuck it. Go all the way, lose, and you still made a bunch of donation money. Do it again in 2020. Just as he had already done in 2000 and 2008.
Except this time…he won.
And then the democrats went with Hillary of all people. Which everybody hated. So trump won.
And 2024, the democrats went with Harris, which large important groups hated. She used to be district attorney, in charge of punishing people for having weed. She also was tied at the hip the last 4 years to Biden, whom everybody hates, and mostly for his stance on Israel. So, she got lumped into that camp. So while EVERYONE didn’t hate her, a large group did. And you run the same formula. Trump running against a woman who a large number of people won’t vote for. 2016, and 2024.
Honestly, I’m so fucking jealous of how transparently GOP primaries are run (or were - I suspect Trump is going to try and start a dynasty now).
In 2016 someone who was the brother and son of previous presidents ran and lost the GOP primary. Can you imagine how hard the system will be rigged if it’s ever AoC vs. Chelsea Clinton?!
…at this point, I’ve mentally checked out. I know that doesn’t carry much weight since you don’t know me, but I’m someone who’s 41 years old and turned down higher paying jobs to keep the low paying job I have all because the job I have now actually helps people rather than profits. I work at an airport, as a mobility assistant. It pays a low wage. However, if your 95 year old grandma wants to come visit for the holidays, or if your dementia riddled father needs to come see you, I’m there with a wheelchair and make it possible for them to navigate these long hallways. For YEARS I’ve taken the financial hit, knowing I’m making the world a better place. Tuesday was like being hit in the balls. I make the personal sacrifice to not be able to do certain things I want in life, so others can enjoy a better life. In my mind maybe that will inspire other people to help others. And if everybody begins to think of everyone else, maybe we can have a world that isn’t so full of shit.
No.
Instead, I’m shown county by county, which areas in Florida are most heavily occupied by Latino-American citizens, heavily voting for trump. It wasn’t some “some like him, some don’t”. No, this is in those counties a landslide. The man who said in 2016 that he wanted to build a wall to keep Mexicans out. The man who used ICE to seperate and kill families in metal detainment boxes in 115 degree weather. The man who is openly racist on TV. THAT’S who they voted for??? The man who isn’t even hiding it. He’s outright been telling people that he’ll make 2024 the last election you need to vote in. His PUBLIC words, not mine. And it’s not just the Latinos. It’s ALL of America. Of every race. I just picked Latinos as the example because it’s absolutely baffling that they of all people picked him. It would be like Jews voting for Hitler.
So now, I’m looking at this world, and thinking "THIS is the world I’m trying to make a better place??? I’m going to stick my neck out and try to help an entire nation that just overwhelmingly picked racism, facism, and a dictatorship as part of the campaign promises??? Ok. Fuck it. I guess maybe I should have been selfish all along. I guess when I looked at the rest of the world, being selfish the last 20 years, I thought maybe I could inspire the world to be better when I died, and less selfish. Nope. I’m wrong. Fuck Earth, and fuck humans.
Oh hey - I’m in no way supporting the outcome but with how heavy handed the DNC is in the primary process the GOP’s process was a lot more level of a playfield.
I understand all of that. But why didn’t people vote for Bernie in 2016 & 2020?
I’m beginning to think you might be trolling based on your responses. In case I’m wrong…
The simple answer to your question was that people who voted in the Democratic Party primary didn’t want him to be their nominee. Of course you’re asking why.
In 2020, Sanders had the lead and the party leaders decided “guys, we can’t run a Socialist Jew against Donald Trump, so we need to pick a candidate and go with him.” A ton of people vying for the nomination dropped out and endorsed Biden. Their supporters voted according to the endorsements and we ended up getting Joe Biden.
ETA: To be clear the Democratic Party is a private organization and they can do whatever they want. It’s completely within their rights to say “we need to stop Bernie Sanders” and put in action a plan to do just that.
To be clear the Democratic Party is a private organization and they can do whatever they want. It’s completely within their rights to say “we need to stop Bernie Sanders” and put in action a plan to do just that.
Legally speaking, yes. Ethically, fuck no. When they admitted Bernie into the party so he could run in their primary, they created a huge chain of events that involved thousands of people and millions of dollars. It’s wrong for them to allow such a charade to go on if they have no intention of honoring their own voters.
Yes, ethically it’s a very bad look. But I’m not a registered Democrat (or anything else) so I don’t have a say in how they run their organization.
What kind of answer are you looking for? You’ve got a lot of responses, but then you just ask the same question over again, as if none of these answers are good enough.
Starting to think you might be a sealion…🤔
But my question to that is, are primaries not decided by the voters to get the most delegates?
In the 2016 primaries, 15% of the delegates were superdelegates, who could vote however they wanted. So no, not necessarily. On that basis alone the 2016 primary could have gone roughly 58% / 42% in Bernie’s favor, as far as voters were concerned, and Hillary would have still won.
