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A message to wavering Democrats
(lemmy.sdf.org)
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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Where were the debates? I'll tell you! The Party decided there would be no debates, because they had already chosen Biden to be the nominee. No debates means no media coverage for those other candidates, which means their campaigns are dead on arrival. That's something the Party controls absolutely. That's not a spectrum.
Voters weren't going to choose Dean Philips or "that one author lady whose name I can’t remember" because those candidates didn't get to speak on prime-time or get put into our news-feeds, the debates are where candidates make their case to voters.
A real primary means having debates. So. Where were the debates? There were some private forums and townhalls held by colleges and independent media outlets, but the Democratic National Committee didn't sponsor or host debates because they had already chosen Biden. They said "no debates on CNN or MSNBC" and that was that.
It would make no sense to always have debates with every small fry candidate that runs. Your opponents could pointlessly exhaust you with RFK Jr. style candidates with no real chance of winning, simply wanting to improve their own personal public profile. This is not a feasible proposal.
Debates are not the main introduction to a candidate, most voters don't watch a debate. These days we just google them, get a website or wikipedia or something. Debates have minimal importance, really. Hilary "won" all her debates, by a lot. Obama "lost" his.
It is fully reasonable to only debate significant challengers. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry that feels like running and wants to get on tv.
Any more DNC conspiracy/control arguments? I am 100% capable of and willing to dismantle every last one of them, I've been watching politics for quite a long time. May as well give me your best.
How did a young senator from Hawaii gain the recognition needed to defeat an already well known former First Lady? Debates!
Stop calling normal party behavior a conspiracy, especially when they just did this out in the open! The DNC shut down the possibility of debates all the way back in 2022 and openly said they're behind Biden. There was never a chance for anyone else to gain the recognition needed for voters to gain interest.
Biden told the Party that he was going to run for re-election and so they kept the field clear for him, because they believed his incumbency advantage in the general was something they needed to protect. That's not a conspiracy, that's normally good strategy! Except Biden rapidly declined from 2022 and that decision is going to bite us in the ass.
Obama was a Senator from Illinois, and was an upstart compared to Clinton for sure. He had a very strong base though, something a Dean Philips, Representative of a single district in Mn since 2019 very much lacks. Any time one of our Senators or Governors runs, that's usually considered a strong contender from the beginning. He did not need a debate to break out, they do not have this great power you attribute to them. Most voters do not consume that content. In 2020, the highest record for DNC debate viewership was set, at 20 million viewers, out of a country of over 300 million people.
I'm unaware of DNC changes that shut down the possibility of reasonable debates (not a policy of allowing every candidate to debate, I am not in favor of that for the record, I think that's unreasonably extreme, would be a waste of time and money and quickly get abused by people wanting a cheap fame boost) in 2022, and cannot find anything with a quick search. Have a source for that? What I do remember is 2020, where a whole slew of people debated at various points.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_debates
Intentionally unfair practices are not normal, and rightfully should be criticized, as Bernie did in his campaign against Hilary. That is absolutely conspiracy, and whether strategically sound or not, should be fought against. I do not want to see my party becoming more MAGA-like in our willingness to throw out our values just to win. If it does so, I will personally cease defending it. As you've probably noticed, I feel pretty strongly about these things.
I should be clear: back in 2022 the DNC merely announced that they had a preferred candidate,
and the DNC decides which debates it sponsors. But, they announced they had "no plans" to sponsor any debates in April 2023, not back in 2022.
Calling this a conspiracy implies this is underhanded or illegal or something, but this is normal precedent. They were just uniting the Party behind the incumbent (who had already made it clear he was going to run) and trying to prevent divisions from forming within the Party. This really is just normal political party stuff. The same thing was done for Bush in 2004, Obama in 2012, etc.
Having a preferred candidate is fine, I have nothing against that. Same with having no plans early on, as plans can change. Had, say, Bernie chose to run again, I expect a debate would have been held as he is clearly a significant challenger.
The precedent is not the organization trying to unite the field. The precedent is serious contenders seeing an incumbent and preferring to hold off on their challenge for 4 years, because the incumbent usually wins and people don't like losing elections. Even so, we have had plenty of cases where a challenger did rise, and usually fail miserably. Just not recently.
The candidates don't merely see an incumbent and decide to stay out of the race, they also see the DNC openly making statements about full support for Biden and weigh that against the risk to their political careers if they try to challenge it. It's one thing to challenge the incumbent, it's another thing to challenge the Party's preferred candidate. Combine this with the tendency for the President to become the de-facto leader of the Party and you have a situation where candidates are cowed into staying out of the race.
"Just not recently" is doing a lot of work there by the by. The last time there was a a serious challenger within the Democratic Party was back in 1980, which is before most of this website was born I'd imagine. Incumbent Jimmy Carter refused to debate Democratic Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and then he lost to Ronald Reagan.
It makes sense for the Party to not want history to repeat itself.
Lemmy is a lot older than you'd expect, look at the popularity of the Antique Memes Roadshow community.
Was Ted Kennedy punished in any way for that, or did he continue on with a long and illustrious career? The DNC has no punishment paradigm for people who act on their own. The candidate will, however, very likely be saddled with the memory of defeat, which will harm them in future elections unless they're very strong in their home region.
Additionally, Reagan won in a historic landslide, he was one of the most popular presidents in American history. I don't think we can pin that on Jimmy Carter refusing to debate his primary opponent, that is a real reach the strains belief.
That was before they knew they'd need to keep primary challengers from threatening incumbents.
Though he did have a long dead-end career where his presidential ambitions were totally destroyed.
You can blame his "memory of defeat" for that, but what about the Party's memory of defeat? They saw the worst defeat in history and you don't think they associate that, in part, with a primary that dinged their incumbent? Primarying the incumbent is terrifying to the Party and they will always do whatever they can to discourage and prevent it. The Party learned from history.
And if Biden stays on the ticket we might see a fucking repeat with Trump this time, and that would be a nightmare.
I think you're really straining a narrative here, kinda contorting it to make it fit this enduring unfair conspiracy. I just apply Occam's Razor to it, it's too convoluted, and there is a much simpler, at least as likely, explanation.
Additionally, I think people would have come out and made statements about being threatened, and would not be deterred by some assumption of punishment. An actual threat would be required to quell someone who thinks they can help run the country, these are not naturally fearful, anxiety-prone individuals.
Lastly, Jimmy Carter was overseeing one of the most brutal economic situations in the past century, that was the era of stagflation. He had to deal with Three Mile Island and the Iran Hostage Crisis. At the time, he was unbelievably unpopular, which triggered the primary challenge in the first place. He was then challenged by one of the most charismatic men to ever run, a former Hollywood star, winning the popular vote 44 million to 35 million and getting almost 500 electoral college votes.
If you just want to go "oh, that was the primary challenge!" I think that's just not very smart thinking.
I think you keep calling this a conspiracy to discredit normal party politics and I think I'm tired of telling you it's not a conspiracy. The simple explanation is the Party doesn't want incumbent challenges and so it does what it can to prevent them, so it doesn't do debates and doesn't help candidates get their name out and openly supports the incumbent.
Look, whether you think political parties do anything or not doesn't matter anyway. We're about to see if Biden is going to be forced out of the race, and maybe if he is you'll see that party pressure exists and that it doesn't all come down to individual free agents acting of the own will without outside pressure changing their decisions.
And if he's forced out I'm sure you'll handwave it as just being a personal choice between him and his family, and the Party had little to do with it. 🙄
No, it's a conspiracy. People coordinating secretively, in your assertion applying behind the scenes pressure to prevent people who may want to run from running for a government seat, without admitting to it. If it's not a conspiracy, show me some evidence of where people have talked openly about it.
Without evidence, it is not just a conspiracy, it's a conspiracy theory.
It does not matter if it makes sense to you, we do not simply try to apply "sense" to what we see, we look at evidence. Because what makes sense to one individual may not make sense to another, this is just a basic challenge of life. Qanon makes sense to Trump fans for instance. Evidence goes beyond individual sense, though.
And again, I already said, twice that yes, influence exists. Sway, lobbying, convincing, etc. This is distinct from control, command, force. This fine line is the difference between reality, with things like money and polls and convincing arguments, and imaginary conspiracy theories like yours or Qanon.
Unless, you can present evidence of someone receiving this pressure not to run? At any point in the past 30 years? It'd be news to me, I would be very interested in hearing about this. But I want evidence, not supposition from random internet people.
edit: Significant pressure too, please. Not just a quote from some random official saying "don't run pls". People are entitled to have their own opinions, and this is distinct from a pattern of coercion. You've mentioned people's careers being ruined, for instance.
edit2: You know, they would have blocked Katie Porter if they could've blocked anyone. Instead they had a drag-out, brutal primary contest with her and a moderate, that she lost. If they stopped people, they'd have stopped her instead of having to win a bruising election at the cost of millions.
Now that he's been forced out, do you feel ridiculous for twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to support him?
And, like I predicted, will you deny he was forced out and just claim this was a personal decision?
Remember when I said I'd put $20 on him dropping out within a week? :) And he decided. He honestly, truly could've told them all to screw off and ran again, but chose to listen to them instead. I think he could've beat Trump too, had he stayed.
I wasn't defending him incidentally, though I am a supporter. I was fighting a conspiracy theory that the DNC and not Biden had the final decision. I hate DNC-controls-who-runs conspiracy theories with a passion.
And you still don't think the DNC ultimately decided Biden needed to drop out?
He was forced out by donors. That's pretty clearly a party decision.
There is no shadowy secretive DNC group that made some united decision, no. Most donors wanted him to go, along with a lot of legislators and even Obama. Others like the Clintons and the more progressive wing were supporting him.
However, even if 100% of all democrats on Earth, including leaders, decided he needed to leave, but one man named Joe Biden disagreed and refused, he would still be running.
You understand how that works?
What you seem to refuse to accept is Republicans want him to leave.
Yes, Trump can beat him and he's a weak candidate, but the Republican base thinks he stole the election and Hunter Biden is a kingpin of an international criminal enterprise and he's a radical socialist that's flooding the country with """illegals""" and other such bullshit. Democrats could join the Republican witch hunt against Hunter Biden or invoke the 25th Amendment and enough Republicans would be willing to work with Democrats because it would satisfy their electoral base.
You reject the idea that Republicans would ever work with Democrats on literally anything, but I think the one thing they could agree on is destroying Biden.
Also? One Republican decided Trump needed to leave and he almost succeeded. I'm just saying, if 100% of Democrats decided Biden needed to leave...
I find it pretty laughable that republicans need to satisfy their base. Their base wants immigration control more than anything, when McConnell put a bill forward with the strongest immigration control in decades, Trump killed it to avoid giving Biden the win.
They believe whatever Trump and Fox tell them to believe, so what actually happens doesn't matter. Their voters' wants are 100% irrelevant, so long as they talk tough and own some libs. That's the soul of MAGA. So no, they would never remove Biden at this point, they'd protect him just like Dems protected Mike Johnson earlier this year despite hating him. Politics are complicated, not simple. Trying to make them fit simple explanations causes problems.
edit: Oh, and I never rejected that repubs and dems can work together, that must've been someone else. They worked together to get aid to Ukraine earlier this year.
The Republican base has grown far beyond Fox these days, they're all across the internet and streaming services now.
I will say that Trump and Trump alone could maybe keep Republicans from joining Democrats in their campaign against Biden. I just don't think he would. I think he'd delight at the chaos it was causing and present himself as the reason Biden was forced out.
You sorely overestimate how much they hate Biden. It's all show, blather, style with no substance, messaging, whatever you want to call it. They could all flip on a dime, like a school of fish or something.
They've been fucking over their voters for yeeears now. Their voters don't exactly love tax cuts for the rich, according to polling anyway. But that's all they get, over and over...
They're not stupid enough to harm their actual chances at winning and seizing govt just to keep a promise or have some lols.
You underestimate how beholden Republicans are to their base. The Party wanted Trump gone after 2020, but they couldn't afford to piss off their base.
The base doesn't love tax cuts for the rich, but they don't hate it either. They're pretty neutral to class politics, if tax cuts supposedly create jobs then they'll support tax cuts.
But the base really does hate Biden, because he stole the election from their godking. That's why I think Trump would be the only one that could save Biden. If their idol told them he needs to stay president then they'd obey, but if Trump poured fuel on the fire (like I think he would) there'd be a frenzy of people demanding Biden was executed.
I've seen them spin too many things around to think they don't have control over their base's perceptions.
Also, "the party" did not want Trump gone. Only a small portion of them really came out against him, many others made their pilgrimages to Mar a Lago. Parties are not monoliths, they're not entities that have single desires and move in unified directions like some sort of organism. They're fractious, with different people wanting different things, rivalries, differing opinions, etc. We saw this dramatically with the purging of the Never Trumpers like Liz Cheney. Even now, their party is not actually unified, despite trying to portray that illusion.
Humans just aren't that good at all cooperating in numbers that large.
Trump and co have already made tons of statements about how Biden was their preferred opponent. I don't think your guess is the equal to that.
No offense, I have nothing against you personally, but you clearly don't really follow politics or political history at any kind of detailed level. I very much do, for the record. I listen to the speeches, research the people, etc, it's been a lifelong hobby. I am not just spouting random opinions based on some assumptions or things I've read online. This is why I just remembered things like where Obama was from and what the 2020 dem debates were like. You seem much more new to this.
Anyways, by all means, believe whatever you like, you are entitled to your own opinion. I will continue to shoot down conspiracy theories when I see them though. There's enough of that in MAGA, we don't need that crap fucking up the left too. The left is cool, usually. Should stay that way.