The End of the Democratic Primary: And the Lingering Problem

So the Democratic primary is over except for any delusion among a minority of fervent Bernie Sanders supporters. The causes that Sanders championed fought for aren't finished, but his ability to win the nomination has been eliminated. In the aftermath, Hillary Clinton has begun to reach out to Sanders supporters, while Sanders met with President Obama and issued a press release that indicates he is prepared to endorse Clinton.

While he had originally claimed he would continue onto the convention to contest Clinton's nomination, the critical loss in California will assuredly end the unlikely attempt to wrest super-delegates to his side. So the healing can begin, just as it sort of has in the Republican Party.

Or can it? Depending on which source one reads, Sanders supporters are likely to flock to Donald Trump, because they share a desire to shake up the corrupt system, or will remain with the Democratic ticket, because “Bernie or Bust” is just as insubstantial as “PUMA” and #NeverTrump.

This problem of where will Sanders supporters end up, is unfortunately the creation of a party that either never had anything to fear, or should have lost and has created its own mess.  Consider the common argument.

The narrative from the beginning: Hillary Clinton was fated to win the nomination. She couldn't lose to a seventy-four year old socialist who wasn't even a Democrat till this presidential election.

If this is first is true, why was so much effort put into thwarting Sanders chances?

For instance, the debates for the Democratic primary were scheduled to prevent anyone from watching them. Don't believe it? Look at the results when “democratic primaries scheduled when no one will watch them” is typed into Google. And note, these aren't all conservative sources or liberal ones, they're from both sides of the political arena.



How was it scheduled to have the fewest viewers possible? Unlike the Republican debates, of which there were twelve, began in August, and only two were on weekends, the Democrats originally only scheduled six (which was expanded to ten and then reduced to nine), began in October, and four of them were on the weekend. Given this, it is unsurprising the Republican viewership doubled the Democrats, with sixteen million average viewers to eight million. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, scheduled three of them on Saturday night, because no one watches them on Saturday night, a claim made indisputable by this fact: there has never been a general election debate on a Saturday.

Debates are crucial for expanding a candidates audience, increasing the number of citizens who recognize them, and illustrating their policies and character. Hosting a minimal number, at an inconvenient time is clearly the best way of harming the chances of lesser known candidates, a process which no one will support publicly, but occurred anyway.

A further use of force to ensure Clinton's nomination was the prevalence of super-delegates. According to FiveThirtyEight, in 2008, Clinton entered January with approximately one hundred and sixty, while sixty of the eight hundred and twenty-three supported Obama. Yet by November of 2015, Clinton already had three hundred and fifty-nine to Sanders eight.

Super-delegates do not actually vote until the convention in July. They can declare for a candidate and then vote for another, as many did in 2008. The only purpose to declaring advance is to persuade the electorate to vote as the Democratic elite does. And plenty of people vote as they see the super-delegates do. It's not wrong to say this, because it's true. If it wasn't true, super-delegates wouldn't declare before the first primary. Super-delegates use their powerful minority to influence the majority and it succeeds.

Sanders supporters (along with everyone else) were constantly reminded of the super-delegates as the media reported it, while also insidiously kept secret, as the media sometimes incorporated the super-delegates into delegate tallies with only a tiny prescription label-like addendum at the bottom of articles and graphic, explaining their methodology.

For these reasons the super-delegate system seemed rigged, and as mentioned in a previous article, including any number of super-delegates in modern primaries is frustrating or pointless. Either they decide narrow races, upsetting the supporters of the loser, or they have no purpose in landslides, or most egregious of all, they (as fifteen percent of the vote total) deny the candidacy to someone who has the overwhelming support of the public. Ironically, the only place they could be useful and fair, would be to deny a factional candidate (someone who acquires only thirty to forty percent of the vote) who appears to be winning because of a crowded field. Of course, this problem would be alleviated if the delegates were awarded proportionally instead of in a winner-take-all method. I wonder who this lesson could be applied to?

The super-delegate issue demonstrated its foolishness shortly before the end of the Democratic Primary. On the eve of the California primary, the Associate Press announced that it could confirm that a small number of super-delegates were declaring their support for Hillary Clinton. With this information, and the names of the super-delegates kept anonymous, the AP declared Clinton the nominee. As Glenn Greenwald wittily declared in his piece reflecting on the announcement, “This is the perfect symbolic ending to the Democratic Party primary: The nomination is consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment insiders and donors whose identities the media organization — incredibly — conceals.”

The next day, Clinton destroyed Sanders in California, fifty-six percent to forty-three, even though the polls showed Sanders narrowing the gap from nine percent in March to two percent in June. Yet she won by thirteen percent. Did the AP's coronation push down voting in The Golden State? In 2008, Clinton and Obama achieved 4.8 million votes, yet Clinton and Sanders only earned 3.4 millio in 2016.

Even if the AP's declaration didn't effect anything, why did it make it? Clearly someone had to call to tell them about the super-delegates, and then either that someone pushed them to call the nomination for Clinton, or the AP made the decision themselves. The night before the largest primary state in the country!

Trump has seen the dissatisfaction of the Sanders supporters. He invited them to vote for him the night of the California primary. As a salesman he thinks he can convince them that he offers the same product as Sanders, and either he is vacuous because he thinks it's true, or he is lying to earn their votes. Both could be true. But since Sanders has repeatedly denounced Trump, and appears prepared after the D.C. Primary to drop out and endorse Clinton, and as Clinton's PUMAs sped to Obama in the general election, so will Sanders' supporters vote for Clinton (except for those who live in solidly blue states who will write in Sanders or vote for the Green Party candidate in protest).

Back to the statement at the beginning. The story: Hillary Clinton was supposed to win all along. She was winning the whole time. She was going to win California anyways. And yet, if this was true, one doesn't pull out every obvious, legal-but-unfair, method one can to win. That is why a minority of Sanders supporters will vote for third party candidates, or write his name instead.

Let's hope the Democratic National Committee hasn't created another Nader in the process.

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