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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