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Are the Democrats Completely Screwing This Up?
The first caucus is Monday, but the 2020 campaign already feels like it’s gone on forever. Is this primary going to help — or hurt — the eventual nominee’s ability to defeat Trump?
The first caucus is Monday, but the 2020 campaign already feels like it’s gone on forever. Is this primary going to help — or hurt — the eventual nominee’s ability to defeat Trump?
Are the Democrats Completely Screwing This Up?
Feb 2, 2020 ~ By Andy Kroll
The DNC’s rules backfired spectacularly... In late 2018, DNC Chairman Tom Perez unveiled the revamped rules for the upcoming Democratic primary debates. Perez pledged that the DNC’s debate rules would “give the grassroots a bigger voice than ever before” and “put our nominee in the strongest position possible to defeat Donald Trump.”... But a year later, what’s beyond a doubt is that they did not empower the grassroots and they replaced old gatekeepers with new ones. Because of these new rules, the most powerful people in the primary up to this point have arguably been the pollsters.
For the past year, campaigns lived and died by the latest Quinnipiac or Fox News or CNN poll; journalists built devoted followings around reporting on polls and interpreting the DNC’s obscure guidelines for which polls did and didn’t count toward the debate. And for voters, polls came to represent — rightly or wrongly — a proxy for viability, strength, the ability to beat Trump. The DNC also required that candidates meet a threshold of individual grassroots donations to make the debate stage. Candidates and staffers say they understand why the DNC used this metric as a stand-in for grassroots support, but they complained that the donor requirement — like the polling threshold — gave a leg up to candidates who already had high name recognition and a preexisting network of small-dollar donors to draw on. Candidates without both of those qualities entered the race at a disadvantage. Instead of spending money to build a field operation in Iowa or make an early play for California’s delegates, campaigns spent money to buy email lists to fundraise off of in order to meet an arbitrary donor target. In a larger sense, the Democratic Party still feels trapped in 2016: the revolutionary left against Obama-era liberalism, wooing the white working class versus turning out loyal voters of color, and so on. Has the endless primary of 2020 — and the choices made to shape that primary — made it difficult if not impossible for a candidate to build the multiracial movement needed to defeat Trump and send hate back into hiding? Is this the best way to produce their nominee who can heal the country, an aspiration that feels more essential and imperative than ever?
Comment:
There is, of course, the option of looking at people who actually got elected. Beginning with the false premise that Trump's election was illegitimate is exactly the wrong way to go, as is the premise that he won because his voters were stupid, racist, contemptible deplorables. The author seems to get a glimmer, and then maybe not:
This is a great exploration on how Progressive Marxist Socialist/DSA Democrat planners make rules expecting humans to act one way, and then they act a totally different way and the rules end up screwing everything up rather than achieving their desired result.
The lesson PMS/DSA Democrats failed in 2016 and are repeating their failures once more and claim that they need to make better rules next time. As always they
The lesson that they should but won't take is that free citizens are unpredictable and make rules of behavior based on principles rather than outcomes. But if they believed that, they'd be Republicans. As usual, PMS/DSA Democrat elitist Democrats screw up everything that they come in contact with. There are no exceptions to this Golden Rule. From a block of granite to a wet dream, these people can and will screw it up. It’s who they are and exactly what they do.
