• pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    They don’t want a safe candidate. A safe candidate would be someone who takes broadly popular positions, like Medicare for All, a jobs guarantee, or public internet. They want centrist candidates, which the consultant class has convinced them is safe (and, coincidentally, never take positions that upset the donors), but centrism is the least safe position to take at this point. No one who is watching their wages stagnate while the cost of living skyrockets is thinking, “I hope this can be solved through incremental changes that don’t disrupt that status-quo too much!”

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Primaries aren’t as popular as they should be but they’re still participated in by 30 Million voters. You could be promoting the primaries and helping pick a candidate instead of complaining about what people en masse choose.

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        I’m complaining about the donors, which are the subject of the article. Jasmine Crockett isn’t talking about what the, “people en masse,” are choosing, she’s talking about who the high dollar voters are trying to select in advance of the primaries:

        Major donors are excited about “one specific candidate,” Crockett responded.

        “I had a donor on the phones with me, telling me that all the donors are lining up behind that candidate,” she said. “So I can tell, and I tell you, it’s not a Black person nor a woman.”

        “So they have, quote unquote, ‘they,’ have chosen,” she added. “When I say ‘they,; it’s the same donors that most likely had their opinions about Joe Biden and moved… So like, that would be the “they” that I would talk about.”

        Telling someone they should be, “promoting the primaries,” and, “helping pick a candidate,” under an article where a Congresswoman is warning people that billionaires are trying to select, “the safest white boy,” is deeply out of touch. I’ve gotten involved in most of my local primaries since 2008, but I don’t have a Super PAC, so I don’t get to help pick the candidate as much as Mark Cuban does.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          I didn’t realize the primaries scored your vote quality based on net worth. /s

          Articles like this are seeding doubt and giving a reason not to vote for the DNC when the most popular candidate wins. We should support the DNC candidate regardless of how much more or less monied interests like them.

          • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            I’m not tolerating this nonsense anymore. The primaries are not a fair, open contests where the most popular candidate wins. Moneyed interests and party insiders heavily influence the outcome, and Democrats don’t even pretend otherwise. Jasmine Crockett, a U.S. Congresswoman, just told you that the donors are trying to pick the 2028 candidate now. Rep. Adam Smith admitted that Biden was picked by insiders to defeat Sanders:

            I’ve said this over and over again; Joe Biden was not picked in 2020 because he was the only person that could beat Trump. He was picked because he was the only person that could beat Bernie Sanders, rightly or wrongly…That conclusion was made, okay? “Oh my gosh, coming out of Nevada, Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee!” And people, just like they are now, said, “Ahhh, I don’t think that’s going to work,” so they were looking for an alternative.

            Rep. Harold Ford said the same thing:

            I was an elite that supported you in 2020, and said that we should do everything we possibly could do to advantage you against Bernie Sanders, because I thought Bernie Sanders’ politics were detrimental to the party and to the country.

            This isn’t some psy-op to spread doubt. These are sitting Congressmen admitting that the party and the donors coordinated around Biden because they feared Sanders popularity. And this is just 2020. Donna Brazil wrote a book about the fuckery that went on in 2016, and you can google Dean Phillips if you want to find out how Democrats ruin a party member who dares primary an unpopular president.

            • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              I’m not saying Jasmine Crockett and the Independent are part of some big psy-op but they’re absolutely buying the lie that “not every DNC is the absolute best option”.

              At the end of the day the DNC does not change platforms based on monied interests, and individual voters decide the primary outcome.

              Biden beat Sanders by about 9 Million votes. It wasn’t even fucking close.

              • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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                7 hours ago

                At the end of the day the DNC does not change platforms based on monied interests, and individual voters decide the primary outcome.

                Mark Cuban was literally telling voters to ignore what was in Harris platform said because he could assure them she wouldn’t tax unrealized gains. If you really believe donors don’t set the policy, that’s adorable.

                Biden beat Sanders by about 9 Million votes. It wasn’t even fucking close.

                Bernie was kicking the shit out of everyone. Pete Buttigieg was seen as the only centrist alternative, and he was losing. Then Biden won one state (South Carolina) and Obama personally called Buttigieg to get him to drop out and endorse Biden. Klobuchar did the same. Biden went into super Tuesday with no real centrist competitors while Sander and Warren split the progressive vote. In the clip I showed you earlier, Adam Smith literally says that the party coordinated around Biden because, “coming out of Nevada, Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee.” An Obama adviser even said Sanders was the only candidate Obama would speak out against:

                Instead, he sees his role as providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly and to unite the party when the nominee is clear. There is one potential exception: Back when Sanders seemed like more of a threat than he does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him.

                So, yeah, he got 9 million more votes than him because the party carefully orchestrated their primaries to prop up Biden ahead of Super Tuesday. Then they changed the primary schedule so that South Carolina was the first state to vote in 2024 and made sure Biden had no real primary challengers. How’d that work out?

                • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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                  7 hours ago

                  You’re believing Mark Cuban on Harris’ campaign more than

                  *checks notes

                  Kamala Harris?

                  This shit is why we lose to Trump.

                  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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                    7 hours ago

                    No, I’d say shit like campaigning with Mark Cuban while he was undermining the candidate’s platform is why Democrats lose to Trump. Did she come out and say, “No, Mark is wrong?” Did she stop using him as a surrogate? Or did she just keep her mouth shut and go along with whatever the billionaire said?

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      They want centrist candidates, which the consultant class has convinced them is safe

      They want centrist candidates and don’t care if they’re safe.

        • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          I don’t think they’re even selling out. I think this is what they would be doing even if there weren’t money in it.

          • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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            20 hours ago

            Maybe. Most Democrat politicians and consultants are just intending to cash in when they return to the private sector, or launder bribes through a book deal. Those payoff opportunities dry up, if they govern properly and don’t favor capitalists.

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        2 days ago

        I think there’s legitimate self-delusion that keeps some of them believing the centrist is the safe choice. Some of them delude themselves into thinking that being centrist is a good idea because people don’t like, “wokeness.” Some of them convince themselves that if they’re too progressive, the donors will abandon them and they won’t have enough money to win. I think the old timers like Carvil legitimately think that centrism is the best strategy because they can’t get past 1992. But yeah, I think deep down, they would all prefer losing with a neoliberal centrist than winning with an actual progressive, even if some of them won’t admit it.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      Yeah, they want to ride the edge and put forth the most conservative a candidate possible that still has a plausible road to victory (and the plausibility can be pretty thin). The last few candidates haven’t been anywhere close to just lining up with the most popular issues (either within the Democratic party or the larger electorate).

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        It’s just insane. People are so desperate for change that they’re willing to vote for fascism, and the Democrats are trying to put run a moderate conservative. If they’re not completely delusional, then they must believe the James Carvils of the party who are telling them they just have to wait for the Republicans to become unpopular again to take power. In the best case scenario, they’ll win in four years, then lose in another 4 (probably to a more competent fascist) because people will see they’re not doing anything for them.

        • Tinidril@midwest.social
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          2 days ago

          I’m feeling deja vu from 2016. Hopefully the primary electorate has learned something that the establishment has not.

          • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            The problem is that the party has a lot of control over the primary; they can keep people off the ballot, they can decide who gets to debate, they can set a primary schedule that favors preferred candidates…The reason we got Biden in 2020 was because Barack Obama made a bunch of phone calls and got everyone who would have spit Biden’s vote share to drop out. Progressives need to spend the next four years calling out this corruption and excising these people from the party at the state and national levels.

            • Tinidril@midwest.social
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              2 days ago

              Yes, it’s almost like overthrowing an established power is difficult. Who would have guessed.