• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The “incumbent advantage” is often misunderstood. Because a weak incumbent gets primaried.

      So the DNC says primarying a candidate hurts them, and why NH didn’t get delegates this year.

      The reality is only weak incumbents get primaried. Whether they get challenged or not in the primary doesn’t make them weaker or stronger.

      By taking a primary away, we’re not helping a candidate, we’re throwing away the option to run a more popular candidate. Which hurts the party and every American if it means trump is elected.

      It’s like saying the only reason trump got caught on his tax fraud was he ran for president. Running for president brought attention to it, but he cheated on taxes decades before running and could have been prosecuted at any time.

      An actual primary wouldn’t have made Biden unpopular, it would have just made how unpopular he is more public, while giving him a public stage to move left to his voters and win some over for the general.

      Hiding it doesn’t make it better, it just gives people a false sense of security, which ironically often leads to lower turnout.

      And as always:

      Low turnout is how republicans become presidents