Jon Stewart torched the DNC and Democratic leadership as "lost" after learning from a candidate with a massive lead that he's heard zilch from the party.
What Dems can’t seem to understand is that Bernie was NEVER going to get the Democratic Nomination because he’s NOT A DEMOCRAT.
The Presidential Nomination is the biggest award a party can give to a candidate. It essentially puts them at the head of the party. Bernie is a card-carrying Independent. He is NOT a member of the Democratic party. The party (The DNC) wants reward their own members, and give the nomination to a party member who has been supportive of the party over the years, and gathered the support of most of the country.
But Bernie has never been a Democrat, and is often nearly as critical of the Dems as he is of MAGA. He might caucus with the Dems, but he doesn’t raise money for them, his agenda is entirely different, and his successes are not their successes. The DNC feels about him almost the same as they feel about a MAGA candidate, or any candidate from any other party.
How would you feel if a Libertarian hijacked the DNC’s infrastructure and forced the party to support him, just because he got a bunch votes under their banner? He doesn’t like you, he doesn’t hang out with you, he doesn’t help you, he just called himself one of you so he could run, and he has no intention of following any of your policies. He’s just using your party to get what he wants, without regard to what the party wants.
Now, when it comes to the corrupt DNC, ALL of that sounds great to me, but it’s terrifying to the DNC. At the time, it came down to having two candidates - one who has dedicated their life to the party, and who has an excellent resume, including 8 years in the White House already, or a popular outside interloper who is trying to exploit the system for their own personal gain.
Take out the emotion of Bernie getting screwed, and you can understand why the DNC made that decision, even though we hate it. And guess what? They’d make that same decision 10 out of 10 times. They simply won’t give their precious nomination to an outsider.
Edit: Yeah, I get downvoted for this opinion every time I express it, but it’s true, and we all know it.
Bullshit. I do not find this to be an insightful take.
You speak as if the Democrats are acting in good faith and not the controlled opposition of fascists which they are. The leadership is, whether they know it or not and they should know it.
Perhaps YOU don’t, but if someone has never considered this idea, then it IS insightful, even if they don’t like it. But that doesn’t make it wrong, just unsavory. That’s the way MAGA thinks: I don’t like it, therefore it’s wrong.
You speak as if the Democrats are acting in good faith
Not at all. I don’t think either party exists in good faith. In fact, I think the point of political parties is to take “good faith” out of the equation, and make decisions based on cold political calculations, and money, of course. You can’t allow nebulous concepts like good faith, morals, fairness, truth, etc. muddy the waters. Let’s just boil it down to inhuman Math.
I’m a lifelong Independent, since I first registered to vote 50 years ago this year. I declined to declare a party then, and I haven’t since, with the only exception being in 2016, when I switched my registration so I could vote for Bernie in the primary, and then changed my registration right back.
I was one of you people, angry that Bernie never got a fair shot, but then I started thinking about it, and realized that he suffered the biggest problem with a two party system - even though the Independents are a larger share than either the Dems or the MAGAs, they don’t have ANY power in a 2 party system, because the two parties make sure to ice out any third party, as they should. Nominating a non-party member is a huge betrayal to party members who would have liked to have that nomination. Besides, the president is essentially the leader of the party. A party can’t have a leader that isn’t a member of their party, and has an agenda that is at odds with the party’s agenda. Otherwise, why have parties at all?
Frankly, that’s what happened to the Republicans. They allowed a really bad candidate to hijack their party, simply because he had popularity, and they were so desperate and pusillanimous, they made a deal with the Devil. I’m not saying that Bernie would have been as bad as Trump, but it shows how allowing an outsider to lead your party, can end in disaster. The Republicans let in the disease, while the Dems vaxxed themselves against the threat, and Bernie got caught in it.
Running as an Independent is a complex and dangerous calculation, and looking back, I wish he had. In a 3 way race between Bernie, Hillary, and Trump, Bernie might actually have won it, especially since a significant chunk of Trump’s support were originally Bernie supporters who refused to vote for Hillary after the DNC edged him out. If he had gone Independent, he might have beaten Trump. That’s on Bernie.
The president wasn’t given the Republican party, he took it from the party.
You are a spousing a defeatism that is just not accurate. We can seize control of the Democratic Party, we came close to doing so without any real leadership, they’re weak they’re unpopular and they’re doomed to fail.
It’s not “Defeatism,” it’s the simple truth. The DNC was NEVER going to give an Independent candidate their nomination, and they never will. That is the NATURE of a political party. If any outsider can come along and claim a party’s nomination, what’s the point of a party?
What if a Republican decides that his primary is too crowded, so he declares as a Democrat, but still runs as a Republican, and Republicans vote for him in huge numbers? Is the DNC obligated to give that disengenuous candidate their nomination? If they can be forced to give it to a good candidate like Bernie, then they can be forced to give it to a terrible one like a MAGA.
The truth may hurt, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Parties have rules, and votes decide leadership. They barely held on to it the preceding two elections before the last one where they just anointed the most unpopular candidate they could find.
they just anointed the most unpopular candidate they could find.
BOTH parties do that! The system seems to filter out the best candidates, and reward the worst. If there was ever proof that the system is broken, it’s that.
That’s not accurate at all, the Democrats were the only ones to force a new candidate without a primary. The current president won a crowded primary I would remind you.
The Democrats had four plus months to go and claimed it was not enough time to run a contest and indeed not a single Democrat threw their hat in the ring despite the anointed never breaching 30% approval all term before her anointment, not having won a single state in the primary she participated in, and being hated by both the actual left, which does not include the Democratic sheep obviously, and all across the right.
You can’t use 2024 as an example, that was the sole outlier of an election, and did not represent anybody’s best wishes.
You act like they did it out of pure contempt for the voters, without addressing the fact that the Democratic campaign became a 3 alarm fire after the debate. Biden was a mess, far more than we knew, and it was clear he was unfit to serve another term, even if it was due to the poor excuse of a cold and medication. I’ve lived with someone who passed from dementia, and there was no doubt in my mind what I was witnessing that night. It was shocking, and something had to be done.
With only a few months before the General Election, it would have been impossible to put together a nationwide primary with multiple candidates. Anyone who thinks that would have been possible, has no idea what goes into holding an election, especially a national Presidential election in 50 states. In the time frame you want candidates to decide, raise money, and campaign, while simultaneously the election teams that have been organizing the Presidential Election now have to split off valuable workers, to operate this emergency primary, mere months before the actual PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
How can anyone possibly think that would go well for anyone, and not be a monumental disaster of historical proportions?
OTOH, we have a Vice-President, next in line anyway, and if he steps down, she steps in, and we’re doing a re-election campaign. The only problem was that nobody wanted to have the hard talk with him (and his family, they always said, because yeah, it’s clear he can’t handle this on his own), or to 25th Amendment the venerable old guy, even though his condition was EXACTLY what it was meant to handle.
And it wasn’t like anyone could make a credible case that she wasn’t a viable nominee anyway. She wasn’t a Sarah Palin by any stretch of the imagination. There were all these comparisons to her past primary, as if she didn’t just spent the last 4 years at the very top levels of power. In anyone else’s job, how much stronger would they be if they spent four years working with the top people in their industry? Nobody would question it. In a primary, especially a chaotic emergency one, it’s a pretty good bet that she would have won anyway.
So it was essentially a re-election campaign for the (v)P, with just that pesky resignation step missing, because they were either too polite to press the issue (so common for weak Dems), or he was too stubborn to quit, which would be a common trait for dementia, believe me.
Most people recognized that at the time, and that’s why we accepted her with open arms. Lest you forget, she raised an enormous amount of money in the next 24 hours, and even more beyond that. I happened to go to a corporate event the next day, with a lot of lesbians in attendance, and they were practically giddy with joy.
The idea that people opposed this oppressive edict from the DNC is greatly overblown. It wasnt the ideal situation, but Harris was a reasonable choice under the extreme emergency circumstances.
There were a lot of other factors that came into play, like MAGA voter fraud, Biden’s enthusiastic support of genocide, etc.
What Dems can’t seem to understand is that Bernie was NEVER going to get the Democratic Nomination because he’s NOT A DEMOCRAT.
The Presidential Nomination is the biggest award a party can give to a candidate. It essentially puts them at the head of the party. Bernie is a card-carrying Independent. He is NOT a member of the Democratic party. The party (The DNC) wants reward their own members, and give the nomination to a party member who has been supportive of the party over the years, and gathered the support of most of the country.
But Bernie has never been a Democrat, and is often nearly as critical of the Dems as he is of MAGA. He might caucus with the Dems, but he doesn’t raise money for them, his agenda is entirely different, and his successes are not their successes. The DNC feels about him almost the same as they feel about a MAGA candidate, or any candidate from any other party.
How would you feel if a Libertarian hijacked the DNC’s infrastructure and forced the party to support him, just because he got a bunch votes under their banner? He doesn’t like you, he doesn’t hang out with you, he doesn’t help you, he just called himself one of you so he could run, and he has no intention of following any of your policies. He’s just using your party to get what he wants, without regard to what the party wants.
Now, when it comes to the corrupt DNC, ALL of that sounds great to me, but it’s terrifying to the DNC. At the time, it came down to having two candidates - one who has dedicated their life to the party, and who has an excellent resume, including 8 years in the White House already, or a popular outside interloper who is trying to exploit the system for their own personal gain.
Take out the emotion of Bernie getting screwed, and you can understand why the DNC made that decision, even though we hate it. And guess what? They’d make that same decision 10 out of 10 times. They simply won’t give their precious nomination to an outsider.
Edit: Yeah, I get downvoted for this opinion every time I express it, but it’s true, and we all know it.
Bullshit. I do not find this to be an insightful take.
You speak as if the Democrats are acting in good faith and not the controlled opposition of fascists which they are. The leadership is, whether they know it or not and they should know it.
Perhaps YOU don’t, but if someone has never considered this idea, then it IS insightful, even if they don’t like it. But that doesn’t make it wrong, just unsavory. That’s the way MAGA thinks: I don’t like it, therefore it’s wrong.
Not at all. I don’t think either party exists in good faith. In fact, I think the point of political parties is to take “good faith” out of the equation, and make decisions based on cold political calculations, and money, of course. You can’t allow nebulous concepts like good faith, morals, fairness, truth, etc. muddy the waters. Let’s just boil it down to inhuman Math.
I’m a lifelong Independent, since I first registered to vote 50 years ago this year. I declined to declare a party then, and I haven’t since, with the only exception being in 2016, when I switched my registration so I could vote for Bernie in the primary, and then changed my registration right back.
I was one of you people, angry that Bernie never got a fair shot, but then I started thinking about it, and realized that he suffered the biggest problem with a two party system - even though the Independents are a larger share than either the Dems or the MAGAs, they don’t have ANY power in a 2 party system, because the two parties make sure to ice out any third party, as they should. Nominating a non-party member is a huge betrayal to party members who would have liked to have that nomination. Besides, the president is essentially the leader of the party. A party can’t have a leader that isn’t a member of their party, and has an agenda that is at odds with the party’s agenda. Otherwise, why have parties at all?
Frankly, that’s what happened to the Republicans. They allowed a really bad candidate to hijack their party, simply because he had popularity, and they were so desperate and pusillanimous, they made a deal with the Devil. I’m not saying that Bernie would have been as bad as Trump, but it shows how allowing an outsider to lead your party, can end in disaster. The Republicans let in the disease, while the Dems vaxxed themselves against the threat, and Bernie got caught in it.
Running as an Independent is a complex and dangerous calculation, and looking back, I wish he had. In a 3 way race between Bernie, Hillary, and Trump, Bernie might actually have won it, especially since a significant chunk of Trump’s support were originally Bernie supporters who refused to vote for Hillary after the DNC edged him out. If he had gone Independent, he might have beaten Trump. That’s on Bernie.
The president wasn’t given the Republican party, he took it from the party.
You are a spousing a defeatism that is just not accurate. We can seize control of the Democratic Party, we came close to doing so without any real leadership, they’re weak they’re unpopular and they’re doomed to fail.
It’s not “Defeatism,” it’s the simple truth. The DNC was NEVER going to give an Independent candidate their nomination, and they never will. That is the NATURE of a political party. If any outsider can come along and claim a party’s nomination, what’s the point of a party?
What if a Republican decides that his primary is too crowded, so he declares as a Democrat, but still runs as a Republican, and Republicans vote for him in huge numbers? Is the DNC obligated to give that disengenuous candidate their nomination? If they can be forced to give it to a good candidate like Bernie, then they can be forced to give it to a terrible one like a MAGA.
The truth may hurt, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Parties have rules, and votes decide leadership. They barely held on to it the preceding two elections before the last one where they just anointed the most unpopular candidate they could find.
BOTH parties do that! The system seems to filter out the best candidates, and reward the worst. If there was ever proof that the system is broken, it’s that.
That’s not accurate at all, the Democrats were the only ones to force a new candidate without a primary. The current president won a crowded primary I would remind you.
The Democrats had four plus months to go and claimed it was not enough time to run a contest and indeed not a single Democrat threw their hat in the ring despite the anointed never breaching 30% approval all term before her anointment, not having won a single state in the primary she participated in, and being hated by both the actual left, which does not include the Democratic sheep obviously, and all across the right.
You can’t use 2024 as an example, that was the sole outlier of an election, and did not represent anybody’s best wishes.
You act like they did it out of pure contempt for the voters, without addressing the fact that the Democratic campaign became a 3 alarm fire after the debate. Biden was a mess, far more than we knew, and it was clear he was unfit to serve another term, even if it was due to the poor excuse of a cold and medication. I’ve lived with someone who passed from dementia, and there was no doubt in my mind what I was witnessing that night. It was shocking, and something had to be done.
With only a few months before the General Election, it would have been impossible to put together a nationwide primary with multiple candidates. Anyone who thinks that would have been possible, has no idea what goes into holding an election, especially a national Presidential election in 50 states. In the time frame you want candidates to decide, raise money, and campaign, while simultaneously the election teams that have been organizing the Presidential Election now have to split off valuable workers, to operate this emergency primary, mere months before the actual PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
How can anyone possibly think that would go well for anyone, and not be a monumental disaster of historical proportions?
OTOH, we have a Vice-President, next in line anyway, and if he steps down, she steps in, and we’re doing a re-election campaign. The only problem was that nobody wanted to have the hard talk with him (and his family, they always said, because yeah, it’s clear he can’t handle this on his own), or to 25th Amendment the venerable old guy, even though his condition was EXACTLY what it was meant to handle.
And it wasn’t like anyone could make a credible case that she wasn’t a viable nominee anyway. She wasn’t a Sarah Palin by any stretch of the imagination. There were all these comparisons to her past primary, as if she didn’t just spent the last 4 years at the very top levels of power. In anyone else’s job, how much stronger would they be if they spent four years working with the top people in their industry? Nobody would question it. In a primary, especially a chaotic emergency one, it’s a pretty good bet that she would have won anyway.
So it was essentially a re-election campaign for the (v)P, with just that pesky resignation step missing, because they were either too polite to press the issue (so common for weak Dems), or he was too stubborn to quit, which would be a common trait for dementia, believe me.
Most people recognized that at the time, and that’s why we accepted her with open arms. Lest you forget, she raised an enormous amount of money in the next 24 hours, and even more beyond that. I happened to go to a corporate event the next day, with a lot of lesbians in attendance, and they were practically giddy with joy.
The idea that people opposed this oppressive edict from the DNC is greatly overblown. It wasnt the ideal situation, but Harris was a reasonable choice under the extreme emergency circumstances.
There were a lot of other factors that came into play, like MAGA voter fraud, Biden’s enthusiastic support of genocide, etc.