this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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[–] dhork@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

As compared to some of the other candidates that might have run if the Democratic Primary were an actual primary and not a coronation.

The last time Democrats ran an actual primary ws 2008, when a young, generational candidate beat out the (kinda boring) establishment choice. Democrats learned their lesson to never let something encouraging like that happen again!

Gavin's gonna win the Primary, as his right as the Next One Up, and we're all gonna vote for him, because as awful as he is, he is objectively better than whoever the MAGA party will run.

[–] antifa_ceo@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

And this is the exact attitude why nothing will ever change in this country. You can't keep voting in people hellbent on maintaining the hegemony capital has over everyone and expect anything to get better for you.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the history of Democratic party, there was exactly one time where the candidate that the DNC chose, actually lost a popular vote. Exactly one.
It was in 2008, when a young, generational candidate actually lost the popular vote by 1% to the (kinda boring) establishment choice, but was chosen anyway.
It's nice to have this simplistic worldview, when "they" control everything anyway so you don't have to do anything and just complain when "they" don't do what you want. It's harder to confront the reality when "they" actually consist of all the people around you, and the only reason you don't get what you want is because you don't do shit.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Nice try, but the popular vote doesn't mean anything in primaries, because the elections are held over a period of time and many candidates drop out mid-way through, so we will never know how many Joe Biden or John Edwards voters would have voted for Obama over Clinton. Clinton did not win a majority of votes, after all.

Obama won a majority of pledged delegates, even before taking the undemocratic Super Delegates into account, and it's delegates that count.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries

Democrats don't need to mess with the counting of votes to "fix" primaries. They do it the old fashioned way, by manipulating the primary calendar to make certain candidates inevitable.

Primaries need to be on one fucking day across the nation.

Make it ranked choice or some other system that works properly with more than 2 candidates while we're at it.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Popular vote reflects how people who actually vote think. Candidates aren't appearing out of thin air, they're nominated as the result of political campaigns.
You can't shift the blame for candidates to ambiguous "them" if you didn't get your ass to try to affect it in any way. The delegates represent pretty nicely the opinion of people who actually vote in Primaries, with almost perfect track record. They don't represent your opinion because you don't vote therefore don't have an opinion. So you don't get to complain about what party that you're not in is doing. Want it to change? Use the ways to change it. Those ways aren't hidden from you, aren't secret, aren't gatekeeped by a shadow cabal, you just need to do politics about it. People who get their candidates elected do that.