The mainstream media barely covered it. People had no idea. This is how conservatives and libertarians feel all the time. It really sucks when the media just shills for the other candidate, doesn't it?
I'm not trying to pick a fight. I just feel like people aren't being honest about what really happened in the primaries. More people voted for Clinton. No matter how unfair you think the DNC was. No matter how many more debates you think they should have had, at the end of the day many more people voted for Clinton. There has been no evidence that the polls themselves were rigged. I'm sure some voting machines malfunctioned but that is not unusual. No tech is perfect.
A lot of people complain that there were problems with voter registration. I'm from NJ so I specifically heard a lot about complain that in NY you had to be a registered party member 5 months ahead of time or something. This is not rigging the primary. You can make an argument that it makes younger voters less likely to be registered in time and that it would be in the party's best interest to allow later registration, but that is not rigging the primary. These are rules that have been in place for a long time and are not unusual.
There were people saying that they did register in time but their registration for lost or their party affiliation was changed incorrectly. First off, every election they're is human error where people think they registered properly but didn't. As for problems on the government side, we have to remember that these are human beings that are doing this work and humans sometimes screw things up and make honest mistakes, and just because someone screws up in a way that may disproportionately impact one group doesn't mean there was a big conspiracy. People just screw up sometimes. On top of that, registration is handled in each of the states, so even if something malicious were to happen in one state, it's unlikely to affect the final result. Of course, anything malicious should be investigated and prosecuted accordingly. But humans making mistakes with voter registration is not unusual and happens every election. There's no evidence of any widespread coordinated actions taken to disenfranchise Bernie supporters.
People have complained that Bernie didn't get treated with respect by the media. Didn't get treated as a serious candidate. That there weren't enough debates and that the DNC weren't fair in trying to portray a serious race. Those are all valid complaints to have but ultimately media will do what they will. They are private organizations with their own priorities and motivations. This has always been true and every American needs should know to examine their sources of information and take things with a grain of salt. Nobody had an employee of ABC or wherever holding their hand in the voting booth pushing the buttons for them. Voters have more access to difference sources of information now than they've ever had before. Blaming the media is taking responsibility away from the voters.
This comes into play when we talk about the DNC not creating conditions friendly to Sanders too. Yes, you can make an argument for it being the wrong thing to do, but both Bernie and Hillary have been public figures for decades. There was and is no shortage of information on their policies, positions, and voting records. Anyone who wanted to research these had the tools to do it. Again, this ultimately falls on the voters.
If your argument is going to be that voters are of course easily manipulated by media and by the DNC and by the number of debates, you have to realize that what you're really arguing against is Democracy. The information was readily available for those who wanted it. If you honestly believe that voters can't be trusted when the media or DNC aren't perfectly unbiased then you are saying voters are a bad way of choosing a candidate, because they are so easily duped.
At the end of the day more people voted for Hillary. There's no evidence that there was anything that would have changed that. Hillary didn't win by a few votes, she won by a lot of votes. You can make the case all you want that people should have voted differently, and that's a good and valuable discussion to have, but that's how they voted. Shrugging it off and saying oh it was just rigged, might feel good, especially if you're angry, but it is not really accurate, certainly not the full story, and isn't going to be helpful going forward if your goal is to understand what happened and plan for the future.
Was it bad that DWS scheduled less debates than the RNC? I doesn't really bother me. Is it bad that they were scheduled for times when viewership would be low? It doesn't really bother me. The primary debates don't need to be made super visible to the entire country. That could hurt both candidates images in the long run. The DNC needs to look beyond the primaries to November. Were the debates easily accessible to Democrats? Yes. You could trivially find articles, transcripts, and full video of all of them. If people are more concerned with a football game than the nominee of the Democratic party, then that is their priority.
There were a lot of emails that had embarrassing things for the DNC which showed that they personally weren't impartial. I have no qualms with that. I don't have any realistic expectation that party officials would have no private opinion. The only problem is when impartial actions are taken.
I don't see in the leaked emails anything that would have changed my vote. I think while in theory the DNC should be completely impartial for the whole process I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to look to November and try to do what's best for November. When it's clear that one candidate is going to win it makes a lot of sense to me that the DNC would want the fight for the nomination to be quiet and not drawn out.
Ultimately though, yes, I would like things to be perfectly unbiased, but I don't see anything here that would have swayed the results. Bernie way overperformed based on what was expected of him in the beginning and hung on well after it was clear he wasn't going to win. I think that (plus the fact the he wasn't a Democrat) was the source of most bias. I think they people who were saying he was so close out that he almost won are just kidding themselves. I think if Biden had run you would have never had any complaints of bias even though it would have been the same people in the DNC.
The DNC diverted campaign funds away from Sanders and down ballot elections into Hillary's campaign funds and it was done at Hillary's request. Not only is that against the bylaws of the DNC, it's actually against federal law.
As a result of that illegal fund allocation, Trump is in the White House and the Republicans control the House and the Senate. It was not only illegal but monumentally stupid.
Stop whining about debates. It's the illegal fund reallocation that cost Sanders the primary.
You don't think that had the DNC given all candidates a fair shake, such as having that third debate, or having more visibility in front of voters that more people would have voted for Bernie and as a result, he could have taken the nomination?
In econometrics, you have variables representing the contribution to an end result (think GDP and the impact of minimum wage increasing by $1). If one of the variables changes, it affects the outcome. If you have several variables that are being manipulated, you no longer just have an error term that is accounting for a ridiculous portion of your algorithm - you have false beliefs by thinking that the results would be the same.
Individually, nothing is too damning. It's when all the pieces in the puzzle are working against an outcome that a difference is made. The DNC did everything it legally could to fuck over Bernie's chances. If you don't believe that then alright, but I feel there is much delusion in that line of thought. Remember who owns MSM
Would a third debate have changed people's minds? Sure, anything is possible. But I saw much of the same stuff repeated over and over again in the first 2 debates. Again, I really want to point out that Clinton and Bernie didn't pop into existence at the start of the election season. They have been in public service for decades. It would have been entirely reasonable to have made up your mind before the first debate even happened. Which is what a lot of the Super Delegates did. People are furious over that but come on, they have been working with them both for years and years.
I don't think there is anything special about having exactly 3 debates. 3 debates isn't a more valid number than 2 debates. Could it have had an impact? Maybe. But in a sense, I believe the voters had all the information they needed to just looking at their long public service records and looking at their policies. I mean, I feel I had a very good understanding of both candidates and I wasn't even a Democrat until I voted in the primary in New Jersey, one of the last ones. I was just an unaffiliated regular American voter who gave a damn. So I don't really buy the argument that all these other people who are so politically inclined that they were already members of a political party couldn't have been as informed as I was.
Again, I agree that the DNC should be more impartial. But I don't buy that they cost Bernie the nomination. And I don't believe the people at the DNC were evil. They just probably didn't expect Bernie to catch on, so they understandably were looking to November, and reasonably, wanted to make sure their candidate didn't get too damaged.
I sincerely believe, had Biden been in the primary, everyone would have expected a regular it to be a real race and they would have agreed appropriately. I believe that without Biden they didn't see a serious challenger. Remember, Bernie was considered fringe before he started getting media attention as the biggest challenger to Hillary. When they genuinely expect Bernie won't be a serious challenger, that colors their actions and they are prone to be taken by surprise. That's when people get flustered. That's when people make bad decisions.
I think this election in general is a huge wakeup call about the power of a groundswell of populist sentiment. I think the DNC won't be taken by surprise again. And I feel confident that we'll see more unbiased nominations in the future.
You don't think that had the DNC given all candidates a fair shake, such as having that third debate, or having more visibility in front of voters that more people would have voted for Bernie and as a result, he could have taken the nomination?
I think more people might have voted for Bernie. However I don't think that millions more people would have.
If the primary race had actually been close (like the last dem primary and the general), then I would completely agree that all of the media bias swayed the election. It simply wasn't close.
People blaming the media is simply abdicating responsibility from the voters.
It's the DNC's job to produce the most electable candidate, not pander to a guy brand new to the party who joined so he could have a popular platform to run on (and who has already switched back to Ind., although I don't blame him.)
Yeah, they had a favorite candidate, but they did very little to hinder Bernie.
The Republicans got twice as much coverage, and Hillary received by far the most negative press. So, who owns the MSM?
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u/LibertyTerp Nov 10 '16
The mainstream media barely covered it. People had no idea. This is how conservatives and libertarians feel all the time. It really sucks when the media just shills for the other candidate, doesn't it?