General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It would be nice if the centrists in this party did some introspection, too. [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's not as though they were somehow created for the first time in 2016 by the Sanders campaign in a conspiracy to thwart the popular will, and victory in a caucus(such as HRC's victory in Iowa)is just as legitimate as victory in a primary(like Bernie's victories in primaries in New Hampshire Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Indiana, West Virginia). I seriously doubt HRC's supporters would have made an issue of the caucuses if their candidate had done well(and it's not unfair that she didn't-she didn't because her campaign apparently hadn't learned anything more about winning caucus states than it knew in 2008).
There are valid reasons to question the caucus system, but the only reason HRC supporters are questioning them, as far as I can see, is that HRC didn't do well in them. She did win the Iowa caucus, and that seems to have been decisive.
My view is that we should have NO caucuses. At the same time, we should have same re-registration in all presidential primary states(or at least re-registration somewhere CLOSE to the primary instead of six months earlier like it was in New York). And there should be no super-delegates(your candidate would have been nominated without the superdelegates)because rank-and-file Dems should not be treated like small children who don't know "what's good for them". THAT is what a truly democratic process would look like.
Issues with caucuses should have been taken up with the state Democratic parties(most of which are run by centrists) who set them up. The existence of caucuses does not delegitimize the Sanders campaign and do not mean it had no right to the number of delegates it took to Philly.
Bernie would have run a different campaign if ALL the states had been primaries, and would have found a way to do well in that scenario too.
And it would have made no difference to the fall result if Bernie had done what you probably wanted and suspended his campaign on Super Tuesday. We'd likely still have ended up losing the Upper Midwest and North Carolina.
HRC was nominated, but at some point you're going to have to accept that support for Sanders was just as legitimate and just as real as support for HRC.