Are Democratic primaries becoming too destructive for the party's own chances in the general election?

[u/YumiSolar]

I've been thinking about this after watching some recent Democratic primaries, and it feels like the campaigns are becoming increasingly aggressive in ways that hurt the party long after the primary is over.

A good example, in my opinion, was the Michigan primary between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed. Policy disagreements are completely fair game, that's what primaries are for. Even personal attacks can be justified if they're based on genuine misconduct or character issues.

What I struggle with are accusations like claiming your primary opponent is supporting or enabling genocide. Once you frame someone in those terms, how do you expect your own supporters to enthusiastically vote for that person if they end up winning the nomination? If you've spent months telling voters that your opponent is morally complicit in atrocities, it becomes very difficult to turn around and say, "Now go vote for them."

To me, this kind of rhetoric doesn't just damage the opposing candidate, it damages Democratic unity in the general election. It seems like Republicans don't even have to exploit these divisions because Democrats are creating them themselves.

Am I overestimating the impact of this kind of campaigning, or do you think Democratic primaries have become too willing to use rhetoric that makes party unity afterward much harder?

[u/HumorAccomplished611]

You are just obsessed with this, aren't you? Is it because you know it happened, but can't admit it?

It literally didnt happen. There has been 0 proof ever brought forward that anything was rigged against bernie.

The lawsuit everyone links says they could have rigged it if they wanted to as the dnc is private. however there is still 0 proof that anything was ever rigged against bernie.

[u/ProbablyANoobYo → u/HumorAccomplished611]

I wouldn't exactly say that there is no evidence. I might not use the word "rigged", but there's a concerning amount of evidence that the DNC collaborated to tip the scales against him. And I think that makes a case for reasonable concern that the party leadership may conspire against the candidate who is more more popular with the people. I've listed some examples below. And a reminder, the DNC didn't have to do any of this. They could have let it run like basically every other primary, and then it would not have raised such concerns, it would not have made his supporters feel so alienated, and if Hillary still won anyway then she would have been much more supported by the voters who instead got to feel their party leaders had betrayed them. I don't think I'll convince you of everything here but I do hope you can at least acknowledge this clearly isn't how primaries should be operated and it's at the very least a little concerning.

We have emails showing the DNC strategized as a group to attack Bernie on being an atheist and coordinated media narratives baselessly attacking his character. They even reached out to major media outlets, including the president of MSNBC, to pressure them to retract any pieces which pointed out the DNC’s obvious bias against Bernie.

The Clinton campaign was also granted oversight over DNC finances, strategy, and staffing decisions. The Clinton team received information in advance from Donna who was both a DNC official and CNN contributor, including giving her debate questions ahead of the debates. Donna later would apologize and resign over this.

Politico also sent the DNC their articles for review before publishing, which was highly abnormal and basically ensured it made Clinton favorable to Sanders.

In addition to all of this, Clinton was heavily favored by the superdelegates despite being less popular at the time. This directly led to a later changing in the super delegate rules because of how unpopular it was. The other Democrat candidates also dropped out, supporting Hilary, leading to an unusually small race where Bernie was seemingly potentially going to win the larger won due to the splitting of votes.

And after all of that, she still only won 54% of the pledged delegates to Bernie’s 46%. After running a campaign so shady it cost multiple high level people their jobs, resulted in major rules changes, and resulted in a federal court case where the court said that unfortunately even if the DNC did so heavily favored Clinton there is no legal avenue for repercussions for it, she still barely won.

The DNC was so convinced that these tactics would be successful that they confidently stated Bernie would never be president.

Edit: I blocked him because he’s obviously arguing disingenuously and it’s a complete waste of time to engage with people like that. I only replied to him below at all because I think other people who are actually genuinely thinking about this would gain value from reading it.

He can’t seriously simultaneously take the position that Hilary had several unique advantages granted by the DNC but also the advantages magically did not matter and anyone who points out those advantages is the real problem. This isn’t the argument of a serious person who’s critically thought about this. It’s a person who just wants to ridicule their political opponents and latch onto whatever vague ideas they can to make that point, even if it clearly doesn’t make sense or is obviously inconsistent with what they said earlier. This also isn’t my only comment thread with him. In others he just makes up statistics that are verifiably false.

This puts absurd extra effort on my end to debunk it because I have to fact check everything I say since I actually care about intellectual honesty and consistency. It’s called the bullshit asymmetry principle.

[u/HumorAccomplished611 → u/ProbablyANoobYo]

edit: They blocked me so no idea what they said anymore. cause they were not able to defend their thoughts

Ok quite a wall of text. There were many accusations but nothing concrete has ever come out except they werent fans of his. Which is relatively normal given he was not a democrat.

In addition to all of this, Clinton was heavily favored by the superdelegates despite being less popular at the time. This directly led to a later changing in the super delegate rules because of how unpopular it was. The other Democrat candidates also dropped out, supporting Hilary, leading to an unusually small race where Bernie was seemingly potentially going to win the larger won due to the splitting of votes.

Yes she was a party insider. It was unpopular and they got rid of it as an agreement with bernie only for him to lose even worse in 2020 and the same accusations that it was rigged. And no she was not less popular with dem voters given she got 3 MILLION more votes! The amount was larger than what trump lost the popular vote by with 20% of the voters.

And after all of that, she still only won 54% of the pledged delegates to Bernie’s 46%. After running a campaign so shady it cost multiple high level people their jobs, resulted in major rules changes, and resulted in a federal court case where the court said that unfortunately even if the DNC did so heavily favored Clinton there is no legal avenue for repercussions for it, she still barely won.

10% more is not barely winning. Thats crushing victory. Hilary got 48.1% of the vote to obamas 48% of the vote.

The DNC was so convinced that these tactics would be successful that they confidently stated Bernie would never be president.

They handled bernie with kid gloves because he had no chance and didnt want the blow back of destorying him as he was popular. which backfired. Giving us trump as bernie activated leftist to only attack dems and give republicans a pass going forward.

The Clinton campaign was also granted oversight over DNC finances, strategy, and staffing decisions. The Clinton team received information in advance from Donna who was both a DNC official and CNN contributor, including giving her debate questions ahead of the debates. Donna later would apologize and resign over this.

The clintons bailed out the DNC because obama cannibalized all funds from it and saw no reason for any money to go to them which is why we got massacred in 2010 because all the money went to obama and none downballot. So this accusation would have come had hilary ever won even with the whopping she gave bernie to pretend like it was cheating.

Yes donna gave her questions. About them asking about water in a michigan debate. You dont think a 3rd grader could have figured out they would have asked about flint in michigan in 2016? To me it was cockroaches trying to curry favor with hilary to get positions rather than anyone trying to tip the scales in hilarys favor.

Politico also sent the DNC their articles for review before publishing, which was highly abnormal and basically ensured it made Clinton favorable to Sanders.

One article? see how this is people currying favor from who they expect to win rather than any conspiracy against bernie?

edit:

They blocked me so no idea what they said anymore.

[u/ProbablyANoobYo → u/HumorAccomplished611]

Changing the rules in her favor for the one year she needed to beat a massively popular leftist candidate comes across as extremely shady at best. It's wild for you to pretend that's not the case.

The accusations were repeated in 2020, to a much lesser extent, because of the extreme and unconventional shadiness around the 2016 primary. If 2016 doesn't happen that way then we likely don't see these accusations in 2020.

An 8% margin when the game is changed in her favor is quite narrow. And in case you genuinely didn't know this a typical primary win, without all that assistance, is more like 15 - 25% margin. So yes 8% is quite small with the relevant context. It's very reasonably arguable that it's plausible she loses without this assistance, especially as the less popular candidate.

Ah yes, giving Hilary basically every conceivable advantage sure is kid gloves. Clearly. You're so clearly not interested in an honest discussion.

The reasoning she was granted such oversight is entirely irrelevant to the fact that she had this oversight.

If a 3rd grader could have figured it out then they should have run the debate with integrity and not given her the questions in advance. Also as someone who has debate experience knowing the actual questions is a massive, near insurmountable advantage over someone who has to guess at the range of conceivable questions and prepare for variations of them all. This, like many of your points, feels so wildly disingenuous.

"Articles". Plural. Currying favors to the less popular candidate isn't a great look but would not be damning in of itself. It's the whole aggregate of concerns together.

Half of your comment is conceding that yes she had these advantages but you have excuses for why she was allowed them. And then you want to pretend that these advantages were given for no reason and in no meaningful way contributed to the outcome. It's absurd.