The democrats haven’t held a legitimate primary since 2008!
In 2008 it was a genuine competition between Obama, Hillary, and a handful of other lesser known politicians. Obama won the general in a landslide.
In 2012 Obama ran unopposed. Obama won the general.
In 2016 the democrats rigged the primary against sanders for Hillary, and to absolutely no one’s surprise who was paying attention, Hillary lost the general. Why? she didn’t genuinely win the primary. Shocking!
In 2020, refusing to learn mistakes from 2016, the democrats once again screwed over bernie and didn’t run a legitimate primary - rigged it so that all the candidates except no-path-to-win Warren exited the race to split the progressive vote away from bernie. Joe biden won by the skin of his teeth, and he would of lost if it weren’t for the country reacting to trumps handling of covid.
In 2024, once again refusing to learn the democrats didn’t even bother with a primary, ran an old demented geezer as a presidential candidate, realized that wasn’t going to work, and then anointed unelected Kamala Harris who didn’t even need to compete in a primary.
And they’re shocked they lost?! These people make way too much money to be this stupid.
Every Republican family member except one that I’ve asked about Bernie has said more or less the following:
I like him, I like that he’s not Dem/Repub, he’s got the country’s best interest at heart, etc.
Then it’s usually followed by how he’d never get a chance, and then it revolves back to why Dems suck and repubs rule, or at best, “they’re both the same.”
You are 100% right: people want change, they want progress, and regardless of how shitty he is, Trump got things done that his base wanted.
Clinton, then Biden, and now Harris, promise marginal improvements to the status quo while dismissing large swaths of their electorate that don’t fall in line.
If they ran progressive candidates with progressive policies, they’d pull voters from all over. But they wont, hence, fascism.
I know a ton of republicans and people sympathetic to republicans. All of them thought bernie was a decent guy and they would of preferred him over Hillary.
Then after the primary he increasingly took up democrat talking points and would occasionally finger wag at them while not materially doing anything other than get angry in a speech. His embrace of democrats on gun control was a mistake, if he just maintained his view that he had most of his political career he’d court a lot of crossover voters. But now he’s far too old and the damage is done.
I voted for him multiple times, in primaries and eventually as my senator, but his milquetoast stance on Gaza made me for the first time vote against him for an independent. He’s really disappointed me over the past almost decade - I went from raising money and canvassing for him to finding him to be a has been and sell out. I still think he’s the best elected official on the national scale that we’ve got but I’m so disappointed in him.
Interesting. Every Republican family member that I have talked to has said Sanders is a Marxist.