Hillary won 13 out of the 23 open primaries

[La Lioness Priyanka]

There seems to be some misconceptions that she would have lost if all primaries were open. She would not.

If all primaries were open she would still be our nominee.

[still_one]

1. Democrats should choose their nominee. I do not want someone who isn't a Democrat

determining who our nominee is.

and guess what, it really isn't that difficult, all they have to do is register as a Democrat.

For those that don't want to do that, means they don't want to be identified with the Democratic party, then go start your own party

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. That's a fine view to hold. What I don't like

Is that people argue against this point, by stating we would have had someone else and someone more liked by independents if we had all open primaries this cycle.

We would not. We'd have HRC.

[still_one]

4. You are absolutely right Priyanka

[pangaia]

3. Who cares any more. It's all,over.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. People who want to learn lessons and make changes do

We don't want to come out of it with incorrect lessons learnt

[Gidney N Cloyd]

6. +1

[JTFrog]

7. Maybe just ignore this forum then. This is the postmortem forum.

Where shit is likely to get discected and scrutinized.

YMMV.

[Kentonio]

8. You have no idea whether that would be true or not.

Some of her strongest states having open primaries does not mean she would have won anywhere an open primary was held. That's faulty logic.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

9. Ok, but any data that currently exists supports my hypothesis

Not yours.

[Kentonio]

11. There is no data to support either argument.

Because we have no idea how many people were disenfranchised by the existing rules. It did make me extremely angry however to hear all the smug 'People who aren't Democrats shouldn't get a vote' stuff I kept reading here. We were in a process of trying to draw in new voters ready for the general, and people genuinely thought it was a smart move to tell them they weren't wanted. Brilliant..

[La Lioness Priyanka]

12. There is data clearly demonstrating that she wins

Open primaries at a greater rate than her opponent

[Kentonio]

13. Ok, so if we also have 'data' showing that more people wearing blue in debates

Then go on to be president, we can safely assume that anyone wearing blue in a debate will win the Presidency right?

[LanternWaste]

15. The former has causation, yours merely correlation.

The former has causation, yours merely correlation. No doubt, your bias prevents you from accurately seeing it such.

[Kentonio]

16. I was using a reductio ad absurdum of course

But the former can't be said to have causation, because its not something we can prove to have had causation. The fact she won a majority of open primary states could just as easily be explained by the majority of current open primary states being in the south.

[Garrett78]

21. Good luck winning the Dem. Party nomination without doing well in the South.

[mythology]

41. You mean like all those caucuses Sanders won?

The available evidence says that Clinton won most of the primaries and Sanders won most of the caucuses. That indicates that when more people turned out, Clinton won. It certainly isn't proof Clinton would have won if we did away with disenfranchising caucuses entirely, but certainly suggests it.

[Kentonio]

42. Why don't we find out next time by making them all open primaries?

The last primary is over, all I'm interested in now is ensuring that next time around we don't cut off a huge number of potential voters. That cost us badly this time, because people started to care about Democratic policies and then were told they couldn't vote. It scares me to think how many of them just walked away at that point.

[Garrett78]

43. Nothing cuts off potential voters the way a caucus does.

I'm fine with every state having an open or semi-open primary. But many persons with jobs, kids, disabilities or a desire to keep their vote private are disinclined to participate in a caucus.

Do away with caucuses.

The bottom line is you must have the support of the party's base, which Sanders did not.

[Kentonio]

44. I'm fine with doing away with caususes.

I know people defend them by saying they are a good example of democracy playing out locally, but I agree with you about them. Make them primaries, but also make them open.

[WhiteTara]

10. But she didn't win them all so

obviously she didn't win bigly enough for the BoBers

[NCTraveler]

14. No doubt about it.

She would have won much more off the start if they wouldn't have made the decision to treat Sanders with such kid gloves. Giving him a free pass in the name of unity was a mistake. It was not something he returned in kind. He did do some good for us but overall he was steeped in politics of division.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

18. Yeah, kid gloves

People keep bleating about Kurt Eichenwald's "2 foot thick" book of opposition research those low down rotten scumbag had

When that "oopsition research" gets listed here, it turns out it was the same slime jobs pushed by that scumbag David Brock and the rest of the surrogates on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

[NCTraveler]

19. They didn't touch him. Complete kid gloves. nt.

[Garrett78]

20. Hardly anyone made mention of Bernie's rape article, association with communists, etc.

And Clinton certainly didn't campaign on those things. But, yes, there was mention of those sorts of things on DU, because it's important to recognize what a potential nominee would be up against in a general election. It's called vetting, a crucial aspect of running for office.

As for those who insist that there must not be a substantial amount of opposition research because no book has been made public is just silly. Sanders wasn't the nominee, so opposition research on Sanders was irrelevant.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

25. Yeah. Nobody talked about except CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC...

... Mother Jones, The Washington Post etc. etc.

https://m.

[Garrett78]

40. See my response below.

The rape essay, the Castro praise et al. constituted a minute portion of the campaign. Meanwhile, Clinton emails dominated the discussion throughout (even with Sanders saying he didn't give a damn about Clinton's emails).

Vetting is a part of every campaign. Sanders would have faced a shitstorm had he been the nominee. During the primary, though, he got off easy. He was never all that relevant because he didn't have the support of the party base.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

22. the eichenwald essay happened after the election

[Hassin Bin Sober]

23. I'm aware of that.

The idea that this stuff wasn't brought up by campaign surrogates is absurd.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

24. it was never fully exploited, there were no add run on it

no high level people were writing about i

i was pretty engaged in this primary, and i didn't know anything about the sandanista stuff or the unemployment.

i had heard about the rape essay but only on DU.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

26. .

https://m.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

29. jake tapper was a clinton surrogate?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

34. Wait. What are discussing here?

The lack of coverage you claimed? - which is demonstrably false.

Or who did opposition research of the slimiest kind that seems to be the extent of the "2 foot thick" binders of research?

Let me know when you are done moving the goal post so we can nail it down.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

38. Clinton never exploited these giant flaws in Sanders. That is my point.

his flaws were never fully exploited, because his candidacy was mathematically over very early on.

[JHan]

37. Yes Jake Tapper and all of them - Clinton Surrogates.

Expect more vids with one or two people talking about it as evidence of a Clinton Campaign smear.

[Garrett78]

32. Yeah, that about sums it up.

A host quoting an article from Mother Jones magazine and asking a Democratic strategist about it. And then that strategist saying it is something the Sanders campaign would need to address, especially if Sanders became relevant.

As I and others have said, very little was made of that story (or his praise of Castro, etc.) during the campaign. If you think the 1-minute clip I just watched suggests otherwise, you're sorely mistaken.

All candidates get vetted, as they should, so of course oppo research gets mentioned here and there. It didn't really matter, though, because Sanders never had the support of the party's base. Had the race been tighter like it was in 2008, perhaps the kid gloves would have been taken off, but the race was essentially over by mid-March. The writing was on the wall after Super Tuesday.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

27. You were so engaged you skipped the debates?

https://m.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

35. again he was asked during a debate. this is not a clinton add, or a clinton high level surrogate

or a clinton OP ED.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

45. Not playing these silly games.

You and I both know how this stuff works.

Jake Tapper and his ilk don't do investigative reporting. They get spoon fed this crap from slime bags like Brock.

Or people like Donna Brazile feed questions and reveal questions while pretending to be non biased.

Hillary, through her surrogates, ran this stuff up and down the flagpole. To deny this was the campaign is beyond laughable.

Then people scratch their heads why turn out in places like Madison Wisconsin was sub par.

The problem with elections that were this close in battle ground states is you can point to several different things that could have swayed the election.

Running a smear campaign and constantly attacking the other primary candidate's supporters is just one of several reasons we lost to a buffoon.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

46. actually Tapper does a lot of reporting. just because you think Sanders should have been the nominee

doesn't mean that a smear campaign was run against him.

you are literally spinning in circles trying to pretend clinton smeared him, when there is no evidence of it.

[Garrett78]

17. Do away with caucuses and have every primary be open or semi-open.

In which case, Clinton would have won in a landslide. Not like Gore v. Bradley, but a landslide nonetheless.

[bowens43]

28. If she was not our nominee we would not have president trump

so this is not something to brag about......

and your assumption isn't valid. winning 13 of 23 does not trend make.....

[La Lioness Priyanka]

33. it does make a literal trend, it is the majority of open primaries

13/23 is more than half the open primaries, whereas 10/23 is less than half.

[bravenak]

30. Sad you have to say this. It like people make their own reality up and live by it

[La Lioness Priyanka]

31. in this fantasy Clinton only wins rigged closed primaries

fuck that she won all sorts of primaries, fuck that primaries are run by state govt and not democratic party.

fuck the facts

[bravenak]

36. He could only beat her in caucuses where working people had no time to attend

I made it to mine but there were only like 30 black people in the whole place. Mostly white dudes and college kids. I still have video of them melting down because Clinton got a delegate.

[Gothmog]

39. I really want to get rid of the undemocratic caucuses

Most of sanders so-called victories came in caucus states. Caucuses are not democratic.

[Cha]

47. Kick for facts then.. they're always interesting.

[JCanete]

48. Of course, but if you want to talk about the conditions of that primary you have to talk about what

things about our system benefitted Clinton, including timing of Sanders momentum, and media's absent to sporadic exposure of him as a candidate, with a favorite tactic being to introduce him with primary #'s that included super delegates, meaning the first time some people heard about him, they had every cause to write him off as a lost-cause candidate.

You and I have had a discussion about our corporate media, so you know that they were not going to give an assist to Sanders. Not to help him win it surely...on the other hand, to damage Clinton once it was pretty clear she had the primary in the bag? Hell yes!

I just think its important that you see why winning the primaries doesn't necessarily convince that they were conducted fairly or that anything about the David and Goliath battle was ever going to be fair given that they had entirely different funding mechanisms and levels of bankable political capital. You can feel good about her winning the primary, but in my mind it doesn't really mean that much about the campaign itself or the candidates relative to each other. It does say a lot about the coalitions that Clinton built and the cred she built up to get herself there, and that is in itself an amazing achievement, whether I like aspects of it or not. Few rise to that level of support within the establishment.

Still, I was a Bernie supporter from the beginning, but the result was expected, and really, never in doubt for me, because thumbs were on the scales...not nefariously in most cases...more just a natural consequence of people making sausage together and liking the same recipe....but they did add weight.

[Gothmog]

49. Most of Sanders so-called victories were in caucuses

Sanders did not come close to getting enough votes to be the nominee.
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/a-message-for-hardcore-bernie-stans/

Hillary Cinton won the nomination because of democracy. She received more than 57% of Democratic votes cast. Bernie Sanders virtually only won caucuses, which are the least democratic aspect of the primary process. And most of those he won only because she decided to save her money for the General election. He won very few primaries, except for his “home states” and Michigan and his clock was cleaned in virtually every other state that mattered. Demographically, he only won white liberals. The fact that YOU think he made it close, or only lost because of “Super Delegates” is a hallmark of your delusion. Bernie Stans largely didn’t seem to notice that she reached out to you repeatedly and you bit her hand off, making you more like Republicans than you should be comfortable with.