this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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If they'd run Sanders, they've had ended up with a Democratic supermajority. SCOTUS would have been largely irrelevant.
But it doesn't change facts. The powers of the presidency in the hands of an actual reformer, not a performative one like Biden or Obama, would have entailed true, fundamental change.
Sanders couldn't even win the Democratic primary. What makes you think he stood a chance at winning the election?
Good morning.
Respectfully, what you're repeating here is a lie. The primaries were rigged against Bernard Sanders, and when the Democratic Party was later sued for it, they admitted it. The bummer here is that in rigging primaries for Clinton, Democrats not only gave us Donald Trump, but also gave Trump control of Congress at the same time.
Rigged how, exactly? Were all the voters that didn't vote for Bernie in on the conspiracy?
Bernie lost, he wasn't popular enough. Get over it.
The DNC didn’t 'rig' the primary in the sense of changing vote totals, but they did actively tilt the scales through media collusion (leaked emails showed DNC officials mocking Sanders and strategizing against him), debate scheduling (minimizing exposure), and voter suppression tactics (e.g., purging independents in closed primaries). The lawsuit revealed the DNC’s lawyers openly argued in court that they had no obligation to run a fair process.
That said, yes, Clinton won more votes, but the system was structurally biased from the start. The real question is whether a truly neutral primary would have had a different outcome, given Sanders’ momentum and Clinton’s weaknesses (which absolutely contributed to Trump’s win).
Bernie lost, he wasn’t popular enough. Get over it.
Telling people to 'get over it' ignores why this still matters. The DNC’s actions in 2016 (and again in 2020, with the sudden coalescence around Biden after South Carolina) reinforced the perception that the party prioritizes control over democracy. That disillusionment cost them key voters in swing states. Which is how we got Trump.
Did Bernie get more or fewer votes than Clinton?
Bernie polled better during the primaries than both Clinton AND Trump. In fact, there were polls showing that he polled better than Trump among Republicans (so long as you only talked about his policies without mentioning his name. As soon as you said his name they'd call him a dirty communist and 180 their opinion - quite literally going from saying they'd vote for somebody with those positions to vowing to never vote for him). Clinton polled worse than Trump, and Bernie had a decent lead over Trump - enough that he was considered the better candidate to run against Trump right up until he dropped out of the race.
So, what happened? Well, major news networks airing 30 minutes of Trump's empty podium instead of Bernie's speech happened. He was the target of a major campaign by the leaders of the party who poured tons of money into making sure Hillary's face was everywhere and his voice was snuffed out. They quite literally said that they were under no obligation to run a fair primary.
So if he was already so popular he was outshining Clinton and Trump, why didn't people vote for him? Could it maybe be because he's only popular in highly populous cities that have relatively few electoral votes when compared to the rural areas where he's not as popular, and so nationwide polling isn't indicative of actual electoral success?
Also, as we all know now, presence on major TV news networks doesn't align with electoral success either. Trump basically cornered the podcast market and he won the election. People don't watch TV news anymore.
Really? You're saying that on a post of a picture showing his popularity across like 80% of the country? I would think that that applies better to Hillary than Bernie, but I have nothing to back that up and she was a fairly unpopular candidate regardless - Trump and Hillary were the two lowest ranking candidates in terms of popularity since they started tracking that. Also, we're talking about the Democratic primary here, not the election, where only Democrats and independents matter in terms of voting (and independents are allowed to vote in primaries only in some states. Others have closed primaries that are only open to people registered with that political party).
Right, which is why Trump lost both elections he ran in, since his face has been plastered on the TV day in and day out for practically a decade now. While I do agree that TV doesn't matter as much anymore, media presence very much does, as Trump shows, and this is where the Democratic Party kneecapped Bernie's campaign. Not only did they give funding and marketing priority to Hillary (a large portion of Bernie's funding was from donations from average Americans - I don't think he had any corporate donors or anything except his own "SuperPac" which is TINY compared to all the others and, again, made up of individual donations), but they also colluded with media organizations to limit the amount of media exposure he had. And even with that handicap on people even knowing about him, he still pulled major points during the primary.
Look at all those small town voting districts that voted for Bernie.
Any good candidate would lose the democratic primary.
Least delusional Sanders revisionist take.
I love hearing from centrists, who've shat the bed every election for over a decade. Without COVID we'd currently be in the third Trump term, all because of you folks.
You see AOC and Bernie filling football stadiums in red states and you think: "We should totally nominate Harris again". Here in Missouri voters approved a $15 minimum wage, required paid sick leave, and legal abortion, but sure, just keep running centrist candidates. That's totally gonna work.
I wish you all would fight fascism with an iota of the fervor with which you fight the Mamdanis of the world.
The fact this isn't a centrist position shows how cooked the US is.
I think the big issue with centrists is they pay absolutely no attention to what's really happening, but wear the term "centrist" like a badge of honor.
So on one end we have Nazis, and the other end we have Democrats who are mostly Center-Right, and then the centrists try to find the middle of that but not having any idea if what that means.
And then we keep getting the enshitification of the U.S.
The centrist position is pro-starvation and pro-theft of labor wrapped in a rainbow flag. (and a bloody one at that, considering how pro-war they are too.)
Yeah, $15 is so put of date. They were pushing for 15 BACK IN 2008, the last time it moved, before housing prices doubled/tripled. 15 would be trash pay, but it's still TOO MUCH for corporate owned Democrats to even pretend to support
Basic human decency is some woke commie lefty bullshit
/s
A guy on the internet thinking something doesn't elect the candidate... votes in primaries do. And they have consistently chosen centrists.
Respectfully, you should go read up on why superdelegates were invented, and maybe the lawsuit in Florida where the DNC stated publicly that they rig their primaries.
Voters do not choose Democratic presidential candidates.
Superdelegates have not been used for either Hillary or Biden. If they had been you'd be right to be pissed, but there was no need because they got enough votes. Voters did choose the candidates.
Leftists consistently lose elections.
Voters have consistently shown they don’t want to elect leftists.
Centrists have won the majority of elections since the 90s.
AOC and Bernie would lose worse than Harris in a national election. Just like all leftists have.
When voters have chosen the option furthest to the right it is stupid to think that running a candidate further left would do anything but lose.
Democrats had to rig not one, but two primaries against Bernard Sanders, and not only did they not deny it, they argued in court that it was their right to do so.
No one fails harder than centrists. They are objectively, evidently pathetic. If COVID hadn't occurred we'd be in the third Trump presidency, and you'd still be sitting here like a good bootlicker telling me I didn't vote hard enough for centrists and ignoring that AOC and Bernard Sanders are filling football stadiums in red states.
I repeat: I wish you all fought as hard against fascism as you do for the billionaire class.
AOC and Bernie stopped in my red state. I went and saw more than half the license plates were from out of state. Those that were from my state were from the one blue county.
We recently had an election between an establishment Republican and a progressive and the progressive lost by a landslide.
Don’t lie to yourself. AOC and Bernie have fans that will travel to see them from other states.
Democrats are trying to stop progressives from throwing the election like they have every time they win a primary.
Progressives can’t even beat other candidates that get funded by AIPAC let alone beat republicans.
LOL, did you happen to see Joe Biden's dementia on full public display last summer?
They are not trying to stop anyone from throwing an election, or they wouldn't have let Joe Biden crown a weak candidate.
Democrats are rigging primaries to help the billionaire class, and doing so in full knowledge that they're aiding fascists, because they themselves are profiting off of it.
Voters were very clear that they would consider it a betrayal to primary instead of replacing Biden with the Vice President since that is the job of a vice president.
Trump says way more crazy shit than Biden and he won. Matter of fact Trump lost by a lot in 2020, if he were to follow the same strategy as leftists he would’ve quit before trying again in 2024.
All politicians and forms of government are susceptible to corruption. Just look at Fetterman and Sinema. Just because someone claims to be progressive doesn’t mean they won’t help the billionaire class or fascists.
No, they weren't. There wasn't a primary.
Apples to oranges. You saw Biden's meltdown and I did too.
A salient point. The Democrats' next campaign slogan should be: Better things aren't possible if you vote for us.
Centrists lost to Trump, the objectively worst candidate for president.
Sanders received a loud applause from a Fox News town hall. I'm not so sure he'd have lost.
Trying to do right-wing policy "better" than the right-wing candidate has consistently lost elections to far-right candidates. All it does is validate the far-right candidate's positions, and they'll always be considered "stronger" on those positions
People primarily vote for change, and that's exactly what the centrists haven't been able to offer. It's why Biden lost, it's why Harris lost, it's why Clinton lost.
I saw that town hall on Fox News with Bernie. The people in the audience were asking about what he was going to do to fix climate change and a lot of subjects that Republicans deny even exists. That audience wasn’t Republican don’t lie to yourself.
Bill Clinton won two consecutive terms.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and lost because of Russian election interference.
Biden won.
Harris lost because of inflation caused by post covid supply chain problems, according to the polls.
Ignoring the fact that voters chose the furthest option to the right give the next election to the GOP, if there is another election.
Just because what you’re saying on lemmy gets upvotes doesn’t mean it would get votes irl.
Popular opinions on lemmy are the exact opposite of what voters vote for.
There was recently a post here on lemmy that proposed AOC running for president and the top voted comment was that she would lose. Even here on lemmy enough people are aware of the leftists echo chamber and how detached it is from reality.
Fox News decided to invite a bunch of progressives? Don't kid yourself.
Clinton lost for a lot of reasons. But she managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of what should have been an overwhelming blowout. It's not just Russian interference at that point, that's delusional.
Biden won once, barely, and only with Trumps shit 1st term stuck in economic crisis after Covid. Biden then ended up so far behind in the polls they pulled him from being embarrassingly defeated by Trump. Harris lost because she didn't offer any meaningful difference from the Biden era. That includes inflation, but again it's not the only reason people didn't turn out for her. Polls also showed she alienated a core left-wing demographic that stayed home. She needed every vote but made poor decisions that cost her more votes than she could gain.
The right-wing does campaigning on right-wing policy better than any centrist candidate ever could. You see this happening everywhere, not just the US.
AOC for president is ridiculous, her heart might be in the right place but she doesn't have a wide enough appeal. Sanders is different. There has been plenty of polling done that showed Sanders had a better chance at beating Trump than Harris or Biden did.
Republicans deny the existence of climate change and vaccines and many other topics that were brought up in that townhall. Your feelings won’t change that.
Everything else in your response was conjecture and excuses.
At least you acknowledge that pandering to the left is a waste of time. Leftist have a reputation for not showing up to vote. But that is probably because there are so few of them that they need to team up with democrats just to have a voice.
Centrists do some self reflection challenge: impossible.