Hot take: Clinton v Trump

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Hillary and Biden are the bottom of the barrel. But theyre the only ones that are allowed to rise to the top. The system is rigged, it will never allow those who want to change the system to get any where near the presidency.

Haven't you figured that out yet?

Except the occasional loud mouthed celebrity, apparently, and he was relentlessly undermined from within when he couldn't be co-opted outright.

Biden was still mourning the death of his son Beau at that point which is why he did not run in 2016 in the first place.

The Democratic party has stronger defenses against populist candidates. Had Sanders won a small to moderate majority of the delegates, the Democratic establishment could still avoid electing him by using superdelegates. Sanders had to win by a solid majority of delegates to be nominated, and even then, if they really wanted to, the party could choose to not nominate him. What people don't realize is the primaries are not real elections. The two parties are not government bodies. They are private organizations that are free to choose their party's nominee any way they like. They are not obligated to even hold an election.

Now, if you thought there was trouble motivating people to get out and vote for the party's candidate in the real (general) election, just try overriding the results of the primary and see what happens. Trump would have won by a landslide.

The Republican party does not have superdelegates. They are at greater risk of having their pretend election won by a populist like Trump or Sanders.

You’re misdiagnosing the problem.

Clinton and Biden rose to the top because they were more popular. It’s as simple as that. No “rigging” necessary. Similarly, Obama beat them both in 2008 (despite being an outsider, well below Clinton and Edwards in the initial reckoning) because he too was more popular.

The big flaw in the way the Democrats elect their Presidential nominees, which is common to the Republicans too, is that they go state-by-state rather than just holding a national vote with ranked or preferably score voting.

The major flaws in the US system as a whole are things that no President could ever fix. To move to a proportionally-elected parliamentary system you’d need a constitutional amendment. Instead you’re left with a House which both sides try to gerrymander to make votes as unimportant as possible, a Senate which skews dramatically towards small rural states and can never be representative, and a Presidency which is inherently winner-take-all but isn’t even elected by popular vote.

If you want things to change, start campaigning for your state (or even your municipality) to switch to proportional representation. That’s the first step towards national change. Of course it makes a big difference who is in the White House, but if you want to fix the democratic system then it will require grassroots action and good-old community politics. You’ve got to get most states to support change, which means you need to change people’s minds.

No misdiagnosis. I've watched the continued takeover of our system by corporate interests for 40 years. There's really no way to reform the system from within at this point. It's going to take a massive resistance by the American people. That's the only way to bring any meaningful change.

The "Electoral College" thing is a big bugaboo.

There is a significant group of people on the Left (at least I consider them to be on the Left whether or not they see themselves that way) who are convinced that Sanders was denied the nomination in 2016 and 2020 by some sort of conspiracy indistinguishable to me from what Trump supporters call the Deep State. So far as I am concerned these people are as bad if not even worse than actual Trump supporters as they have been duped and refuse to acknowledge that fact. They are arguably Trump's most valuable allies as without them Trump would have no real power.

Nothing worse than being ignorant and proud of it.

You need to read the Podesta emails. That will enlighten you on how the DNC and the media conspired to take down Sanders.

And if you want to tell me you don't trust Wikileaks, everything they have released has 100% validated and they've never had to retract one story.

https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/the-fake-podesta-email-thats-still-circulating/

Yeah, FactCheck.org is pretty biased toward the Democratic party. Nothing to see there.

I saw how the media ignored Sanders in 2016 and elevated Trump. It was pretty damn obvious what they were up to.

Bernie was shortchanged by the Democrats.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/p ... inton.html

You aren't even understanding the article you linked.

"Two years ago, a self-proclaimed satirical website made up a politically charged email and claimed that it had been released by WikiLeaks."

1. It was made up by a satirical website.
2. It had nothing to do with wikileaks.

The podesta emails that WERE released by wikileaks, on the other hand, are legit. Prior to getting their marching orders from the party, a couple of the participants even apologized for their participation in the smearing and sabotaging of Sanders. Importantly, the party and Clinton did not challenge their veracity. What they did do is start claiming they were hacked by Russians, in order to prepare to discredit the NEXT release, for which their employees were probably instructed/threatened to not apologize for.

There is no conspiracy. But there is bias and corporate agenda.

Okay, the 2016 primary was conspiracy. And there probably continues to be conspiracy that we just don't know about because nobody's leaked it. But understanding the conspiracy is not necessary to see what's going on.

When MSNBC coverage is full of trust fund celebrities saying "Sanders makes my skin crawl," just what do you think is happening?

90% of the media Americans consume is owned by six corporations. Who do you think runs them? The rank and file?

Corporate media, run for the benefit of the oligarchs who own them, have too much say in the selection of candidates at the primary level. And yes, Trump was given extensive, free coverage because they thought he had no chance.

Y'all see Fox News as the propaganda arm of the Republican party, but MSNBC and CNN are...unbiased?

smdh

Two wings of the same, damned bird. Doesn't matter one whit to them whether you are governed by a Democrat or a Republican, as long as it is a corporate-friendly Democrat or Republican.

Even the parties themselves don't give a damn. The Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than win with a progressive.

Sanders can't win because he doesn't have a realistic plan to defeat MSNBC.

In 2020 Barack Obama and Jim Clyburn put their thumbs on the scale for Joe Biden, but it was MSNBC and CNN that made that seem a done deal. Not conspiracy, but definitely not democracy, either.

You're inching up to one of my more controversial opinions, that the 2020 election was not stolen in the sense of hacked voting machines or ballot stuffing, but that it was a bit less than legitimate with the vast tech and media machines all conspiring to defeat Trump at all costs.

I'd say it's pretty fair to say that based on physical appearance, personality, and headlines of their days that Bill got a lot more blowjobs than donnie.