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I think we need a post mortem in the Democratic Party. Look I supported Hilary but there were so many things that went wrong. Let's talk about the fact that we

I think we need a post mortem in the Democratic Party. Look I supported Hilary but there were so many things that went wrong. Let's talk about the fact that we suppressed our own vote. Emails came out that the party wanted Hilary to win at all costs enough to sabotage Sanders. Well that sort of thing doesn't help anyone, because a candidate not picked by the people will loose. Trump may have been someone that the party despised but he won the vote, they did not push him out. There are so many other things that we did wrong, why wasn't Elizabeth Warren in this? I know because the party wanted Hilary to win it. There are many other things that can go into this post mortem. I've come to grips with the fact that we lost and I'm looking ahead at what we can do next time.

Burritamos 10y ago
Hillary won a majority of the popular votes in the primary as well as the majority of pledged delegates (i.e. not just superdelegates). I don't think I understand how that counts as 'suppressing' your vote. Mind expanding on that a bit?
- Alex3917 10y ago
  Things Hillary and her campaign did during the primaries: - Rigging the primary/caucus schedule so that all the states favoring Hillary would be the first to vote. - Rigged the debate schedule by purposely scheduling them at odd times when no one would by watching so that Bernie couldn't get his message out. - Cheated in the debates by receiving the questions in advance, and was given extra time by the moderators. - Got the media to censor all virtually all coverage of Bernie. E.g. on the days when he had big primary wins, the media covered the speeches of every other candidate except him. - Illegally disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in New York and Arizona alone by removing them from the voter roles, or else removing their party affiliation. Disenfranchised millions more around the country by, e.g., forcing California voters to vote provisional and then just throwing out their ballots without counting them. - Circumvented campaign finance laws by having donors send money to the state parties, but then requiring the state parties to send all of that money to her campaign. All while trashing Bernie for not raising money for the down ticket races.
  - brightball 10y ago
    That's very similar to the playbook used against Ron Paul in 2008. That's one of the reasons that the Trump strategy was so interesting. Ron Paul focused on concepts, history, logical points and got a huge following because of it as well as a lot of money raised. He sparked a lot of the Libertarian movement that we see today...but he was largely blacked out by the media and especially Fox News. They even edited him out of debate rebroadcasts. Trump on the other hand played to the media shock free press. He'd garner national attention as the media took opportunity after opportunity to shame him...and it worked. He got tons of free press because the media focused on shaming opportunity and sound bites while candidates with good points get ignored. It's an absolute reflection of how our media works.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - moyta 10y ago
      It really is a reflection of how our media values things, shocking content gets airtime, reasonable well formed opinions get minimal airtime. What Ron Paul did inside the republican party, whereby his supporters ran the party at the state level in many states was incredible, they really knew how to make a run of it!
    - DefaultUserHN 10y ago
      The good thing about Trump winning is that Ron Paul will finally be able to work with the Trump administration to implement some of his great ideas.
- moyta 10y ago
  I'd say the vote was suppressed, but that is mainly due to how hard it is in the US to vote. You need to be registered to vote months in advance, depending where you live you likely need to show up to a polling place and wait for hours in line on a particular day during work hours, etc. All this means that of the 220 million eligible voters, only 120 million actually voted this election, whereas for Obama in 2008, 130 million people voted (nearly all of that 10 million going to Obama). If Hillary had had a stronger ground game, or pulled in the Bernie call canvasers, she could have turned those 10 million out to the polls. The sad thing is, after Bernie's loss, many of the people I met in West Michigan did not turn out to vote, or if they did they did not vote for Hillary. I know at least 15 of the people I met did not vote, and another 5 voted for another candidate.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    The turnout wasn't that bad for this election, the turnout was bad for the Democratic base this election. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voter-turnout-fell-especially-in-states-that-clinton-won/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voter-turnout-fell-espe... "The drop in turnout was uneven. On average, turnout was unchanged in states that voted for Trump, while it fell by an average of 2.3 percentage points in states that voted for Clinton."
    - saghm 10y ago
      I might be misinterpreting this, but wouldn't that quote imply the opposite? If the states that voted for Clinton had fewer voters than before but she still won, the seems to me like that means that the people who did vote were Democrats, not those who didn't
cheriot 10y ago
> Emails came out that the party wanted Hilary to win at all costs enough to sabotage Sanders. Can you link to the emails that show this? I keep hearing it, but the closest I've found are a few trash talking employees that were slapped down and told to stay out of it.
- dijit 10y ago
  There's lots of press on the topic http://observer.com/2016/07/wikileaks-proves-primary-was-rigged-dnc-undermined-democracy/ http://observer.com/2016/07/wikileaks-proves-primary-was-rig... and there's lots of little nuggets like this https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643
- __s 10y ago
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-emails-show-dnc-favored-hillary-clinton-over_us_57930be0e4b0e002a3134b05 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-emails-show-dn... http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows-mechanics-of-a-slanted-campaign-w430814 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows... First person description of Nevada: https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4jid77/basic_stepbystep_of_what_went_down_yesterday_at/?st=ivgt1rqu&sh=9a55ed8f https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4jid77... (obviously biased ofc, but it's a source)
jfaucett 10y ago
It sounds like you're genuinely interested in correcting mistakes made by the democratic party. To that end as an outsider looking in, it seems to me that the biggest problem the democratic party has right now is the ability to openly discuss ideas in a rational manner free from the chains of political correctness and its inherent biases. If the left could openly discuss the relationship between islam and terrorism, the negative impacts of certain equal opportunity laws on the minorities they are trying to benefit, the conflict between gender pronoun legislation and free speech, etc. then the party itself would be on big path for improvement. Note: Your statements were about the Democratic Party so I gave you my opinion on it. The Republican Party is replete with its own flaws, but thats not the topic here. IMO I think most of the left/right dichotomy is a poor political model which leads to group think over rational contemplation of specific issues. EDIT: I understand a libertarian or non-conforming opinion is not popular on HN or in liberal circles, hence the down votes. The irony here and specifically with my statement above is that we should uphold debate and argument over exclusion and political correctness to "let the good ideas win in free debate" and the only counter is to downvote and silence. Disagreement is great but it leads to Trump if you batle with intimidation tactics and silencing instead of actual argument. This is the biggest problem currently with many on the left and so I stand by my statement.
- woofyman 10y ago
  What is "gender pronoun legislation"?
  - mhogomchungu 10y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/17/you-can-be-fined-for-not-calling-people-ze-or-hir-if-thats-the-pronoun-they-demand-that-you-use/?utm_term=.8aeccb6b5097 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
  - jfaucett 10y ago
    The idea (which is now becoming law in some places such as Canada [1]) is that some people do not identify as male and female but rather as something inbetween. So if you refer to them using the words 'he' or 'she' then that is an act of violence against them. The laws enacted then fine you if you refuse to use whatever pronoun they prefer in place of 'he' or 'she'. [2] Some examples are ze,them, zer, etc. 1. https://youtu.be/kasiov0ytEc https://youtu.be/kasiov0ytEc 2. http://nypost.com/2016/05/19/city-issues-new-guidelines-on-transgender-pronouns/ http://nypost.com/2016/05/19/city-issues-new-guidelines-on-t...
TheCondor 10y ago
The super delegates should have jumped ship when the mail server came out and the potential for federal indictment. It was inexcusable and absolutely terrible judgement on her part; she was a federal employee people go to prison for that. Thing was she had been campaigning for so long, she closed the door on Biden and some other options. i think sanders is authentic and means what he says, I have a difficult time seeing him win the presidency though. It's easy to second guess but a competitor that is proudly "socialist" plays really well with what trump won with. Some of it comes back to Bill, the leadership in the party were afraid to look elsewhere, and they knew she'd had this server and what have you. The bush dynasty and the Clinton were both vanquished this year, maybe that should be a strong lesson. Udall lost in Colorado in 2014 too.
jjcc 10y ago
I just wander if any body noticed that Trump is a mixed of Democratic and Republic but disguised as a Republican? His policies have a lot of overlap over Bernie's. That's a reason he harvested so many Democratic party supporters. Those supporters could vote for Bernie if he was a candidate. On the other hand, Hilary's close relation to Wall street, hawkish altitude towards war, strong ideology of regime change made her seems more like a Republican. That also leads some republican vote for her, but not many. Are voters along with Hilary and Bernie fooled by the strategy of a smart guy(i.e.Trump) who disguised as a Republican? Note: With a habit of tit for tat, Trump never attack Bernie while Bernie was strongly against Trump.

Burritamos 10y ago

Hillary won a majority of the popular votes in the primary as well as the majority of pledged delegates (i.e. not just superdelegates). I don't think I understand how that counts as 'suppressing' your vote. Mind expanding on that a bit?

Alex3917 10y ago
Things Hillary and her campaign did during the primaries: - Rigging the primary/caucus schedule so that all the states favoring Hillary would be the first to vote. - Rigged the debate schedule by purposely scheduling them at odd times when no one would by watching so that Bernie couldn't get his message out. - Cheated in the debates by receiving the questions in advance, and was given extra time by the moderators. - Got the media to censor all virtually all coverage of Bernie. E.g. on the days when he had big primary wins, the media covered the speeches of every other candidate except him. - Illegally disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in New York and Arizona alone by removing them from the voter roles, or else removing their party affiliation. Disenfranchised millions more around the country by, e.g., forcing California voters to vote provisional and then just throwing out their ballots without counting them. - Circumvented campaign finance laws by having donors send money to the state parties, but then requiring the state parties to send all of that money to her campaign. All while trashing Bernie for not raising money for the down ticket races.
- brightball 10y ago
  That's very similar to the playbook used against Ron Paul in 2008. That's one of the reasons that the Trump strategy was so interesting. Ron Paul focused on concepts, history, logical points and got a huge following because of it as well as a lot of money raised. He sparked a lot of the Libertarian movement that we see today...but he was largely blacked out by the media and especially Fox News. They even edited him out of debate rebroadcasts. Trump on the other hand played to the media shock free press. He'd garner national attention as the media took opportunity after opportunity to shame him...and it worked. He got tons of free press because the media focused on shaming opportunity and sound bites while candidates with good points get ignored. It's an absolute reflection of how our media works.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - moyta 10y ago
    It really is a reflection of how our media values things, shocking content gets airtime, reasonable well formed opinions get minimal airtime. What Ron Paul did inside the republican party, whereby his supporters ran the party at the state level in many states was incredible, they really knew how to make a run of it!
  - DefaultUserHN 10y ago
    The good thing about Trump winning is that Ron Paul will finally be able to work with the Trump administration to implement some of his great ideas.
moyta 10y ago
I'd say the vote was suppressed, but that is mainly due to how hard it is in the US to vote. You need to be registered to vote months in advance, depending where you live you likely need to show up to a polling place and wait for hours in line on a particular day during work hours, etc. All this means that of the 220 million eligible voters, only 120 million actually voted this election, whereas for Obama in 2008, 130 million people voted (nearly all of that 10 million going to Obama). If Hillary had had a stronger ground game, or pulled in the Bernie call canvasers, she could have turned those 10 million out to the polls. The sad thing is, after Bernie's loss, many of the people I met in West Michigan did not turn out to vote, or if they did they did not vote for Hillary. I know at least 15 of the people I met did not vote, and another 5 voted for another candidate.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  The turnout wasn't that bad for this election, the turnout was bad for the Democratic base this election. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voter-turnout-fell-especially-in-states-that-clinton-won/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voter-turnout-fell-espe... "The drop in turnout was uneven. On average, turnout was unchanged in states that voted for Trump, while it fell by an average of 2.3 percentage points in states that voted for Clinton."
  - saghm 10y ago
    I might be misinterpreting this, but wouldn't that quote imply the opposite? If the states that voted for Clinton had fewer voters than before but she still won, the seems to me like that means that the people who did vote were Democrats, not those who didn't

cheriot 10y ago

> Emails came out that the party wanted Hilary to win at all costs enough to sabotage Sanders. Can you link to the emails that show this? I keep hearing it, but the closest I've found are a few trash talking employees that were slapped down and told to stay out of it.

dijit 10y ago
There's lots of press on the topic http://observer.com/2016/07/wikileaks-proves-primary-was-rigged-dnc-undermined-democracy/ http://observer.com/2016/07/wikileaks-proves-primary-was-rig... and there's lots of little nuggets like this https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643 https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643
__s 10y ago
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-emails-show-dnc-favored-hillary-clinton-over_us_57930be0e4b0e002a3134b05 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-emails-show-dn... http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows-mechanics-of-a-slanted-campaign-w430814 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows... First person description of Nevada: https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4jid77/basic_stepbystep_of_what_went_down_yesterday_at/?st=ivgt1rqu&sh=9a55ed8f https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4jid77... (obviously biased ofc, but it's a source)

jfaucett 10y ago

It sounds like you're genuinely interested in correcting mistakes made by the democratic party. To that end as an outsider looking in, it seems to me that the biggest problem the democratic party has right now is the ability to openly discuss ideas in a rational manner free from the chains of political correctness and its inherent biases. If the left could openly discuss the relationship between islam and terrorism, the negative impacts of certain equal opportunity laws on the minorities they are trying to benefit, the conflict between gender pronoun legislation and free speech, etc. then the party itself would be on big path for improvement. Note: Your statements were about the Democratic Party so I gave you my opinion on it. The Republican Party is replete with its own flaws, but thats not the topic here. IMO I think most of the left/right dichotomy is a poor political model which leads to group think over rational contemplation of specific issues. EDIT: I understand a libertarian or non-conforming opinion is not popular on HN or in liberal circles, hence the down votes. The irony here and specifically with my statement above is that we should uphold debate and argument over exclusion and political correctness to "let the good ideas win in free debate" and the only counter is to downvote and silence. Disagreement is great but it leads to Trump if you batle with intimidation tactics and silencing instead of actual argument. This is the biggest problem currently with many on the left and so I stand by my statement.

woofyman 10y ago
What is "gender pronoun legislation"?
- mhogomchungu 10y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/17/you-can-be-fined-for-not-calling-people-ze-or-hir-if-thats-the-pronoun-they-demand-that-you-use/?utm_term=.8aeccb6b5097 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
- jfaucett 10y ago
  The idea (which is now becoming law in some places such as Canada [1]) is that some people do not identify as male and female but rather as something inbetween. So if you refer to them using the words 'he' or 'she' then that is an act of violence against them. The laws enacted then fine you if you refuse to use whatever pronoun they prefer in place of 'he' or 'she'. [2] Some examples are ze,them, zer, etc. 1. https://youtu.be/kasiov0ytEc https://youtu.be/kasiov0ytEc 2. http://nypost.com/2016/05/19/city-issues-new-guidelines-on-transgender-pronouns/ http://nypost.com/2016/05/19/city-issues-new-guidelines-on-t...

TheCondor 10y ago

The super delegates should have jumped ship when the mail server came out and the potential for federal indictment. It was inexcusable and absolutely terrible judgement on her part; she was a federal employee people go to prison for that. Thing was she had been campaigning for so long, she closed the door on Biden and some other options. i think sanders is authentic and means what he says, I have a difficult time seeing him win the presidency though. It's easy to second guess but a competitor that is proudly "socialist" plays really well with what trump won with. Some of it comes back to Bill, the leadership in the party were afraid to look elsewhere, and they knew she'd had this server and what have you. The bush dynasty and the Clinton were both vanquished this year, maybe that should be a strong lesson. Udall lost in Colorado in 2014 too.

jjcc 10y ago

I just wander if any body noticed that Trump is a mixed of Democratic and Republic but disguised as a Republican? His policies have a lot of overlap over Bernie's. That's a reason he harvested so many Democratic party supporters. Those supporters could vote for Bernie if he was a candidate. On the other hand, Hilary's close relation to Wall street, hawkish altitude towards war, strong ideology of regime change made her seems more like a Republican. That also leads some republican vote for her, but not many. Are voters along with Hilary and Bernie fooled by the strategy of a smart guy(i.e.Trump) who disguised as a Republican? Note: With a habit of tit for tat, Trump never attack Bernie while Bernie was strongly against Trump.