2 ms·

The RNC may have done the same thing secretly, I don't know and I assume you don't know either despite your subjective 100% certainty, but it also doesn't matte

The RNC may have done the same thing secretly, I don't know and I assume you don't know either despite your subjective 100% certainty, but it also doesn't matter because it's unproveable without a leak, and even if it happened it didn't work. The DNC collusion did happen, and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that it ended up changing the primary results, given Sanders's early success. So you don't care if a small number of party leaders influence primaries for the good of "democracy" or "the party"? You think it's wrong for that information about secret DNC bias to get leaked, or it's only wrong if it's leaked by a foreign party? How do you know Putin leaked it rather than Seth Rich? What you're outlining for the role of political parties seems to be that they should strongly bias and rubber-stamp frontrunner candidates who are then rubber-stamped by primary voters who have been persuaded by bias and propaganda from the party leaders during the primary campaigns. I don't know what the word democracy means anymore if you think that conforms to its definition.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> So you don't care if a small number of party leaders influence primaries for the good of "democracy" or "the party"? Even having primaries be anything other than overtly symbolic is a relatively recent feature of the system, for both parties. The norm has long been that you vote with your membership: you join the party whose leaders you trust most to serve your interests, and then (notionally) those leaders make decisions that they expect will retain and attract members.
- harshreality 9y ago
  There have been all sorts of undemocratic processes in history, but at present I think the vast majority of voters would agree that primaries are supposed to reflect an intra-party democracy, and the DNC leak proved that there were efforts to bias that process. Still, many of the same Democrats who rail against the electoral college for being undemocratic, or Russian propaganda for biasing (however slightly) the general election, are silent about biased/undemocratic selection of their primary candidate.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> So you don't care if a small number of party leaders influence primaries for the good of "democracy" or "the party"? Even having primaries be anything other than overtly symbolic is a relatively recent feature of the system, for both parties. The norm has long been that you vote with your membership: you join the party whose leaders you trust most to serve your interests, and then (notionally) those leaders make decisions that they expect will retain and attract members.

harshreality 9y ago
There have been all sorts of undemocratic processes in history, but at present I think the vast majority of voters would agree that primaries are supposed to reflect an intra-party democracy, and the DNC leak proved that there were efforts to bias that process. Still, many of the same Democrats who rail against the electoral college for being undemocratic, or Russian propaganda for biasing (however slightly) the general election, are silent about biased/undemocratic selection of their primary candidate.