How did the sponsors even think this would work? Just like “hey please can you just put out a memo that you changed your mind?” Are they asking the court to re-adhudicate the same case? Do they have new evidence? Is the resolution compelling the state Senate to be the plaintiff in a new law suit that they want the court to allow to skip all the lower courts? Like what the fuck even is this?

Changing from first past the post to ranked choice voting would do a lot to break the duopoly.

💯 But I don’t see that as something we can get pushed through without first taking over through the primaries. Of course, I keep forgetting that unlike Texas, other states have direct ballot initiatives that voters can do without their legislature. So if your state has that option then absolutely go that route!

Because it’s just not feasible without election reform. Over 99% of legislative offices (both state and federal) are held by either a Republican or a Democratic nominee. We’re on presidential election away from it being 60 years since a 3rd party presidential candidate received a single electoral vote. And Perot won just shy of 19% of the national popular vote in 1992. We need a progressive groups funding progressive primary challengers, and progressive voters turning up for them.

No idea. Some of my wife’s cousins who are deal were Trump voters in 2016, so I imagine they remained so this time around.

It’s because of the Citizens United ruling.

They could have had an actual election at the convention instead of just anointing someone who wasn’t even running in the primary.

I’m assuming you mean having all the primary voters vote again. Sure that would have been great but I think the logistics of it make it a non-starter. There was only a month between Biden dropping out and the convention. Are you going to limit it to just the voters who voted in the first primary (which is actually the law in my state)? I would expect law suits of this happened, and probably law suits of it didn’t, too. There were only about 30 days between Biden dropping out and the start of the convention. How are you going to organize and execute that in 30 days?

And the electors are basically low tier nerds who did the bidding of the head nerds and didn’t have an actual vote, or give it to the second place finisher.

The delegates were pledged to the candidate who won the primary in their state. Second place was Uncommitted. Third (Phillips) and fourth (Palmer) place dropped out (which against goes back to the logistics of having a second primary). The convention was open to new candidates to declare, and they did, and Kamala won the vote at the convention.

They just assumed that everyone would be okay with it because the DNC is a private organization that can do whatever they want. They don’t have to care what voters think.

This was an unprecedented situation where you essentially had no primary candidates left in the race after the primary. There was no possible outcome where everyone would be happy.

I didn’t say that. I said they had primaries (which I learned Florida and Delaware did not), challengers could run, and delegates voted for Harris. All of those things are true. What is also true but I didn’t mention is challengers were still able to declare ahead of the convention after Biden dropped out (correct me if I’m wrong but I believe some did).

The problem was that there were no better candidates to vote for. Which is the fault of the candidates who could have run but didn’t. I’m not blaming the voters for candidates not running. An incumbent dropping out after winning the primaries is unprecedented. An expectation of organizing a second primary is just unrealistic.

Yeah and then he dropped out when the voters lost faith in him. And the people that hate been voted to represent the voters at the convention went on to vote for their pledged candidates existing understudy. I’m not saying Biden voters voted for Harris, I’m just refuting your claim that “nobody voted for Harris.” The DNC still had a convention where the delegates who voted were the ones sent to the convention by the primary voters, and the delegates voted for the endorsee of the candidate they were pledged to. I’m not saying you should be happy with it. I’m just saying you should be armed with facts instead of hyperbole.

I’m really dreading the amount of well-deserved crap I’m going to get from the in-laws the next time we go back to visit Panamá.

yes, but those head nerds were elected by the primary voters.

That sucks. Was there anybody who met the requirements and tried to register but was rejected?

That is partially true. We the voters did not vote for Harris, but the Biden delegates who the primary voters sent to the convention did.

Yep. But it’s generally (just learned that Florida and Delaware Democratic parties cancelled theirs in 2024) not because the state parties just reject any other names to be put on the primary ballot. But there’s still a lot of people saying there was no primary or that the DNC wouldn’t let any challengers run. Just generally misplaced anger that they didn’t have better Presidential candidates to vote for when the reality is that better people just chose not to run. Has there ever been a primary challenger beat the incumbent president for the nomination and then win the election?

Your proof that we didn’t have primaries is to link a source that shows that not only did 48 states have a primary (I wasn’t aware that Florida and Delaware did not, so TIL, and thank you for that), but also that all of them had at least one challenger on the ballot? Show me who qualified to be on the primary ballot in their state, showed up to register for it, and was denied.

We did, in fact, have primaries. There were like 9 choices for the Democratic nominee in my state. Better challengers could have run but didn’t. Yes I know the DNC using funding to “encourage” or “discourage” but that doesn’t change the fact that challengers could have, and did, run in the primaries.

Primaries are only competitive if the people show up to them.

This is the person whose tweet that directly spilled the beans was directly referenced by the judge as the reason an injunction was placed on Trump’s spending freeze order.

Yeah it was like the Howard Dean scream. You could see him getting more and more nervous about it until he finally freaked out and grabbed the water, but such a normal thing to experience.

His first big exposure to the national spotlight was when he gave the Republican response to one of Obama’s State of the Union addresses. And for whatever reason he had insane dry mouth and had to pause his live-on-air speech to grab an off-screen bottle of water and take a drink and for a while that was all anybody associated him with. It kind of killed his momentum as a rising star at the time.

https://youtu.be/dWkjVvoXIS0

Fuck off and chug some more water, you prick.