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2024 was the only year recently we didn't have a primary.
neat. i have been voting for longer than that. there have been years where there was only one person on the primary, which efficiently means “primary votes are cancelled” - when the dnc say they want the incumbent.
that is a de facto cancellation. telling the people who could vote that they are ignored.
my point stands: the dem side needs to do a better job.
I've been voting since I was 18 and I've never seen that in the past 16 years. 2024 was skipping because Biden was the incumbent at the time. Incumbent are almost always given the primary. The GOP does the same and is entirely different.
yeah. see. i disagree that incumbents should be given anything. earn it. primary every time.
i have been voting since 1997.
I agree with you, but as devil's advocate, why would a political party vie against itself for a seat it already holds. At best, it would only slightly sully the incumbent's name. Take Biden for example: either he's doing a good job, or he needs to be replaced because he's not doing a good enough job.
Parties shouldn't have that kind of operational control over our elections.
why? imho because its supposed to represent the current situation and overton window not be a reminder the parties are “clubs” that set their own rules.
From what I've read the reason primaries aren't done on incumbents is because every single time it's been tried the incumbent lost the actual election and the seat went to the other party.
? If incumbent wins the primary its the same as if they didn’t have one but at least the party members chose.
primaries are separate by party.
It's not a thing that happens often, but as far as I can find every single time the incumbent president has had someone try to primary them, the incumbent's entire party lost the seat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_challenge
I mean, in the current system if there's enough desire from within the party to push to primary the incumbent president, they were already pretty unpopular.
It's not the primary that's causing them to lose, it's that the party had thought a primary was even necessary because they were already likely going to lose.
interesting. maybe a spread in focus leads to loss.
My assumption is that primary related mud slinging depresses enthusiasm among the public for the incumbent, combined with attempts at it only being made when the incumbent is relatively unpopular anyway.
Nope. Bernie should have won the primary but the dems decided it was “Hillary’s turn” so they fucked Bernie.
Bernie didn't have the votes. Period.
I voted for Bernie, but most people I knew at the time voted for Hillary because of the name recognition.
Argue all you want, but facts are facts.
[Citation Needed]
2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
On July 22, WikiLeaks published the Democratic National Committee email leak, in which DNC operatives seemed to deride Bernie Sanders' campaign[12] and discuss ways to advance Clinton's nomination,[13] leading to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other implicated officials. The leak was allegedly part of an operation by the Russian government to undermine Hillary Clinton.[14][15] Although the ensuing controversy initially focused on emails that dated from relatively late in the primary, when Clinton was already close to securing the nomination,[13] the emails cast doubt on the DNC's neutrality and, according to Sanders operatives and multiple media commentators, showed that the DNC had favored Clinton since early on.
The Dems fucked Bernie. From your own sources.
All I was talking about was 2016.
Sure, but a proper one? 2020 and 2016 were both ratfucked. 2012 was an incumbent year. So we'll be at 2 decades since the last time we had a proper primary.
What was ratfucked about 2020? 2020 didn't feel that different from 2008 or 2004.
In 2020 Bernie and Biden were the front-runners, and then all the other candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden. So it wasn't ratfucked in an illegal way, but in a "torpedo a popular leftist in favor of a right-of-center establishment neolib" way.
Biden wasn't even in the top 5 for the first like 4-5 races. He did ok in one, then the whole orchestrated dropout occured to manufacture consent
That's absolutely not true. I've been voting since 2012 and the only presidential primary I've voted in that had more than one candidate was the Hillary-Bernie primary. That's the only one.
It absolutely is true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
In 2012 Obama was the incumbent, which again as I mentioned, incumbents typically aren't primaried if they are doing a decent job and up for re-election.
Since then there was 2016, 2020, where both years had a primary for the DNC. 2024 was just a fluke because Biden should have dropped out. Or even stuck with his original campaign promise of not running for re-election. You're young and your sample size is 4. My sample size is 5, but it's been consistent in years prior.
Depending on your state. In mine, there was a single candidate. That's a primary in the same way the USSR had elections. If you lived in one of the states that had two candidates in 2020 then good for you. I didn't.