Comment on To all you outside of the US...

<- View Parent
ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

So what were the advantages? The usual one I hear listed is superdelegates, which doesn’t matter if more people voted for the winner, or that they didn’t proactively inform his campaign about funding tricks that the Clinton campaign already knew about.

Are you saying that Clinton was an independent who just happened to align with the party for her entire political career?

I’m not sure you know how political affiliation or “people” work. Being a member of the party for decades vs being a member for months matters. Those are called “connections”, and it’s how most politicians get stuff done: by knowing people and how to talk to them.

The point of a primary is to determine who the candidate is, not who the party is more aligned with. Party leadership will almost always be more aligned with the person who has been a member longer, particularly when that person has been a member of part leadership themselves. It’s how people work. You prefer a person you’ve known and worked with for a long time over a person who just showed up to use your organization, and by extension you, for their own goals.
We have rules to make sure that those unavoidable human preferences don’t make it unfair.

The Obama campaign is a good example. He didn’t have the connections that Clinton did, so party leadership favored her. Once they actually voted, he got more so leadership alignment didn’t matter and he was the candidate. He then worked to develop those connections so that he and the party were better aligned and work together better, and he won. Yay!

So what rules did they break for Clinton? What advantages did she have over Sanders that she didn’t have over Obama?
Which of those advantages weren’t just "new people to the party didn’t know tools the party made available?”

source
Sort:hotnewtop