Fun fact: 2024 is the first Presidential Election since 1976 to not have a Bush, Clinton, or Biden running
It's almost like the heads of a group of corrupts families have been ruling the country and bleeding it dry for almost 50 years...
- 1980 Reagan-Bush vs Carter-Mondale
- 1984 Reagan-Bush vs Mondale-Ferraro
- 1988 Bush-Quayle vs Dukakis-Bentsen
- 1992 Bush-Quayle vs Clinton-Gore
- 1996 Dole-Kemp vs Clinton-Gore
- 2000 Bush-Cheney vs Gore-Liebermann
- 2004 Bush-Cheney vs Kerry-Edwards
- 2008 McCain-Palin vs Obama-Biden (Hilary Clinton in primaries)
- 2012 Romney-Ryan vs Obama-Biden
- 2016 Trump-Pence (Jeb Bush in primaries) vs Clinton-Kaine
- 2020 Trump-Pence vs Biden-Harris
It's pretty crazy to think about, even without taking into account the primaries as well - Hillary in 2008, Jeb! in 2016.
Of all of the people in American politics at one time - 50 governors, 100 senators, 435 representatives - people still vote for the same handful of names.
Are people really choosing them, or are those the options that the donor and lobbyist class selects for people to choose between? Limit the scope of options between two fixed points and allow rigorous "debate" between them without presenting or acknowledging the positions that exist outside of them.
Seriously though, I think it's a mix between donor/lobbyist class selections and the power of name recognition. "They" certainly have influence, although I would argue it isn't definitive. In a lot of ways, the last name of Clinton or Bush is just branding/marketing. Voters knew what they were getting into, more or less, and those candidates immediately were perceived as belonging.
The non-Clinton and non-Bush choices here are all heavily movement-based and not donor-class selections. Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama, and Trump were all groundswell forces of nature. Biden was as well in 2020, although admittedly as more of an anti-Trump movement and not a pro-Biden movement. None of these five were who politicos wanted. Even Kamala's apparent coronation for the Democratic nomination isn't the donor choice - they definitely wanted Biden to step down, but they seemingly wanted an open primary and not the next in line.
Influence for sure - outsized even - but not absolute.
I mean... you can be a proud conspiracy theorist all you want, but people are voting for these candidates. Biden beat Bernie Sanders by 2 to 1 in the 2020 primary; at the end of the day if you want to say that we as voting citizens are having our options limited for us by people in positions of power or influence, then you need to turn right around and call a spade a spade: that Americans as a whole are idiots and are easily controlled into those choices in the first place.
Also, it's important to note that just because there are only two relevant political parties doesn't mean there isn't choice. It's just that a lot of that politicking gets hashed out in primaries or within parties rather than being sorted into multiple constituencies like in a parliamentary system. What ends up crystallizing as the Democrats' platform is a reflection of various blocs on the left, and the relative influence they hold. I won't pretend like the GOP has any kind of policy platform anymore, but the constituencies there are equally obvious; big business and wealthy people have little in common with evangelical Christians or white nationalists. In a different system those would be totally separate parties that might end up governing together; we just do all that part of it before we get to a national election.
I never said anyone didn't vote for them. The fact you think it's as easy as more people voted for X than Y because they're idiots, especially with the blatant circling of the wagons from establishment candidates that happened in both DNC primaries in 2016 & 2020 to box out Bernie, is an impressive oversimplification, but par the course to your usual thought process.
What you said, or rather strongly implied, was that there is some shadowy cabal that prescreens candidates that suit their agenda, leaving voters with a false choice, since they are only allowed to pick between candidates that are acceptable to the elite.
Your constant refrain, that the DNC "boxed out Bernie" is just laughable. I mean, of course they did - Mr Sanders isn't an "establishment" Democrat and his views don't align with the majority of the party. The DNC is in the business of helping Democrats win elections, and as was shown by the major disparity in the actual votes, Mr Biden (and Mrs Clinton before him) were far more palatable candidates.
You are so desperate to prove that "elites" or "the establishment" are somehow part of a vast conspiracy, but you never actually show the connective tissue that gets you from "this organization exists for a very public and obvious purpose" to "this organization is acting contrary to the will of the voters." You just keep screaming conspiracy theories into the void, and hoping that no one notices the absolute lack of proof, intent, or anything else that resembles a logical thought process.
Who cares what the DNC thinks? The only reason that can possibly matter is if you think the electorate is so stupid or so impressionable that they are incapable of making their own decisions, and rather, will simply parrot whatever they're told. Because at the end of the day, "the DNC" doesn't vote, people do, and those people preferred Mr Biden to Mr Sanders by an exceptionally large margin.
Occams Razor suggests that it is not a vast conspiracy to elect one candidate, but rather that the vote tallies reflect actual sentiment, and thus that the party-level committees are actually doing the right thing by way of their constituents, since really all they are meant to do is reflect the preferences of Democratic voters. You need to paint the Democrats as fundamentally corrupt or something, so you've decided that that cannot be the case, and that there is something shady going on. Which, again... doesn't make sense, since the votes don't lie.
I heard in the past few days that the political parties provide a platform for “political entrepreneurs” to advance and gain power. First I’ve heard that term, but makes sense how politicians craft their life stories for political office. The name recognition helps, but it’s the votes that matter.
I better get in while I can... There must be strong correlation between raising money and being successful in politics, which is why it is essential the dems put Shapiro on the ticket. The donors would enthusiastically contribute with him on the ticket.
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