“What Magnuson did not realize is that she was suffering from Pundititis, a virus affecting the nervous system of Democratic voters that was born out of the 2016 elections. Those infected find themselves unable to fall in love with candidates, instead worrying about what theoretical swing voters may feel. Signs of Pundititis include excessive electoral mapmaking, poll testiness, and an anxious, queasy feeling that comes with picking winners and losers known as “Cillizzasea.” If you experience any of these symptoms for three hours or more, please stop consulting your television.”
I’m really debating whether it’s worth me paying attention to the primary till like a month before PA’s Primary.
I like at least 5 of the major candidates, so I don’t really feel like getting into dumb fights.
Half to 3/4 of them will have dropped out before PA gets to vote.
Already have enough political stuff flowing at me watching what’s going on with the government, to focus on a primary fight between a bunch of people I generally like.
At the same time, Twitter doesn’t control the primary otherwise Sanders would have won that primary. On the other hand, PA is really important in the general election and is worth jack in the primary because it has a primary so late in the season. My money is on Harris at this point, she’s not my number one choice but she’s up there. Plus now that Texas and CA vote earlier, she has a big calendar advantage.
I mean save Bloomberg, all the candidates that have declared and are probably going to run are progressive enough for me. So it becomes a race of personal preferences instead of ideology, and watching an ideological splitting of hairs is going to be tiring.
Tiring, but necessary. It’s like shopping for computer parts. Any of those video cards are going to get the job done. None are completely right or wrong. Regardless, they are still different, and you can only choose one. The choice is not arbitrary and has huge consequences, so it’s irresponsible to choose randomly.
While they are all progressive enough to vote for in the general election, it’s still best to vote for the most progressive one in the primary. Even if that candidate doesn’t win, it sends the right message to the party and the candidate that does win. If you vote for a centrist in the primary you’re telling the party that you want them to pull back to the right. I want the opposite, so let’s see who can go as left as possible without crossing the line to where they have a newspaper with red ink.
Yea, again, did you read above? I said stop paying attention to primary till a month before MY primary that i get to vote in. I didn’t say don’t care about the primary.
Also you all assume that it will be clear who’s the most progressive, I could list the issues of each person and they probably average very close to each other so it will depend what your pet issue is.
Interesting think piece from FiveThirtyEight. I could totally get behind this idea:
" let’s say Democrats could order the primary calendar any way they wanted. How should they do it? One way would be to order primaries1 by how similar a state’s Democratic electorate is to the party’s nationwide voter base. The early states play a key role in winnowingthe candidate field, and a state electorate that looks more like the party as a whole may vote in a way that better reflects the opinion of Democrats across the country."
If primaries were all on the same day, the most popular candidate would always win and “dark horse” candidates and outsider candidates wouldn’t stand a chance.
If the most popular candidate always won, Bill Clinton would not have been president in 1992. Obama would have lost to Hillary in 2008.
A national primary would give a huge advantage to better-known, better-funded candidates since only they would be able to finance the expensive advertising and large campaign operation needed to run a national “get out the vote” effort in all states. Lesser-known candidates without extensive campaign operations would not have an opportunity to reach out to voters in “retail-style” fashion and build support.
People who vote in primaries theoretically care more and are more informed. They have Internet, they know who the candidates are. With IRV they will be theoretically be more willing go give that top vote to a lesser known candidate and give the safer candidate the 2 or 3 slot.
Whatever negative consequences there are, it is VASTLY preferable and more democratic than giving an outsized amount of influence to a handful of voters in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
