- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Kamala Harris has the support of enough Democratic delegates to win the party’s nomination for president, according to CNN’s delegate estimate.
While endorsements from delegates continue to come in, the vice president has now been backed by well more than the 1,976 pledged delegates she’ll need to win the nomination on the first ballot.
Harris crossed the threshold amid a wave of endorsements from state delegations Monday evening.
It would be great if we had a system like that, but we never have and it is not part of the constitution. Political parties have always been allowed to choose any candidate by any means that they want to put on their ticket. They could even choose 2 people, but that would be a bad idea. This will continue to be true as long as we have first past the post elections (and the electoral college). Ranked choice voting would solve some of these problems.
The democratic election happens when we vote for the president. The primaries are basically large state by state polls. No one’s ability to vote was stolen and everyone who votes is still allowed to write in a name if they choose (but that is akin to not voting given our current system).
Quit abusing the word “democracy” like that. A country picking one of two choices handed to them by oligarchs is not democracy.
Activists labored for decades and died in police crackdowns to achieve the concession of primary elections from the two parties. You are pissing on their sacrifices. We don’t give up hard won rights just because they aren’t explicitly mandated by the constitution.
Ranked choice voting would fix these concerns.
Agreed, but that’s not really relevant as to whether or not we should wait for the convention for the delegates to choose. The primary election is done.
They are waiting for the convention to choose, these choices are not made yet. They do, however, still have first amendment protections, so if they want to tell CNN who they plan to vote for, then they may. CNN, enjoying freedom of the press, has the right to ask.
It’s wagging the dog. The delegates declare support now, the media runs with that and treats Harris as the obvious winner while ignoring other candidates. By the time the convention happens the public has already accepted Harris as the winner, making it inevitable.
Well, it pretty much is inevitable. Nobody else really wants the job on such short notice. President is something you want to prepare for, have a good, solid plan, with people you’re planning on staffing your presidency with. You usually start the groundwork years in advance, to avoid failure with extraordinary consequences once you are actually in office. There’s reasons Whitmer, for instance, simply endorsed Harris even though a lot of people wanted her to be the nominee.
Even Manchin waffled on it in his interview, and he’s a colossally arrogant asshole.
This is testament to how deceived you are by whatever media you consume. There were no other candidates who were allowed into the public discourse, but there were plenty of other candidates running. If there were an actual primary there would have been a lot more.
Names?
At any rate, I don’t think it’s the DNC’s job to support any specific candidate. They made that mistake with Hilary vs Bernie, and hopefully learned from the blowback they subsequently received.
It is an individual candidate’s responsibility to create their own public discourse, this is the process of campaigning. Otherwise it becomes too tempting to use a Presidential run simply to increase one’s own individual fame.
Lastly, perhaps I should have been more specific. I don’t think any strong candidates want the job. I’m sure plenty of weak candidates and frankly, foolish people, would love to have the job because they wrongly think it wouldn’t be that hard.
I also want more choices, such as provided by ranked choice voting. However to say that our elections aren’t democratic is far worse of an insult to the sacrifices of the labors of prior generations. Voters may still choose anyone that they want, and that ability to choose is better in our system than it is in many other places in the world. It’s not the best though, and I would like to see us get there. But it is not fair to say that our election (run by the government) is no longer democratic just because an independent 3rd party is now going to register a different person on the ballots than their initial polling suggested.
Nonsense. They would almost certainly agree. It’s better in a lot of ways, but it’s not democracy to pick between two establishment choices. It’s just not.
It was never Democratic in the first place. I’ve been fighting this fight for over 25 years, and I’m a latecomer. However, it’s not “just because” of that one thing. This is the moment we are in right now, so it’s what I’m engaged with right now.
It’s sounds like the democracy we have is not the one that you want. That’s fine, it’s also not the one I want. Again, I’d prefer to be able to choose between a range of progressive candidates. But either way they are both still democracies and we should keep on asking for better systems. I disagree that what we have is a completely undemocratic system, that would imply that our system is similar to Russia’s or NK’s and it simply isn’t.
Asking for a better system is exactly what I’m doing, and look how everyone closes ranks against the guy not towing the party line.