As someone that voted Bernie in 2016, we didn’t have the votes in 2016 for Bernie to make it through the primary. The country itself was not as progressive in 2016 as it is now imo, especially so for the Democratic base.
For Bernie to have even had a chance to win the primary, the election format would have needed to not be First Past the Post. He was a victim of vote splitting found in First Past the Post and then establishment Dems allocated their voters votes to go towards Hillary. I don’t think it was fair what happened to Bernie especially with the DNC, but I realize now it was a flaw of the system itself that makes it extremely difficult for a progressive to win a Democratic presidential primary. I think it makes zero sense why people can’t pick their favorite candidate(s) first and then pick backup ‘safe’ candidates for elections. Also there is the issue of some states excluding people not registered with a party from voting in the primary. I feel it is a bad move to prevent these voters at the primary level since non-affiliated voters are usually the ones that ultimately decide the elections and they can give input ahead of time if they would vote for that candidate in the general election.
Having ranked robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting would help prevent a popular candidate like Bernie from losing by default to a ‘safe’ establishment pick.
Edit: Trust me, I would like to be wrong about 2016 and just how progressive country as a whole was at the time. But we’re really backwards in a lot of ways, especially so back then. The bulk of older voters were at most were economically voting for Democrats, not on social or economic policy by and large.
As someone that voted Bernie in 2016, we didn’t have the votes in 2016 for Bernie to make it through the primary. The country itself was not as progressive in 2016 as it is now imo, especially so for the Democratic base.
For Bernie to have even had a chance to win the primary, the election format would have needed to not be First Past the Post. He was a victim of vote splitting found in First Past the Post and then establishment Dems allocated their voters votes to go towards Hillary. I don’t think it was fair what happened to Bernie especially with the DNC, but I realize now it was a flaw of the system itself that makes it extremely difficult for a progressive to win a Democratic presidential primary. I think it makes zero sense why people can’t pick their favorite candidate(s) first and then pick backup ‘safe’ candidates for elections. Also there is the issue of some states excluding people not registered with a party from voting in the primary. I feel it is a bad move to prevent these voters at the primary level since non-affiliated voters are usually the ones that ultimately decide the elections and they can give input ahead of time if they would vote for that candidate in the general election.
Having ranked robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting would help prevent a popular candidate like Bernie from losing by default to a ‘safe’ establishment pick.
Edit: Trust me, I would like to be wrong about 2016 and just how progressive country as a whole was at the time. But we’re really backwards in a lot of ways, especially so back then. The bulk of older voters were at most were economically voting for Democrats, not on social or economic policy by and large.