will the democratic party let Bernie be the candidate?

[snowy owl]

Seems John Sununu thinks not. Nor does Eoin Higgins writing on Huffpo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eoin-higgins/bernie-sanders-will-not-b_b_8908320.html

It's possible Sanders could win a majority of the primaries. But he still won't be the Democratic nominee. The Democratic Party will never allow it.

See, the Democratic National Convention, where the Democratic nominee will be decided, is under no obligation to assign delegates to the winners of primary states. In fact, the rules don't even specify that the primary results be taken into account when deciding on the nominee.

You may remember this from the last time Clinton ran for president in 2008. The Clintons made noise about a floor fight to wrest the nomination away from upstart Barack Obama, who had a plurality of delegates.

The Clinton team pointed out to the media through back channels that although Obama had won more primaries, it didn't really matter in the end. Hillary Clinton could still be nominated without winning.

Clinton decided against that floor fight. Obama went on to become president.

BTW, I'm an independent like the Bern. I have no fondness for the democrats.

[daleanime]

26. +1

[liberal_at_heart]

2. There will quite a shit storm if they do and it just might be the kick in the pants the

country needs to start fighting back against this corruption or it could just put more people off of voting. The majority of Americans don't vote because of how corrupt the government is. The good news is Bernie is bringing voters back to the table so maybe if we're lucky people will fight against the corruption instead of just giving up and not voting. 30% of Americans identify as Democratic right now. 40% identify as Independent. I think that will start to make a difference pretty soon.

[glinda]

23. Maybe some of the current Dems don't want people to vote also. Did you think of that?

[truedelphi]

3. The Old Guard Republicans understand quite well how their party stole

More than a few primary wins away from Ron Paul. So they know how easy it is to do, especially since most Americans rely on the Mainstream Shitty Media for its info. And those Big Media Players are all too happy to do as the Inner Party Elite tell them to do!

[Cleita]

4. Well I volunteer at local Dem hdqts and we have Bernie campaign swag

for sale. I don't think the DNC has said they are not going to support Bernie should he win the primary. If DWS pulls a fast one before the election you can be sure there will be an Occupy movement nationwide, the likes you have never seen before and I'm changing my registration if need be. Enough is enough.

[yourout]

5. If they screw over Bernie then the next step is forming a new partie....maybe a Labor Party.

[snowy owl]

8. would that take some kind of Constitutional Amendment?

I don't know. I'm asking. I know that our Founding Fathers determined our political system and shied away from proportional representation like Canada and England have. At least I believe I'm right on that. Without proportional representation, we'd just be another Green Party without much clout. That's my prediction anyway. I've voted green for federal elections myself.

[jeff47]

14. No. Political parties are not in the Constitution at all.

The only reason we have only two big parties is an artifact of the structure of our government. The Constitution has a lot of "winner take all" aspects. In that environment, splitting into a large number of parties means you sabotage your allies more than you hurt your enemies.

So our government coalesced into being dominated by two parties. They have not always been the same parties (the Whigs used to be one of the major parties), and the parties have not always held the same left-right position (the Republicans were the liberals in Lincoln's time).

[Yupster]

29. The electoral college pretty much guarantees

a two party system.

If a right or left third party starts up it just guarantees an electoral college win for the other side.

[Nite Owl]

9. We need to be ready

After all it is DWS in charge

[Nite Owl]

6. If that happens it would very quickly

become the end of the Democratic Party. Same thing could apply to the republicans if Trump is elected. The people are in no mood for such a stunt.

[Jarqui]

7. If they do that, they can probably kiss off the general election

and an opportunist would try to start a 3rd party ... which might not be such a bad idea because gridlock probably isn't as consistently easy with three groups instead of two.

Anyway, I don't like counting my chickens before they're hatched. Hillary is still ahead and currently in the better position. If Bernie is going to beat her, he's got a long way to go.

[snowy owl]

10. True - remember that we already have a 3rd party. The Greens.

[Jarqui]

21. I'm thinking of something a little more mainstream

The three main parties in Canada are the Conservatives (Republicans), Liberals (Democrats), New Democratic Party. There's a few other parties but those are the main ones.

Coincidentally, the father of single payer in Canada, left federal politics, and led a socialist democratic party to power in a province, got a form of provincial healthcare... and then that party kind of evolved into the federal New Democratic Party (aka NDP), which he led.

The NDP have never produced a Prime Minister but they've got some of their social democratic policies through when they held the balance of power.

For a brief period, a Reform party started - kind of a Libertarian party, that really messed up the Conservatives (GOP) diluting them. They later merged. If the GOP carry on like they are, that wouldn't exactly shock people.

Canada has a Green Party as well but hasn't been able to do much.

The British have Conservatives (Republicans), Labor (Democrats), Liberal Democrats and others.

If someone started an Independent Party that positioned itself between the left and right, that might bust up the gridlock in Washington and it might break the corporate hold on the federal government.

I think I'm to the left on nearly everything so I doubt I'd want to go to the center but if it were for the best of the country, maybe that's something that could happen to stop this corruption and gridlock madness.

[Art_from_Ark]

34. We have more than 3

There are also the Libertarians, and the Constitutional and Natural Law parties always seem to have a presidential candidate on the Arkansas ballot, although they usually don't even get enough combined votes to fill a small town.

[TTUBatfan2008]

11. Hopefully everything goes fine either way...

...if they screw him over then he has no reason to be loyal to the party. Run 3rd Party in the General Election and shine a very bright light on how corrupt BOTH parties are.

Republicans = Corrupt Corporate Party 1 (CCP1)
Democrats = Corrupt Corporate Party 2 (CCP2)

[HooptieWagon]

12. That's not accurate.

The pledged delegates, those awarded candidates by voters during the primaries and caucuses, are required to vote for their pledged candidate on the first ballot at the Convention. Some states require the pledged delegates to vote for their candidate on the second ballot (if there is one) also. After that they can change their vote if desired. The unpledged 'super' delegates can vote for any candidate they choose on any ballot taken at the Convention.
IOW, Sununu is talking out his ass.

Now the party may try to pull some shenanigans...in fact, an attempt is likely. But they will be breaking the rules as they currently stand.

[liberal_at_heart]

13. No delegate should be able to change their vote. The way we vote in this country is so screwed up.

Why can't we just have one person, one vote? Why the hell do I have to let someone else vote for me? And the fact that they can change my vote is undemocratic.

[jeff47]

17. That's unworkable. Delegates have to be able to change their vote.

Imagine a 3-way race where each candidate gets about 33% of the vote.

Option 1: The candidate with 33.6% wins over the candidate with 33.3% and 33.0%. That's gonna be a big problem with 66.3% of the party. 33.3% and 33.0% have no reason to help - they're best off if 33.6% loses so they can run again in 4 years. So you get a fractured party going in to the general election.

Option 2: First vote is locked, but future votes are not. This allows negotiation at the convention. 33.0% candidate negotiates a position in 33.6%'s government, and then asks his delegates to vote for 33.6%. Now 66.6% of the party is happy, leading to a much less fractured party going in to the general.

[HooptieWagon]

33. I think it also takes 50% to win.

So in a three candidate race, there wouldn't be a winner if they were close.
In a sense, the convention works like a caucus. Votes are held, candidates strike bargains, new votes are held. Once a candidate reaches 50+%, they're the nominee. Usually after that there's a unifying vote where all the losing delegates join the winner for a ceremonial unanimous vote to signify party unity.

[Fearless]

35. This of course did happen in the general election for John Quincy Adams

He won with 30.9% of the popular vote... Andrew Jackson LOST with 41.4% of the popular vote.

Jackson ALSO won the Electoral College vote... 99-84, but LOST the presidency!

It was called the corrupt bargain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupt_Bargain

[HooptieWagon]

37. Ok, but I was referring to delegate votes at the convention.

There has been several instances of a POTUS candidate winning with a plurality. Also not unheard of to win electoral vote but lose popular vote.

[snowy owl]

16. So tell me, why super delegates anyway?

[jeff47]

24. 1968.

There was a riot at the 1968 convention, when the uppity kids did not want to nominate the party's anointed one.

Not wanting to repeat that problem, some in the party tried to come up with a mechanism where they could nominate the anointed one without the help of those who might riot. It took until the 1984 convention for superdelegates to become a reality.

Fact is, superdelegates are mostly elected people. For example, a bunch of them are from Congress. And they'd like to stay in Congress. So it is extremely unlikely that the superdelegates would overrule the popular result, since it makes it very likely that the superdelegates themselves would lose in the upcoming election.

Which is why there's no mechanism to "lock-in" a superdelegate's vote. They change all the time. For example, John Lewis endorsed Clinton in 2008, but changed his vote to Obama after Obama utterly dominated his district in the primary.

[HooptieWagon]

36. There was more to it than that.

Humphrey got all his delegates in caucus states rigged for him, he didn't even enter any of the primary elections. In the primary states, 80% of the voters selected one of the two anti-war candidates. The uppity kids knew there were going to be some back room shenanigans, and they planned to raise hell about it.
If it had been an honest nomination, McCarthy would have been the candidate. IDK if he would have beaten Nixon, but the party wouldn't have been so badly fractured, youth would have remained involved, and the chances to win in 1972 would have been pretty good.

[jeff47]

38. Yes, it was a simplified explanation, since the process for choosing a nominee...

...is so different from 1968. For example, there were hardly any primaries held in 1968. It's not so much Humphrey didn't enter, there were only 14 primaries held in 1968. Primaries started becoming the norm in the 1970s.

As a result, it complied with the caucus-heavy and smoke-filled-room-heavy system we had used up until that point. But that system was utterly insufficient. As primaries became the norm, the people who liked the smoke-filled-room system still wanted some control over the result, thus creating superdelegates.

As for 1972, that was gonna be an uphill battle no matter what. Nixon was a relatively popular incumbent with a good economy. He was doing awful shit that might have sunk him if the party had not sabotaged McGovern, but Nixon started with the wind at his back.

[Odin2005]

15. Leave it to the Turd Way to destroy the oldest political party in the world.

Because that is what will happen if they pull such a stunt.

[99th_Monkey]

18. It's a valid question/concern, but as pointed out upstring, the repercussions would be dire.

I can't see what the Clintons -- or anyone -- would gain from such a stunt. Any "victory"
would fully expose the Oligarchy like never before, and throw a buttload of gasoline on
3rd Party bonefires.

[Hydra]

19. As pointed out, the Clintons threatened to do it before, it and was enough of a threat

To get themselves invited into the WH as co-powers.

If it happens this time, expect the party to fracture and a GE bloodbath. I'd be surprised if 10% will still be in the party 4 years later.

[rocktivity]

20. We simply tell the superdelegates what we told them eight years ago

"You vote for the candidate WE voted for -- or we DON'T VOTE FOR YOU!!!"


rocktivity

[mikehiggins]

22. Not going to happen. Once we have a nominee everyone will fall into line and fight the GOPukes.

Torpedoing a successful Sanders campaign would most likely bring down the Democratic Party from the inside.

[reformist2]

25. If they pull a stunt like that, they won't deserve to be called the "Democratic" Party.

The name will be a lie. The party will be a fraud.

[mythology]

27. Just to confirm, this is the same John Sununu who "won" his election to the Senate

after jamming the phone lines of the Jeanne Shaheen's campaign and I'm supposed to believe he gives even the slightest damn about electoral chicanery? John Sununu can jump off a very tall building for all I care.

If Sanders wins a majority of the pledged delegates, he will be the party's nominee. If Clinton wins a majority of the pledged delegates, she will be the party's nominee. Period. This silly grasping at conspiracy theories by Sanders supporters has long since grown tiresome. There is no evidence to suggest that Sanders wouldn't be the nominee if he wins the pledged delegates.

[snowy owl]

28. It is not a conspiracy theory

It has real potential and it would be wrong. I do agree that most of the upthread provides good answers to what will probably happen. But you never know. There are a lot of shadows in politics. Our fortune is that Bernie knows what and where they are.

[sabuthefuture]

30. Here is the SMOKING GUN! / MAYBE HILLARY WILL HAVE THE CHARACTER TO STAND DOWN

Hillary Clinton debate with Bernie Sanders February 5, 2016

“There is this attack that he is putting out, which really comes down to, anybody who took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be bought,” she said. “And I just absolutely reject that, senator. And I really don’t think these attacks by insinuation and innuendo are worthy of you. Enough is enough. If you’ve got something to say, say it directly.”

Maureen Dowd Feb6, 2016 / Hillary Battles Bernie Sanders, Chick Magnet

"When Hillary accused Sanders during the debate of doing an “artful smear” on her, charging him with insinuating that she engaged in pay-for-play with Wall Street, drug companies and other special interests, some Republicans predicted that the moment would go down as a Gary Hart-style challenge that would come back to haunt her."

SMOKING GUN: Please listen to the middle of the video below about 12 minutes in and pay close attention to what Ms. Elizabeth Warren says in 2004. Keep in mind several times Hilary Clinton has put forth the idea that no one could show how receipt of donations towards her campaign have had any effect upon her voting record.

https://www.americarisingpac.org/flashback-elizabeth-warren-on-clinton-she-can-be-bought/

Hillary Clinton accused Bernie of insinuation and innuendo rather than speaking the truth. She accused him of playing games rather than being forthright. This video is the SMOKING GUN showing Bernie was being honest, not polite or disingenuous. She asked Bernie to basically present your evidence or shut-up. It was a challenge and the question is whether Bernie really believes he is the one who can lead this nation back to its goal of justice and opportunity for all. By everyone calling Bernie a socialist, or saying he does not have the experience to lead a nation as she has, critics demonstrate their ignorance. First by not understanding history that President Franklin Roosevelt also could be considered a socialist getting legislation passed like social security, unemployment insurance, and the New Deal. Yes, Hillary has had the experience in government and look at her track record. She voted for the Iraq war and proved when Secretary of State that she was not prepared for regime change. The loss of civilian lives of a half million and our brave soldiers’ lives of almost 6,500 is the cost of her judgment and proof that experience matters little if someone does not have the wisdom to make good decisions and policies as Bernie Sanders’ record does in government. Plus you need to look at Hillary’s voting record on Gay, civil rights, and women’s rights in contrast to Bernie’s, and not just for the last few years. When Bernie finishes office as President of the United States and has restored faith in government, equal opportunity to all, a level of economic and social justice so as to set an example for the rest of the world, then it will be time for “Statespersons” like Senator Elizabeth Warren or Patricia Scott Schroeder who served in the House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997 to serve in this position. Now these are only two of the several women capable of being a good president who have the integrity, the character, judgment, and the fortitude that would make any US citizen proud. Hillary’s history as demonstrated by her actions demonstrates she is a true politician, one who puts her finger in the air and depending which way the wind is blowing, says what the citizenship would like to hear.

You need to read in the Huffington Post the article
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Socialist or "Champion of Freedom"?

04/23/2012 02:44 pm ET | Updated Jun 23, 2012 David Woolner

I have no need for any credit. This is a news story dedicated to all those in the media dedicated to tell the truth and the too many reporters throughout the world who have lost their lives just doing their job. The media that print this information are demonstrating they have integrity and are not in the pockets of special interests groups that have so much to lose if Bernie Sanders becomes President. His only special interest group that he is obliged to listen to is the average American citizen which includes about 90% of the people whether Democrat, Republican, or Independent who own as much as the other 1%.

MOST IMPORTANT IS PLEASE COPY THIS AND GET THIS TO EVERY PERSON ON YOUR MAILING LIST, TO EVERY NEWS ORGANIZATION, BLOG, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. MOST NEWS ORGANIZATIONS WILL NEVER PRINT ANYTHING LIKE THIS AS THEY KNOW WHO PUTS THE BUTTER ON THEIR BREAD. BERNIE IS THEIR WORST NIGHTMARE AND TO BERNIE: “PLEASE BE SAFE”. THOSE IN POWER WILL GET DESPERATE AND THIS IS NO TIME TO UNDERESTIMATE THEIR INSANITY.

michael / Human Being*
The WISDOM of SABU

Sisters And Brothers Universal
"Uplifting the Spirit by sharing the wealth"
"Que eleva el Espíritu al compartir la riqueza"

*Rather than live as a marionette, a consequence of the conditioning and other negative experiences one suffers from childhood on, a Human Being prefers to be free, independent, responsible, wise, happy, loving, and compassionate. By cutting the strings that control them and striving to reach their fullest potential, they are best able to help their Sisters And Brothers Universal do the same/SABU

[jillan]

32. I think we are scaring them. They thought this political revolution was a joke.

Nobody is laughing.

We are on to them.