Trans journalist Erin Reed has published a list of Democratic midterm candidates with anti-trans records, and the question she is forcing is one the party would rather not answer: if trans voters keep rewarding Democrats who harm them, what signal does that send? The calculation is real, the stakes are high, and there is no clean answer.
We got to vote for Bernie in the primary. Not enough people chose him over the “safer”, more conservative Biden (who definitely wasn’t advertised as having the same policies as Bernie). Biden was still way better than Trump, so we should have voted for him in the general. This isn’t complicated.
Think about it.
Biden was prematurely flung into the nomination on the eve of a pandemic in South Carolina. South Carolina’s electorate is made up of overwhelmingly Republican voting conservatives. They had an idle primary with no contest to Trump, and suddenly there’s a record SC Dem primary turnout? Republicans voted in an open primary anyways, because why wouldn’t an asshole do that? Republicans nominated Biden, a habitual lying senile genocidal racist rapist, because why wouldn’t an asshole do that? The disparity between Bernie’s policies being so so popular and the dogshit party’s refusal to enact democratic mandates is a dead end in a fatally flawed excuse for a democracy.
It’s only not complicated for liars and chumps. Which are you?
It’s hard enough to get voters to turn out for their own primaries. People don’t strategically vote in the opposition primary in significant numbers; that’s pure fantasy.
What South Carolina has, in addition to a lot of Republicans, is a lot of conservative, risk-averse, black Democrats. They don’t vote for progressives in primaries, because they believe (probably correctly) that white people won’t elect them in the general. That’s who nominated Biden.
It was an almost 50% increase in turnout from 2016. In an average open primary the strategic crossover is said to be 3% to 20%. That’s hardly insignificant numbers, nor a fantastical concept, and nothing was typical in 2020.
The Democratic party actively suppresses voter turnout . They use the same tactics the Republicans use in the general election, which often overlap. They’ll limit polling locations or forgo primaries completely when THEY determine THEIR candidate is “unopposed”.
And don’t get me started in all the ratfucking going on in caucuses or mid-contest rule changes.
It’s a corrupt corporate controlled party that’s leading the nation towards destruction alongside the Republican party, and nothing either of says will change that.
America is neither an open or free democracy, if it ever was one.