• finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Fuck yeah fund the opposition’s primary. Your article even explains why that strategy works so well.

    If you don’t like how campaigns get financed, then I have some wonderful news! Democrats have in the past written many campaign finance laws including capping contributions per person effectively outlawing lobbying from 2003 to 2010 which was the basis of the Citizens United SCOTUS decision, which was also a 5:4 partisan decision.

    • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Yeah look how well it’s worked. Far right nutjobs have totally not been normalized. Nope.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        No matter how much you think far-right primarying conservatives in congressional districts normalizes the nutjobs, nothing holds a candle to electing the racist felon to POTUS two whole times.

        If there were more competitive conservative primaries in 2024 like there were for democrats then we’d be in a different timeline rn.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Let’s see,

            • ABC News article talking about how unprepared they were to face Trump (because they were expecting to face Rubio) and how much they underestimated his appeal

            Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment repeatedly stressed Trump’s lack of political experience as a knock against him during the general election campaign, but nationwide, the electorate valued the ability to bring about change.

            • Politico article about how shocking it was to the Clinton campaign that Trump won the RNC primaries

            “I asked a Clinton staffer about this,” said Sullivan, who around that time briefly went online to research Irish double-citizenship out of her revulsion with the Republican nominee-to-be. “He said, ‘Well, you know, now we have to save the republic.’"

            • A Salon article which cites a “wikileaks whistleblower” with a secret email addressed to no actual persons but the DNC just in general. Not even going to quote this one.

            Did you have some kind of point to make here? It might help if two of your articles didn’t directly contradict the third.

            • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Did you not read about the part where their plan was to boost the more extreme candidates in the primary to try to get the rest of them to move further right in hopes that it would make an easier opponent for them?

              That they realized they screwed up after the fact doesn’t change that.

              • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                That part was in the article about the wikileaks email. You’re irradiating a blindingly strong “trust us, bro” energy rn.

                Even if we assume that was true, despite how incredibly suspicious and noncredible it is, then it was still a good plan. Spoiling candidates and splitting the voters into factions works, its been working on the DNC crazy well, and the chances of victory were always slim immediately following the 8 years of Obama which the right abhors with a deep seething hatred and the resulting political pendulum effect.

                • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  For leaks there is rarely going to be a way to know for sure. So you have to evaluate whether or not you think it’s reasonable given what you do know. We do know that they’ve done this kind of thing in other races. We do know that the party is funded by capitalist interests. We do know that the campaign didn’t really put forward a positive agenda and therefore had to look for other ways to gain advantages. As far as the character of the people/party involved, I’m not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt knowing all the awful things they’ve been complicit in. Lastly it doesn’t seem like it’s some crazy infeasible or irrational thing to do. We’re not talking about demonic sex cults or mind control or some nonsense. We’re talking about political maneuvering through media strategy during a campaign. The objective was rational even if it was unconscionable.

                  As you said, they thought it was a good strategy to optimize their chances at winning. Not only did they turn out to be wrong, but the act of trying to instigate one of the only two political parties we’re stuck with to take further right positions and possibly nominate a very right wing candidate is not an acceptable byproduct of the strategy.

                  Do I think we were headed in that direction anyway? Probably. As long as the parties aren’t willing to address the fundamental problems with capitalism, the door will always be open to a right wing demagogue who knows the right things to say. But spending your effort to speed that along instead of, idk, working on actually popular social programs, certainly didn’t help.

                  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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                    1 day ago

                    As you said, they thought it was a good strategy to optimize their chances at winning.

                    I didn’t say that. I said it would hypothetically be an okay strategy. It’s been illustrated many times by many people that Trump’s primary victory was a surprise and an upset to the DNC, and additionally that his influences to run for president were likely not even from within the USA at all.