I’ve just peed in Scott Walker’s cup, gimme my SNAP card.

Yeah. You’re telling me what it is. I’m telling you what it should be. Telling me how the world is, like the explanation itself would be any justification for maintaining an oppressive system, is bizarre. It’s an impotent circular argument made to defend a tradition, a status quo.

I agree. Caucuses are at least as big a problem as superdelegates, when it comes to specifically suppressing the influence that marginalized people (especially the working poor) will have over the democratic process.

The fact that they endorse someone before a convention informs their true purpose. I think the “gun you hope to never use” analogy works well enough, but the presence of superdelegates does affect voting behavior.

Oh yeah, in the long run there should be more parties to pick from, and those parties’ platforms should be protected from potential attempts to change them. But in a nation whose political process looks like ours, when do you think that might be? Without a pro-worker left-wing party that is allowed to even compete…

Sounds like Tad Davine is part of the problem. Sounds like Sanders has more involvement in the superdelegate issue than he cares to admit.

Parties existing as “private organizations”—and being defended using the same property-centric arguments that we use to defend the rights of business and corporations—is why our political system is so flawed.

When even the Democratic Party suppresses your votes, there’s not a lot of places for advocates of democracy to turn. Thing is, the Democratic Party can survive without liberals. Liberals won’t survive without them. That’s their strategy.

I guess it depends on the degree of the populism, too. Thing is, most liberalism is populist by its very nature. It opposes a perceived patriarchal power structure which oppresses the many.

I don’t think we should run our political party like a business.

But what happens if the Democratic Party starts to do something you don’t like? What if they start picking candidates who are pro-war or those who oppose a woman’s right to choose? You may wish you had more control over the party. That’s why socialists wish that the party’s elites would give the people more control:…

Oh yeah, multiple parties definitely help matters. I think America is on the verge of a dying GOP, a Democratic Party that becomes the strong center, and a rising third party. Once the Democrats have 60-70% of the vote, there will absolutely be liberal parties (like the Green party, or perhaps a pro-worker “Labour”…

That’s basically why it’s not being taken seriously, in the first place. Just like with Flint, there is a racial element that compounds Congress’s trademark lethargy. The victims are invisible to them.

I hadn’t met a single self-described liberal who was “pro-superdelegate” until this election came around. That’s when we figured out that having a small group of elites suppressing votes is actually really useful . It’s why the GOP has been trying to suppress votes for years: It really does work.

In 2016, our organization can and should have the ability to provide a voice to even the least among us: People who will never be elected as the privileged leadership of the party. It’s actually easy to enfranchise all voters. We choose not to. Giving the oppressed more voice makes social democracy win, plain and…

If the people voted for John Edwards, he should be their candidate. Even if, by every measure you could provide me, you’d call him a bad candidate. I don’t think it’s for you or me or any one person to decide that. I think it’s for us to decide that, together. I just believe in the people on principle. I think…

Who is arguing that caucuses are good? Caucuses and superdelegates and gerrymandering, and all of those associated curtailments of democracy, are bad. I oppose them all on principle. If I opposed only a few and accepted the others out of fealty to a candidate who benefited from them, I wouldn’t be a liberal. I’d be a…

Who is the political party? You say the party itself should have a say in who runs under their banner.

I watched the thing. These Sanders supporters are acting like idiots, and they should be opposing superdelegates on principle instead of trying to get their own candidate elected by any means necessary. The latter option is truly illiberal.

Right. It’s like keeping a loaded gun on the table, and then promising never to use it. Whether or not you accept the promise, the presence of a loaded gun on the table changes your behavior. In this case, your voting behavior.