Wednesday, 1 June 2016

Bernie Sanders and Rigged Elections: Sometimes You Just Lose

Each week, Nate Cohn, The Upshot’s elections analyst, and Toni Monkovic, an Upshot editor, will discuss the 2016 race and post a lightly edited transcript of their written exchange. The Democratic primary season has led to some grumbling from supporters of Bernie Sanders that the primary system is rigged. This week, we start on that subject, and look ahead to the California contest on June 7.

Toni Bernie Sanders has benefited from the caucus system; it’s a major reason he has been competitive. If Hillary Clinton had dominated caucuses instead of primaries, I suspect that he would have complained that caucuses were flawed — that they were less democratic than primaries and less accessible to the working class.

And if Sanders had dominated with Democrats and lost among independents, instead of the other way around, I suspect we wouldn’t be hearing calls from him to open more primaries to independents.

That’s just standard politics — any other candidate would have behaved the same way. And Sanders is far less of a finger-in-the-wind politician than many. But it goes against this general idea that his side is trying to convey: that he’s pure, that he’s above politics. For the full article click here 



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