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Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote āuncommittedā in Michiganās primary on Tuesday
Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.
āItās important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote thatās not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,ā she said on Sunday during an interview on CNNās State of the Union. āA second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.ā
Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Bidenās 2024 campaign, also said she wasnāt sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote āuncommittedā in Michiganās 27 February primary.
Just ignoring that small donors exist and add upā¦
The DNC doesnāt like them tho. Large entities giving huge amounts of money involves, dinners, fancy fundraisers, trips, and all types of situations the money spreads around where it shouldnāt.
Small donors just want common sense politicians who are actually going to try and help Americans. Large donors want corporations to pay less taxes if were lucky. AIPAC wants billions a year and unquestioed support.
So large so ors and small donors want opposite things, and since large donors are more likely to personally enrich the people running the party, the people running the party decided thatās who they go with.
Even if it means Dems are less likely to win elections.
Right, exactly. Sure, the Dems have a bunch of formal structure, and yes, you can participate in it, and if you persuade the decision makers inside the party (who are industry tools more often than not), then yes, you can have an influence. But if you want to challenge them on something genuinely democratic, like calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which 76% of the Democratic base is in support of, then all of a sudden the elitist liberalism comes out and we all have to get in line behind our august statespeople, who know infinitely better than us measly citizensā¦
Itās what Bernie has been saying for decades.
The first step is replacing neoliberals with progressives. We canāt fix anything while theyāre in power, because theyāre the problem
Which is why the DNC fights harder against progressives than republicans. Losing to republicans just isnāt a big deal to them, they know in 4-8 years theyāll be in power again, and theyāll be a shit ton of donations to Dems because of it.
If they lose to progressivesā¦
That could be the end of the gravy train forever.
The more people understand that, the sooner it happens.
Thatās why the neoliberals demand absolutely loyalty to Biden.
The DNC has the state infrastructure and most federal and state-level campaigns tied so deeply into their infrastructure thereās no real hope of replacing them.
Local politics are a tiny bit more open-ended, but again, the stakes are lower and local governments are explicity subordinate to states. Cities and counties canāt do much if the state doesnāt like it.
I have no idea how you fix this situation up, but as I see it, whatever the solution is has to look like making the DNC and its infrastructure obsolete. I donāt see this happening inside the Democratic Party.
ā¦
The DNC is not the state partiesā¦
The state parties exist independent of the DNC, but due to how funding is supposed to trickle down, the state parties do kind of have to listen to them.
And while the state parties are in charge of their primary votes, the DNC can choose to ignore them.
Which is what happened when NH Dems refused to break NH state law so that Biden wouldnāt have to lose the first primary after NH picked progressive over party favorite in 2016 and 2020.
Itās confusing, but please try to learn more about our poltical system.
Iām noticing lots of Bidens supporters are incredibly opinionated, they just donāt know what theyāre talking about about. When they do, they finally start understanding how fucked up we are and that if we dont act soon itās too late.
Itās hard enough when one party is antidemocratic, if both areā¦
Right, theyāre formally separate, I know. The DNC intentionally uses their version of the power of the purse to control state parties. Like you said. They donāt need perfect control as long as they can starve any campaign they donāt like of funding.
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It costs more money to get ten million $1 donations than it does to get one $10,000,000 donation. You have to advertise, put up a website, collect donations, and possibly pay service fees for the charges. One giant novelty check from a billionaire means more of that money goes into their coffers.
Itās the same reason websites have advertising rather than memberships: Ad dollars are cheaper to get.
It costs more money to get the $10M donation, but itās paid for by taxpayers rather than the candidate.
Lol
You think thos 20k a plate fundraisers cost zero?
The difference is the in person schmoozing with all those donors. The people running the party want to be paid to attend shit like that and having wealthy people suck up to them
I think getting $19,000 out of $20,000 is better than getting $0.90 out of a $1 donation, yes. Itās called cost-of-revenue.
But youāre right about the schmoozing. The donors love that shit. But thereās also massive armies of political operatives whose livelihood depends on getting paid a ton of money to repeat facts back at the candidates.
Advertisers, analysts, pundits, news orgs, and a ton of other people rely on elections being both as expensive and as frustrating as possible. That way they get a ton of money, and sell a ton of eyeballs.
Sure, if youāre making up random numbers anything can be justifiedā¦
But talking to someone who does that isnt something a lot of people are going to want to do bud.
Talking to someone who canāt understand a common business concept isnāt much fun either
I think they understand that concept fine, itās just that getting 97Ā¢ out of twenty thousand $1 donations is better than getting $18k out of $20k, so if weāre making up numbers it can go either way.