Hypothetical: If Sanders dies of coronavirus, what should happen to the primary?

[The Magistrate]

52. You Are Using This To Trot Out Your Old Proposal, Sir

Which we have crossed words over before.

You want to strike a deal by which 'Bernie' supporters receive a proportion of delegates you feel is appropriate to what you feel is the actual balance of voters in the Democratic Party, whatever the actual votes may be.

You suppose that forty percent are what you call 'progressive' and sixty percent are what you call 'moderate' and you think delegates should be apportioned accordingly.

First, understand being out-voted three to two in a democratic body entitles the minority to nothing at all. Anything short of a majority has only what influence the majority may choose to grant it. That, Sir, actually is Democracy, as it has always been practiced, and still is practiced today. No proposal, no plank, no change of rules, not the slightest motion, which is opposed by sixty percent of convention delegates, can pass or ought to be passed.

Second, the only way the forty percent could attempt getting anything they have not the votes to carry, and the majority is in no mood to grant, is by some threat the majority feels it must acquiesce to. Disruption on the floor, or withholding of votes in the general election, whether by calving off into a third party, or by voting instead for the opposing party's candidates, or by sitting on their hands and not voting at all. As a matter of curiousity, Sir, which do you think the forty percent ought to choose among these threats, to bend the majority to their will?

Third, though it must remain a matter of opinion, it certainly seems to me your gauging of factional strength within the Party wildly overstates the strength of the faction you support. That would best be judged by total vote tallies, not by delegate strength, as a fair number of votes do not result in delegates being alloted --- candidates failing to achieve a one vote in six threshold in a primary, or receiving votes after they have ceased standing for the nomination. It is quite fair to take as the voting strength of the 'moderate' faction the total of all primary votes cast for anyone but Sanders. After all, the Sanders campaign regarded all opponents as moderates, as figures who were nowhere near so 'progressive' as was 'Bernie', and that they proved themselves in the final analysis to be mere tools wielded by the 'Democratic Establishment', which prevailed on them to cease active candidacy to the detriment of Sanders' campaign. Voters supporting Sen. Warren may well consider themselves to the left of the typical moderate, but support for Sen. Warren included active rejection of 'Bernie' as a standard bearer for progressive policies. As matters have worked out, her bloc of voters has been pretty solid for Mr. Biden. Taking all this together, roughly seventy percent of Democratic primary voters cast their ballots against Sanders, and this is a good deal closer to the seventy-five percent 'moderate' twenty-five percent 'progressive' split you proclaim unfair to your 'progressive' faction.

Fourth, if you define 'progressive' as people who would stick with allegiance to 'Bernie' through thick and thin, the twenty-five to thirty percent who voted for Sanders in primaries is likely a considerable overstatement of 'progressive' strength. The largest portion of Sanders' supporters seem likely to be quite willing to swing behind the candidate who prevailed in the primary, and opened the convention with a solid majority of delegates. They are not likely to support disruption by Sanders delegates, or other actions they think likely to do harm to the effort to turf out the cheap thug Trump in the general election.

Understand, having two fifths of delegates does not mean two fifths of the decisions go your way. Any more than having a quarter of the delegates means a quarter of the decisions go your way. Whether you have two fifths of the delegates or one quarter of the delegates, the majority of delegates gets its way on any question its members are serious about prevailing on, and it may well be their will to prevail on every single thing which comes to the floor. And that actually is Democracy, Sir, as it has been practiced for ages.





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."