Stidmatt

It is absolutely impossible to understand my life without understanding that I have had cerebral palsy since the day I was born. Having cerebral palsy means that it forced me to have a strong sense of social justice for my entire life, because people with my condition have literally been murdered simply for existing. Family members discriminated against me because of my disability in a very cruel way when I was in high school, preventing me from finding employment. My already heightened sense of social justice was further amplified by this treatment. Combine this with general pervasive social discrimination against people with disabilities and my ability to find a job has definitely been hampered. I have tested this and I know for a fact that when I check that disability box on an employment form it is less likely they will call me back. I have run experiments on this issue. The results were depressing.

No wonder my sense for social justice is so strong. I will only ever know what life is like as someone who is disabled. It doesn’t matter if people know it or not, because if I am forced to out myself to a hiring manager their decision will be impacted by my checking the box and it doesn’t matter if the job is for a private company, most non-profits, or government. The callback rate is the same for all industries in my experience.

With this experience, no wonder I have a deep sense of social justice and when I see something wrong or insufficient I get angry. I get angry because it is an attack on me personally. When politicians refuse to use all possible mechanisms to fight evil it is a direct attack on my existence. For me I see no alternative than fighting hard to win just fights because people will literally die if we don’t.

If it wasn’t for how I was treated in high school because of my disability my mental health to this day would be significantly better. Even after abuse ends, its impact can last for decades. It would have made it easier to form romantic relationships, it would have been easier to not have a layer of depression over everything I do every day of my life, and it would have significantly improved my overall well-being if it wasn’t for the discrimination I have encountered.

Because of this discrimination I have experienced, I am easier to anger, I am slower to please (although when I am pleased by something that emotion is also magnified) and my reactions can scare people at times. There have been some times where the way I have been treated by others has made me so absolutely angry that I have literally scared other people. It has hurt my most important relationships and can make me feel very very alone. These reactions are proportional to how I have been treated in the past.

Finding other friends who both know what it is like to be disabled and discriminated against because of this fact of which I have no control over is very difficult. Merely being disabled will only help people empathize so much, it is the discrimination from my immediate family which has caused the deepest and longest lasting damage.

Being disabled made it harder to find a job, which makes it harder to get raises, which makes it harder to support myself. It is not that my disability makes it more difficult to do my job, it has no impact on that, but it took far longer for me to find work than it should have after finding college, which is also why the damage in 2018 when I suddenly found myself both housing insecure and unemployed was so absolutely damaging to me. For most people finding another job is easy, but for a disabled American who was only 25 at the time, whose only professional work experience of note was at a public college, it was significantly more difficult than for other people. That is why that event in 2018 is one of the most traumatic of my life and was the hardest on people who truly love me who had to observe it. It drove some people who clearly love me to be more distant because it was so painful for them to watch, and that makes me angry and sad. I am grateful that I am now fully employed at a wonderful company with good people, I just wish it happened years ago. It makes my life so much better in every possible way.

Anger is a valid emotion, and is important. Anger allows people to notice when things are not being done correctly, and then seek a course of action. If you can harness anger to make change then it can be a powerful force for good in this world. I wouldn’t put in the time for righteous fights when they appear, nor would I be so deeply disgusted by compromising measures if it wasn’t for my experience in this world. Every single action of political movement I do is to make it so that hopefully someday no one will have to go through the same types of experiences I have gone through, which are completely overwhelming at times. This includes actions like more progressive tax codes, environmental justice which impacts everybody, and voting reforms which make it so people who have unorthodox experiences are more likely to be heard.

Beyond the political activism I very deliberately become involved in organizations which actively fight injustice and work to make the world a better place. I spend my time in these places because I have this inherent unshakable belief that the world can become better.

No wonder I studied political economy in college, and no wonder that sometimes I very forcefully speak my mind when issues concern my existence. It makes perfect sense and I really hope that someday we can live in a world where we treat each other with kindness.

And I pray that as I grow older I will become more calm and able to control my deep emotions while never sacrificing my deep sense of justice.

Today is the second day of the third Democratic trifecta of my life. President Biden is planning on sign the executive orders he can to fix most of the damage Trump did through executive orders, which is exactly what President Biden should be doing this week.

Soon eyes will turn across the lawn to the Capitol Building where the House is going to be working on passing Biden’s proposed bills which require Congressional approval in order to pass.

Then the bills are going to be sent across the building to the Senate, which is where our story really begins. With only 50 Democrats in the Senate even after all of the carnage of the last year, we are in desperate times, and desperate times call for desperate measures. The probability of the filibuster not being used by Republicans to block President Biden’s legislation is 0, and any idea that they will suddenly come to Jesus is absolutely naive.

In order to pass President Biden’s legislation to end this epidemic and save our economy, we need to do the nuclear option to remove the filibuster. I can see no other realistic path forward which doesn’t end with Mitch McConnell supporting a filibuster to block President Biden’s every move.

We have been through this before in 2009 and 2010 when President Obama proposed a wide suite of legislation and it got bogged down in the Senate when the Democrats had an even larger majority than today. Mitch McConnell is still the leader of Republicans in the Senate, and given how his strategy was successful in blocking Democrats in order to tire out their base in 2010, he has absolutely no incentive and has shown absolutely no sign of changing his behavior any time soon. The rules of the game are the same, making government dysfunctional, dropping turnout among Democrats low enough that Republicans can win the midterm, and they are in power again. It worked in 1994. It worked in 2010. We must make sure it does not work in 2022.

The Nuclear Option, the complete absolute repeal of the filibuster from the Senate rules will completely disarm Senator McConnell, making him just another Senator. This will allow Democrats to have the most productive congress since 1965-1969. The only way to make Senator McConnell an average Senator is to abolish the filibuster.

So, the first issue will be whether this will create an escalation? I don’t believe so. This is merely moving the Senate back to how it worked internally when our nation was founded, where a simple majority is enough to pass a bill. This is how functional democracies are designed. This is how every state legislature works as far as I am aware, and how the House works. The Senate is out of the norm on this issue, and it makes our entire government break down on a regular basis. Americans need to have a government which works for us, and we won’t have a government as functional as we need until the filibuster is abolished.

There will be reluctance to this by some who are concerned that if and when the Republicans take back congress that they can use this change against us.

So, first if we look at the 2022 maps we will see that there are no significant pickups for Republicans but several good chances for Democrats,

Democrats have easy pickups in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with potential pickups in North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio. Republicans might be able to pickup seats in Arizona and Georgia potentially. But if Democrats continue the incredible organizing in those two states, the probability of Republicans taking those two states back goes down significantly. Basically, the 2022 Senate maps favor Democrats. In order to maximize our chances in 2022 we need to make sure that Democrats will get mobilized to vote. The easiest way to do this is show over the next 6 months that the Democrats will deliver.

The 2024 Senate map doesn’t have any very easy pickups for either party, with one potential pickup in Florida for the Democrats. West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio are potentially at risk, but the other states are safe.

If Senate Democrats give Americans a good reason to vote however, the odds will turn in favor for the Democrats like they did in 1966. They can do this if they abolish the filibuster.

If Senate Democrats fail to deliver this session, turnout will drop, Republicans might pickup seats in both chambers, and this will be a wasted opportunity.

If Senate Democrats deliver real progress which makes American lives better, we expand our majority in the House, and gain seats in the Senate, we can bring Texas into play by mobilizing its Hispanic population, we can mobilize African Americans in other Southern States like was done in Georgia by so many amazing activists, and then the 2020s can be the decade when America really starts to deal with systemic problems which our nation has had for centuries.

This future starts with the Senate Democrats abolishing the filibuster and ending this epidemic as soon as possible.

Democrats have the governorships in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada. We are not going to see the same level of gerrymandering we saw after the 2010 census. If Democrats mobilize their voters, the House is safe. Even in the chance that the Senate becomes controlled by Republicans, they can’t do a lot without the House or the Presidency.

The Nuclear Option will mobilize Democratic voters, and the Republicans will need to become less extreme if they are ever to win again. If Democratic Senators deliver and we can make pickups over the next 2 election cycles then the Senate will lean Democratic. I don’t see any reason to fear a Republican Trifecta if Democrats show that they are willing to lead.

If Democrats are able to keep government and things improve, Fox News will have less fuel to add to their fire, and some of their viewership will eventually be forced to see something I like to call reality.

If we choose to be fearful and timid and we do not move on the filibuster now, we will get less passed than we should. The consequence will again be a drop in turnout among Democrats, and the possibility of Republicans taking the Senate is real. Fear truly is the path to total obliteration.

However… If President Biden can match his excellent executive orders with excellent laws passed by Congress then the Presidency will be leaning Democratic for the foreseeable future. If he uses his power to enforce our already existing voting rights laws across the country, then no one like Trump will be able to win again if people are able to vote.

If we abolish the filibuster and pass bold legislation to solve the very real problems America faces, the Democrats will likely control government for at least the next 10 years, forcing the Republican Party to abandon the policies of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.

History is very clear. Democrats can either deliver or be defeated.

The time for bold action is now.

Abolish the filibuster.

On 8 November 1960 Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard Nixon for the Presidency of the United States. Future President Kennedy won 49.72% of the vote, and went on to be a deeply remembered President for the 3 years until he was shot on 22 November 1963. He didn’t get much legislation passed during his short Presidency, but he laid the ground work for President Johnson to continue his mission by enacting the Great Society package of programs. The 1964 election was the last time a Democrat went on to win over 60% of the vote, and in the 1966 elections for Congress the Democrats increased their majority in the House. Democrats ran on a strong platform of racial equality and fighting economic inequality and had 8 years of government.

In 1968 of course, a lot of Democratic leaning voters chose not to vote for the Democratic nominee, Nixon used the Southern Strategy to win 43.4% of the popular vote, and the Presidency.

The 1972 Presidential featured a candidate who blamed the inflation of the 1970s on the Great Society.  He failed to secure even 100 electoral college votes.

After the details of the Watergate scandal came out, and President Nixon became the only President to resign in American history, President Carter ran a fairly moderate campaign, won 50.1% of the vote, and 297 electoral college votes. He is the last President to start his term with over 60% of the Senate being shared with his party. He didn’t pass much significant legislation during his time as President besides the formation of the NSA, but he did benefit from a Democratic trifecta for both of his terms. Rampant inflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis led to President Carter being the last Democrat to fail to win even 100 electoral college votes in his reelection bid.

President Reagan’s first term was a time of hyper inflation, high unemployment, and a stagnant GDP. In 1984 Democrats ran a candidate who ran on the Equal Rights Amendment, nuclear freeze, and more. The economy was improving by 1984 and Reagan rode that wave to win his reelection.

The 1988 election was the biggest underperformance by Democrats in American history. After news of the Iran Contra Scandal and Iran hostage crisis broke, the Democrats failed to hold George H.W. Bush accountable for his being involved in these illegal activities. After shooting at Dukakis as an elitist “Massachusetts liberal” the Democrats should have responded by pointing out that both John F. Kennedy and John Quincy Adams were both “elitist Massachusetts liberals” and did phenomenal jobs as President. In fact, I cannot name a single bad President from Massachusetts. With weak messaging, the Democrats were resoundingly defeated with Dukakis winning only 111 electoral college votes.

The 1992 election saw Bill Clinton win a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote after running a very moderate campaign. Ross Perot stole a lot of votes from George H.W. Bush which gave Clinton the Presidency. Democrats lost seats in the House and picked up one seat in the Senate.

The 1996 election saw Clinton win a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote yet again. Republicans kept both houses of Congress.

The 2000 election was the fourth time in American history where a President won the Electoral College without winning the popular vote since direct elections began. It was the first Republican trifecta since 1953. Republicans won fewer seats in the House than in the 1998 elections. This followed massive bills signed into law by President Clinton which included Wall Street Deregulation with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Defense of Marriage Act. Signing into law bills which fall in line with Republican social and economic policies led to Republicans winning a trifecta in 2002. Clinton’s strategy clearly did not work.

The 2004 election saw George W. Bush win a majority of the popular vote for President against decorated War Hero, founding member of the New Democrat Caucus, and US Senator John Kerry. The strategy of Democrats in that election clearly did not work.

The 2008 election was a very historic election. It was the only time in the last 50 years a Democrat has won the Presidency with over 300 seats in the House. It is the second time in the last 50 years a Democrat has won over 50% of the vote, and was the largest majority received by a Democrat since President Johnson’s landslide in 1964. The Democrats gained 8 seats in the Senate that year, the largest gain for the Democrats since the Democrats picked up 15 seats in a single year in 1958 when Lyndon Baines Johnson was Senate Majority Leader. Obama’s strategy focused on health care, infrastructure investment, and human rights. He followed up by proposing bills on all of these issues as soon as he reached office, and passed the largest health care reform bill in over 50 years. The Affordable Care Act was  greatly whittled down by the House of Representatives, and the rest of his proposals were dead in the water. This showed the massive schisms in the Democratic Party, how some Democrats will be happy to campaign on popular progressive proposals but as soon as they get into office they stall. With that being said, the 111th United States Congress was the most important legislative session under Democratic control in over 50 years. Obama ran his campaign outside of the Democratic National Committee, and focused on what politicos like to call “grassroots organizing” and the “50 state strategy” which is basically a focus on talking to actual voters, which involves aggressive phone banking and door knocking in every state. I like to call it “effective politics” and “the winning strategy”. Not only that, but the Republicans nominated John McCain, a seasoned Senator who earned a purple heart in the Vietnam War. Even nominating a candidate like McCain was not enough for the Republicans to win. It was the largest gain in the house for the Democratic Party while picking up the Presidency since 1932. It was also the first year where the Democrats picked up the Presidency, gained seats in the House, and gained seats in the Senate since 1932. President Obama had grown a reputation for not being as progressive as Sheldon Whitehouse or Russ Feingold, but also not as conservative as Hillary Clinton or John Kerry. He is pretty much at the dead center of the Democratic Party, and he moved America to the left on many issues, such as gay marriage. He did all of this as Fox News kept calling him a socialist, claiming he wasn’t an American citizen, and the rest of the conspiracy theories just get more crazy from there.

2008 is where the Democrats received the biggest majority of the popular vote for President since 1964, the largest electoral college majority without a spoiler taking Republican voters since 1964, the largest Democratic gain in the Senate since 1958, and the largest Democratic majority in the House of Representatives since Gingrich’s Contract with America. Democrats also dominated state governments following Obama’s wave. The strategy of Congressional Progressive Caucus member Howard Dean’s leadership of the DNC and Barack Obama clearly worked.  What is even more amazing is that Democrats won this large majority of 257 seats on the same map which had given Republicans their largest majority in 2004 which was the largest number of Republicans elected to the House since 1946, a 58 year high. While gerrymandering is important, looking back now gerrymandering was clearly not the main cause of Democrats or Republicans doing well but instead the ability of the Obama Coalition to give Americans something to vote FOR instead of simply voting against the Republican platform. We need to replicate this strategy.

In 2010 the Democrats lost significant amounts of seats. While Obama campaigned on a strong platform which was to the left of Clinton but not solidly in the progressive wing, the Democrats in Congress failed to pass most of Obama’s proposals, giving Democrat voters little reason to turn out and vote. We saw a massive decline in Democratic turnout as a consequence and the Republicans picked up 64 seats in the House of Representatives. This was the worst showing for a midterm in a Democratic presidency since 1938.

In 2012 Obama announced his support of gay marriage and free community college, and he became the first Democrat to win reelection with a majority of popular vote since 1944. He broke a 68 year streak of Democrats failing to pick up a majority of the vote upon their reelection campaign. While Obama failed to pick up Congress in his reelection following Republican gerrymandering, the fact that he became the first Democrat to win reelection with a majority of the popular vote since 1944 is extremely important. If this wasn’t amazing enough, Republicans nominated Mitt Romney who was one of the most moderate Republicans they could nominate and the Democrats destroyed him. Obama built a cabinet which brought together people from all sides of the party, and in sum it translated to him being reelected as a much more moderate bloc of Democrats in Congress once again failed to win the election. It is Obama’s success at being the first Democrat to be elected to reelection since 1944 which makes it clear to me that the reason Democrats saw a drop in turnout was not because of President Obama but because of the lack of spines in the Democratic Congressional Leadership which made it so Republicans won the 2010 midterms.

The 2016 election saw a reversal of fortunes. The Hillary Clinton campaign failed to properly reach out to all wings of the Democratic Party, her grassroots organizing game was not strong compared to what Obama had done only 4 years earlier, she did not have the advantage her husband had with a spoiler peeling voters away from the Republican candidate, and she lost to the most unqualified candidate in the history of the United States. Her campaign chose to ignore states which she thought she would win handily and we have paid dearly for that over the last 4 years. That election created the first Republican trifecta since 2005. Clinton faced the same number of absolutely absurd and crazy conspiracy theories which Obama faced in 2008. She faced a far less qualified candidate who did not command a majority in the primary election, and her strategy did not work.

The 2018 election demonstrated that even with the gerrymandering which I myself thought was the main culprit to the Democrats losing congressional elections in most of the 2010s was not actually the main culprit. Democrats made a strong case for why they needed to be elected, the Congressional Progressive Caucus surged in urban, suburban, and rural districts, and we gave people something to vote FOR. I admit I was mostly wrong that gerrymandering was the main cause for Democrats consistently losing elections through most of the 2010s but instead it was from not giving people a reason to stand in line in freezing weather. I do believe the gerrymandering contributed, but it wasn’t enough by itself to create a Republican majority. Once Democrats campaigned on policies Americans agreed with, just like in 2008, Trump lost more seats in his midterm than any other Republican midterm since 1974.

The 2020 election was the first time a Democrat had defeated an incumbent since 1992. It is the first time a party won the Presidency while losing seats in the House since 1992, and unless if the Democrats win both elections to the Senate it will be the first time where a Democrat has won the Presidency without also carrying the Senate since 1884. Joe Biden is the first New Democrat to ever win a majority of the popular vote for President. While Democrats lost seats in the House in 2020, the Congressional Progressive Caucus kept every seat they had won in 2018. If the Democrats fail to win both seats in Georgia then we are in waters which are almost completely uncharted.

The Republican campaign strategy was so disorganized that Rudy Giuliani reserved a landscaping company thinking it was a 5 star hotel. Joe Biden faced the same amount of opposition and batshit crazy conspiracy theories from Fox as Obama did in 2008 against a far less qualified candidate, and with the massive advantage of an ongoing epidemic and recession which the incumbent Republican President did almost nothing to stop. The American people agree with the Democrats on every issue according to exit polls on individual issues. Even with all of these advantages the campaign strategy of the Democratic Party failed to increase their margin in the House, lost several key Senate races they should have won in Iowa and Maine, and are at risk of not having the Senate for the first year of a Democratic Presidency for the first time since 1884 . At the exact same time, several progressives picked up several seats in the Washington State legislature. I cannot find any evidence that the main cause of an underwhelming election is because the Republicans are any better organized than they were in 2008, though there is loads of evidence that the Democratic campaign strategy has fundamentally changed. We are not using the 50 state strategy, Biden chose not to campaign in Ohio, and the Democratic Party continuously fails to provide sufficient support to legislative and congressional races which consistently leads to poor performance year after year.

Conclusion

This is a long article, but the main conclusion of this article is that the 50 state strategy produced the biggest landslide majority for the Democratic Party in the last century. We saw a similar type of strategy here in Washington State this year, where Democrats picked up seats in formerly Republican districts after a very successful legislative session with a lot of legislation passed on many issues which people care about.

The 2022 and  2024 elections are going to be more challenging than the 2020 election. We won’t be running against Donald Trump or a literal epidemic. It would be highly unlikely for there to be a recession during President Biden’s term, but the main focus for the next two years for the Democratic Party needs to be to give voters a reason to give the Democrats a trifecta in 2022. We need to give voters something to vote FOR, and this means that President Biden, Vice President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Minority Leader Schumer need to ensure that they build very strong bridges which unify the party on issues like health care, education, economic mobility, and social justice not just with a President championing these issues but also with a party unified among policies and values which have been on the official party platform since 1932.

We did this in 2008 with historic results, and I fully believe that if Democrats use the 50 state strategy to rebuild the Obama coalition we can give President Biden a large trifecta which he can work with if he chooses to in 2023, and then keep the coalition strong well until the Republican Party is forced to abandon the failed policies of Richard Nixon. The 2008 election started the longest streak of Democrats winning the popular vote for the Presidency ever. If the Clinton campaign in 2016 had used the 50 state strategy and worked harder on building bridges with progressives and turning out young voters like Obama did then I am certain she would have won the election. A strong strategy in the Presidential race increases turnout and victories in congressional, state, and local races.

We need to not replicate the mistakes of the 111th congress where Democratic leadership in Congress refused to use all available tools at their disposal to pass Obama’s extremely popular agenda which ended in a massive drop in voter turnout. If Democrats are lucky enough to pick up enough seats in the Senate and House to have a strong majority in 2023 then we will need to make sure that the Democratic Party gives American voters a really good reason to vote for the Democrats, just like we did in 1964 and 1936.

This is about more than just health care, education, the environment, economic mobility, but about Democracy itself. Republicans have shown that they will go to any length to fulfill their goals, they will openly discriminate against African American voters, praise foreign dictatorships, send money to terrorist groups like the Contras and Mujahideen, undermine ongoing peace negotiations, and undermine our basic civil liberties. The Republican Party has not cared about democracy for as long as my parents have been alive, and they demonstrate it every single year. Every time Republicans have gained power their opposition to basic Democratic norms becomes ever more apparent, starting with undermining the Vietnam peace treaty which effectively killed American soldiers in 1968, to engineering the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1980, undermining our civil liberties with the PATRIOT ACT in 2001, receiving help from foreign dictatorships in the 2016 election, and fighting against the medical advice of experts during the COVID epidemic of 2020. The Republican Party clearly does not care for the Rule of Law, democracy, fair elections, civil liberties, or the lives of American citizens. The only way for America to fully overturn their apathy towards liberty is to ensure that not only do we provide a strong Democratic majority in 2022 but for the rest of the decade for the Presidency, House, Senate, Governorships, State Legislatures, county governments, and city governments. We need to completely demonstrate that fascism has no place in the United States anymore, defend our constitution, and show that being liberal means that we are strong.

This is why I believe that we need to elect many more strong progressive democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Katie Porter, Ayanna Pressley, Russ Feingold, and Sheldon Whitehouse to congress and state legislatures across this country. These are people who have shown not only that their values are strong but they understand how to use the mechanisms of power to make  real lasting change. If we fill the benches of congress and the state legislature with people like them who respect the constitution, believe strongly in Liberal American values, and are willing to fight for what we believe in then I believe the 2020s can be a decade like the 1960s or 1930s where Democrats are able to against make lasting change. I believe we can choose to make 2026 replicate the elections of 1966, 1962, 1942, 1938, and 1934.

Or we can go back to the policies of the Clinton Administration which were contrary to the stated values on the Democratic platform or the infighting of Pelosi’s first term as Speaker of the House which led to the Republicans winning midterms in 2010 and 1994.

The choice is ours.

The 2020 elections saw the Democrats pick up the Presidency, lose seats in the House, and have less than a 25% chance of a trifecta if they manage to win both seats in Georgia according to PaddyPower.

In this most likely scenario, with a Democratic President and House along a Republican Senate, how should Democrats govern?

Well, if you look at the last two years we have of course had a Republican President and Senate along with a Democratic House. The House did not pass bills to the Senate, preferring to negotiate with them behind close doors before passing them in their own chamber, and as a result only one stimulus was passed at the beginning of the epidemic and there has been endless deadlock.

Even worse, the Democrats lost 10 seats in the House this year, and with 222 seats have only 4 more than the 218 required for a majority. If they lose 5 more seats to Republicans, the Republicans will have control of the House of Representatives.

On top of that, several vulnerable Republicans kept their seats, putting the Democratic Trifecta in jeopardy.

All of  this after a year of deadlock, epidemic, and recession. Even though Joe Biden won a majority of the vote, he will most likely have to work with Republicans for at least the first half of his term.

Putting this into perspective, Washington State this year has had a Democratic Trifecta for only 3 years. In 2018 we saw a massive Democratic landslide and we saw very important bills be passed regarding health care and environmental protection, most notably making Washington the first state to have a public option. After this, the Democrats further increased their margin in the Washington State legislature after a very productive time in the legislature. This is the same state where the Republicans controlled the state legislature for most of the 2010s and the 2004 gubernatorial election was determined by only 133 votes.

The moral of the story is, when Democrats fight, Democrats win.

The 2020 primary election continues to be discussed on social media, and I personally believe this is a good thing. Joe Biden and the rest of his caucus seriously under performed in November, and we cannot afford to under perform again in 2024. We need to understand what really happened, and what needs to change in order to make certain that the Democratic nominee in 2024 will win the general election.

Lessons from the Primary

The Primary election was extremely crowded. Not only were there a lot of candidates, but many of them also had strong experience which made them viable. With one former Vice President, 3 sitting senators, and a former mayor of New York running at the same time, it is no surprise that no candidate was going to get a majority of the votes in such a crowded field.

First thing, the progressive vote was definitely split. Warren had the lead in the polls before the Iowa caucus, but after Iowa when Bernie outperformed her I believe a lot of would-be Warren voters voted for Bernie instead. This is a symptom of first past the post, and it means it is impossible to get an accurate measure of what people actually want from the polls. The best we can do are the ranked voting polls which FairVote did which in September and February. These two polls make it very clear that a lot of voters moved from Warren to Sanders after Sanders outperformed Warren in a couple of small states. The strategic move then is to move from the 3rd place candidate to the second place candidate. We need to sovle this problem by having all elections on a single day and have the vote be done with ranked choice voting.

Second thing, Bernie Sanders dropped out early. Warren dropped out on March 5th and Sanders dropped out on April 8th.

Most of the country had not voted yet. No major swing states had voted yet, namely Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania the only state with a significant number of votes which Bwhich the nominee absolutely had to win in order to become President. No Democrat has won the Presidency without Michigan since 1940, Pennsylvania since 1948, or Wisconsin since 1968.

If we look again at the map after Warren dropped out, Bernie’s chances did not improve.

There were three crucial swing states which voted after Warren dropped out and before Bernie dropped out. Biden won all three of them. Bernie Sanders had won both Wisconsin and Michigan in the 2016 primary, and with Biden cleaning Bernie out of the upper Midwest with a clear majority, Bernie Sanders did not have a realistic path to victory, and this is when it was a two horse race.

Because of this fact that even without a spoiler Bernie Sanders was failing to get voters to vote for him, and his campaign was unable to convince Warren voters in Washington State to switch over to Bernie Sanders even after she dropped out, it was very clear to the Sanders campaign that the election was over. Washington was the only significant state which Biden did not win. No offense North Dakota, but you just don’t have enough votes to make a meaningful difference.

So, to all the people who say that Bernie Sanders would have won if Elizabeth Warren had only stayed in the kitchen, they are not just sexist, but completely incorrect. Bernie Sanders underperformed his 2016 performance even after Warren had dropped out. He failed to get a clear lead at any point  in the primary, and was in third place in the polls before Iowa. Instead of just sowing more division he decided to drop out, and endorsed Biden one month after Warren dropped. This was before New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio even voted.

That has nothing to do with Senator Warren.

There are still deep divisions within the Democratic Party. There are still big questions regarding whether a ranked voting system and a single day for the election would have given Biden a victory. It is very clear from the available data that Biden would not have won in a landslide, and that makes it too close to call.

The Democratic Party needs to reform the primary system before 2024 to ensure that it can get an accurate measure of what Americans want. This is the only way to guarantee that they can get a popular candidate who not only will win the general election but also carry their success down ballot. The consequence of not doing this will at best be the lack of a trifecta in 2025, or at worst a repeat of 2016.

Let’s not repeat 2016.

Let’s have an election which is accurate.

After the clear lessons of the 2016 and 2020 elections, the Democratic Party needs to endorse FairVote and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This will make a fair election.