Welcome To Soreloserville
How progressives will cost Democrats the 2020 election.
On August 28th, the cutoff came for qualification for the 3rd Democratic presidential debate.
To qualify for the debate, candidates were required to receive 2% in 4 qualifying polls and amass 130,000 unique donors, with 10 candidates meeting the requirements: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang.
Along with the candidates who qualified, there were also plenty of candidates who didn’t make it. 11 candidates who appeared in either of the first two debates failed to make the third, with a few candidates like Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper and Jay Inslee dropping out.
Now, most people should be able to accept that the rules for qualification were fair. The polling requirement ensured the debates included candidates people actually wanted to see, and the donor requirement meant that candidates had to seek small donors to finance their campaign, and couldn’t get away with getting funding from a few rich corporate executives.
Simply put, these requirements made sure that candidates were legitimate and were consistent with the values of the party, and the requirements were also quite lenient. 2% is by no means a difficult hurdle to cross if you are a legitimate contender for the Democratic nomination, nor is getting 130,000 people to donate to your campaign.
Despite this, after the qualification window closed, there were lots of grumbles from losers that the qualifying rules were unfair.
After failing to qualify for the third debate, Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that she thought the debate requirements were unfair and lacked transparency, and implied that she was cheated out of an appearance on the third debate stage.
Many of her supporters echoed her statements, criticizing the DNC as having an anti-Gabbard agenda, and saying that she wasn’t given ample opportunity to meet the requirements. All of these criticisms appeared after Gabbard failed to qualify, by the way — before the window closed, her supporters had no problem with the requirements.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Progressives have spent the entire 2020 election cycle accusing the DNC and the media of trying to smother them and their chosen sweetheart, when that’s not remotely the case. Progressives, in all of the ignorance and internet-induced rage, seem to have forgotten one simple fact: they’re a minority of the Democratic Party.
While progressives have increased in size and loudness over the last few years, they’re far from a majority of the Democratic Party base. Yet, thanks to their domination of the internet, they’ve convinced themselves otherwise, and have begun to think that they must be in control of the Democratic Party because everyone on Twitter agrees with them.
Progressives, like Trumpists before them, have begun creating conspiracy theories that there’s some “Democratic establishment” out to get them, and whenever they see progressive candidates doing poorly in polls or debates, they blame it on the establishment.
Let’s look at Andrew Yang for an example. Throughout the 2020 election, he’s received some coverage by the media for his universal basic income plan and focus on automation, but he’s still been overshadowed by other candidates in the race. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have gotten far more coverage than Yang when it comes to public appearances and policy proposals, and it’s not hard to guess why. Yang polls at a measly 2.6% nationally, putting him in 6th place, meaning it’s very unlikely he will be the Democratic nominee or even remain in the race past the Iowa caucuses.
For the media, covering Yang doesn’t make much sense. While he does have some interesting ideas, most people haven’t heard of him or aren’t interested in him, and in a few months, he won’t even be a presidential candidate, making all of that news coverage wasted. A better use of that time is to cover major candidates like Biden and Sanders, candidates with a real shot at the nomination, which is why they’re doing it.
Despite there being a clear reason for Andrew Yang receiving low media coverage, his supporters can’t seem to accept that. Instead, they’ve concocted a narrative that the media wants to smear Yang, and they’re deliberately blocking him out of coverage to try and drown his candidacy.
This theory, while ridiculous, has gained an unfortunate amount of traction in online circles. There are many progressives who now distrust the media and believe there’s some massive conspiracy against them and their candidate.
To be fair, this doubt is not unfounded. During the 2016 election, leaked emails showed bias by the DNC against Bernie Sanders, including attempts to undermine his campaign, and that should be kept in mind. However, just because Sanders received unfair treatment in the past doesn’t mean that the DNC has taken out all of the stops this time and is trying to put down all progressives.
And the theories that are being thrown around aren’t just dumb, they’re going to be detrimental to the party if they’re kept up.
Many polls have been taken online by political journalists that have shown a large percentage of Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, and even Bernie Sanders supporters would not vote for any Democratic nominee if it was not their chosen candidate. When I say large percentage, I mean up to 50% in certain polls.
This is certainly concerning when you look back at 2016. A significant number of Democrats who supported Sanders became disillusioned with the party after he lost the primary. Instead of doing what was best for the country and voting for Clinton to, if not have the perfect candidate, at least keep Trump out of office, they decided to stay home, or vote for Jill Stein, or even vote for an independent.
Essentially, these people threw away their votes, and that was a major contributor to Trump’s victory in 2016. Even though progressives aren’t a majority of the Democratic voting base, they are still an important part of it, and them abandoning Clinton in 2016 caused a lot of damage.
Given what happened, we should learn from this and be able to accept our nominee no matter who they are. Even if we can’t have our ideal candidate, we should be able to accept that any Democrat is better than another 4 years of President Trump.
These insane theories, however, prove that we’ve learned nothing. There are still hundreds of thousands of progressives who are putting ideology over basic logic.
Let’s face it, the Democratic nominee is going to be either Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. It’s not some DNC plot or media conspiracy, they’re simply the most popular and most qualified candidates in the race. When election day comes in 2020, one of those 3 is going to be on the ballot next to Trump, and it is going to be progressives who can put their egos aside and pick the candidate who will put the country back on track, or who can throw their vote away and give Trump another term.
Truth be told, the base simply isn’t on the far left. The base is a lot more ideologically mixed than the internet leads us to believe, and they will pick a candidate who reflects that. When they do, progressives need to stop being sore losers and stop giving in to the conspiracy theories they’ve been generating to make themselves feel better. Instead, they need to accept the facts and vote for better, even if they can’t get perfect.
