The Pennsylvania Democrat recalled his time serving as a Hillary Clinton surrogate in 2016, even after he supported Bernie Sanders in the primary.

  • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    if everyone who says “I’d vote for x but x can’t possibly win” just voted for x, x would actually win.

    Not really. It means that person does not have the votes to win. Even if every supporter of X exclusively voted for X, plus a few supporters of Y, X would not win against Z. However, if every supporter of Y voted for Y, plus a few supporter of X, he would win against Z. So we should shift our support to Y because he has more supporters and is more likely to win against Z.

    I think what you’re trying to say is that if every Biden voter just voted for Bernie, Bernie would have won. Which…sure, but you could say that about anyone.

    It’s a difference between core voters (“I’m only excited about X”) vs swayable voters (“I like X but I think Y has a better chance of winning against Z”).

    The point is that Biden has more core supporters than Bernie. Biden has a bigger, more reliable group of people who want to vote for him and only him.

    • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It means that person does not have the votes to win.

      It means that people who want to vote a certain way are being pressured to vote a different way.

      This in turn means the way the votes went is not a measure of what people want, but rather of what they can be pressured into doing. These are different things, even if it’s convenient to dismiss it as a distinction without a difference.

        • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No I read it, I just thought you missed my point and wanted to clarify

          The subtext of the point I was trying to make was about whether or not your politics leave people feeling understood or respected. NGL I wasn’t feeling either