19th May 2016, 11:01 AM
I'm not trying to "sit on the fence" here, but you're both right, just about different things.
Sanders voters ARE being disenfranchised, mainly because all voters are being disenfranchised by the two-party system and the way it sets up these primaries.
Clinton IS the more popular candidate, even once you take that disenfranchisement under consideration.
Those two issues aside, there's a bad trend among a certain branch of Sanders supporters that so distrust Clinton they might simply abstain. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-...ers-voter/
ABF, this is not a license to say "the Sanders supporters doomed us to Trump" in the event that such a situation happens. Ultimately, the ones that would be responsible for this are the Trump supports and the Trump supporters alone. It wouldn't matter WHAT Sanders supporters did if no one supported Trump, and that's where the blame needs to lie. It's much like how so many Dems got so mad at the third party voters in the 2000 election, saying that the presence of a third candidate "stole" all the votes that would have gone to the Democrats. That's not true, and getting mad at voters for supporting a third pillar because they weren't voting "strategically" is putting the blame in the wrong place. The ones responsible for Bush Jr are, and always have been, the people voting for Bush Jr. They're the ones to get mad at.
Guilt tripping people just because they aren't following the two party system like good little voters is just plain wrong, if you ask me.
Sanders voters ARE being disenfranchised, mainly because all voters are being disenfranchised by the two-party system and the way it sets up these primaries.
Clinton IS the more popular candidate, even once you take that disenfranchisement under consideration.
Those two issues aside, there's a bad trend among a certain branch of Sanders supporters that so distrust Clinton they might simply abstain. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-...ers-voter/
ABF, this is not a license to say "the Sanders supporters doomed us to Trump" in the event that such a situation happens. Ultimately, the ones that would be responsible for this are the Trump supports and the Trump supporters alone. It wouldn't matter WHAT Sanders supporters did if no one supported Trump, and that's where the blame needs to lie. It's much like how so many Dems got so mad at the third party voters in the 2000 election, saying that the presence of a third candidate "stole" all the votes that would have gone to the Democrats. That's not true, and getting mad at voters for supporting a third pillar because they weren't voting "strategically" is putting the blame in the wrong place. The ones responsible for Bush Jr are, and always have been, the people voting for Bush Jr. They're the ones to get mad at.
Guilt tripping people just because they aren't following the two party system like good little voters is just plain wrong, if you ask me.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)