They effectively had a 60-seat senate majority for only 3 months at the end of 2009. They had three months prior to that but had two seriously Ill Senators, Kennedy and Byrd, who were unavailable for votes. Even when they had 60, Byrd was barely available.
The real failure is that Obama ran an inspirational campaign in 2008, then turned to milquetoast centrism the second he took office. That led to suppressed voter enthusiasm and the Democrats got clobbered in the 2010 midterms.
This year they literally canceled the presidential primary in several states so, no, we don't have a primary every four years.
Radical consolidation of the media industry has largely killed independent journalism. There is a long list of media personalities who were taken off the air for daring to speak the truth. Anchors are selected to represent the establishment perspective on everything. Media ownership and the establishment work together to dominate the narrative. For profit or non-profit is irrelevant. PBS is now as captured as the private networks.
New media caught the establishment by surprise and did manage to make inroads, but that has largely been brought under control. Democrats and Republicans cooperated long enough to pressure social media companies to tweak the algorithm to direct viewers to "trustworthy" news sources, a group that laughably includes FOX News and MS-NBC and excludes independent news providers.
Electing Biden can't preserve democracy where none exists. There was that study out of Stanford that showed zero statistical correlation between the policy desires of voters and what legislation gets passed. We have the facade of democracy, but no actual democracy.
What we do have is the fight for Democracy, and that fight has a much better chance under Biden than Trump. That's not a minor distinction. I will not get behind allowing the Democratic establishment to portray itself as the defender of Democracy. They are democracy's enemies, and they are my enemies. The entire fight for democracy in an age of media manipulation is a fight to pull back that curtain. That fight doesn't stop because of Trump.
Well, at least in the states where they didn't succeed in keeping everyone else off the ballot.
There was no real primary. Even 2020 wasn't a real primary. The fix is in with mainstream media and the major outlets taking their queues from the establishment.
The idea that we have an actual democracy is laughable, and the Democratic party does everything in their power to keep it that way. Biden won in 2020 because the establishment picked him and the media did as they were told. There is no democracy without an independent press.
Biden is a better choice than Trump for a multitude of reasons, but not saving democracy.
Then let's hold a primary.
We can still get back to democracy. This isn't democracy. Did you even read my comment btw? This knee jerk canned response isn't even human.
the only one who decides if he continues is Biden.
Got it.
Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
Um, what? Vote Biden to save Democracy, and fuck you if you want a different candidate.
I'll vote for Biden's corpse in 2028 if it's still the only way to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse, but give up the "save Democracy" schtick. That ship has sailed. Democracy is dead, and it's not just the Republican's fault.
The term "court packing" has a very specific meaning. It refers to adding seats to the supreme court to shift the balance.
We have to save democracy from Trump, so we can't afford the luxury of a primary election. /s
The issue wasn't that people didn't show up. There was record turnout for a primary race. The issue was concerns about electability. The talking heads kept repeating incessantly that Biden had the better shot at beating Trump. It was complete bullshit based off polls, but people believed it. Beating Trump was the top priority with policy taking a back seat. The position we are in now is the universe's sense of irony.
The thing that fucks American elections isn't our abysmal turnout. It's the complete lack of civic involvement between elections that makes voters easily malleable by expensive ad campaigns.
By the time the Illinois primary came around, it was already over. He still got my vote, for what it was worth.
6 decades of third parties have failed to gain momentum but sure, 6 months (or 4) is plenty.
The DNC gets to pick any replacement. To them, that's far better than rolling the dice on a progressive winning a primary.
It's come to the point where the risk of changing the candidate has to be weighed against the risk of not changing the candidate.