Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the reelection of former President Trump would be the “end of democracy” in an interview released Saturday by The Guardian.
“It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy,” Sanders said in the interview.
The Vermont senator also said in the interview that he thinks that another round of Trump as the president will be a lot more extreme than the first.
“He’s made that clear,” Sanders said. “There’s a lot of personal bitterness, he’s a bitter man, having gone through four indictments, humiliated, he’s going to take it out on his enemies. We’ve got to explain to the American people what that means to them — what the collapse of American democracy will mean to all of us.”
Sanders’s words echo those President Biden made in a recent campaign speech during which he said that Trump’s return to the presidency would risk American democracy. The president highlighted the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in an attempt to cement a point about Trump and other Republicans espousing a kind of extremism that was seen by the world on that day.
A. Primaries have existed since 1972. 1976 Ford primaried by Reagan. 1980 incumbent Carter challenged by Ted Kennedy. 1992 Ross Perot.
If B is true, they shouldn’t be able to use tax dollars and public employees for their primary elections. They should have to fund and administer their private org election themselves. In fact, in many states only the two parties even have access to primary ballots.
C. DNC could care less about winning. See also Bernie.
Ross Perot was a third party candidate, not a primary challenger to an incumbent. I take no issue with anything else in your comment.
Ross Perot was an independent. That’s hardly a party primary. The others were before I was born. Also primaries have been a thing since the early 1900’s. They just didn’t have as much weight then as they do now.
I’m going to need an example state where minor parties can’t get on the ballot. At any rate afaik, they pay the state for the election. But it’s also in the state’s best interest to run it.
And they did win with Biden. I think it’s more fair to say they care more about their internal politics than winning.
Ohio is one example that took away third party ballot access. The first hurdle would be getting 60,000 valid voter signatures in a limited time frame. Then you would need to get 120,000 General election votes for a Gov candidate. Arkansas etc are similar
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_parties_in_Ohio
Other examples can be found https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_parties_in_the_United_States
That’s not a ban. That’s third parties not having enough support.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Taking Ohio as example when 3rd parties sued for ballot access, Libs had 3% of the vote, 4-6% for statewide.
https://lpedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_of_Ohio_Historical_Election_Results
Green Party with 1% to 3% when allowed on General election ballots
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_Ohio
Not sure what your definition of “enough support” is. Ohio repubs then tailored the law to exclude any future 3rd parties. (Through petition signatures which amount to millions in CPRS)
Fun story, they were on the ballot for the general election in 2020. They got 1 and 0.3 percent respectively.
Frankly, these aren’t good enough numbers to be on the ballot. Even if they were at 3 percent. The standard around the world is generally 10 percent to get seated in a parliament.
So Ohio asking for a fifth of that in signatures isn’t bad. In other countries they’d need to show half a million people for Ohio’s voting population.