This just seems like a lot of strawmanning. Take point #1 It's pretty well documented by now what happened. An elderly person working for the polling company had her screen resolution turned down...
This just seems like a lot of strawmanning. Take point #1
How did they take over the Des Moines Register, which make the decision to spike the poll?
It's pretty well documented by now what happened. An elderly person working for the polling company had her screen resolution turned down to make the text larger so she could read it. The list of names was one name too short, but it was randomized so she wasn't leaving off Buttigieg from every single poll. She talked to a Buttigieg supporter who noticed his name was omitted and informed the campaign. The error likely had no real effect because the name left off was randomized. It also would be possible to isolate her polling and throw it out. However, because the company running the poll is concerned with their reputation, they declined to release the results at the request of Buttigieg's campaign.
That actually happened, and there is no requirement for the Buttigieg campaign to have stealthily taken over the Des Moines Register.
So many of these stories are just "Sanders supporters are stupid to have a chip on their shoulder about being generalized, vilified, and treated with bias; just ignore their grievances. Anyway,...
So many of these stories are just "Sanders supporters are stupid to have a chip on their shoulder about being generalized, vilified, and treated with bias; just ignore their grievances. Anyway, here's an article about how fucking TERRIBLE they all are."
Yeah, there's a lot of gaslighting going on. The primary in 2016 was heavily influenced to favor Hillary Clinton at every step of the process. There have been reforms (championed by Sanders...
Yeah, there's a lot of gaslighting going on. The primary in 2016 was heavily influenced to favor Hillary Clinton at every step of the process. There have been reforms (championed by Sanders delegates at the convention) but even still, supporters are rightfully wary.
The strawmanning I find with that is, like this article, people are arguing against a massive, complicated conspiracy that few if any people are actually presenting. The same happened in 2016. The...
The strawmanning I find with that is, like this article, people are arguing against a massive, complicated conspiracy that few if any people are actually presenting.
The same happened in 2016. The DNC had a clear preference for Hillary Clinton and against her challengers, Sanders especially. This manifested in advanced knowledge of the debate questions, a low number of total debates, and using superdelegates to present the primary as decided well before it actually was. But, some people might have thought the DNC actually rigged the voting, so that's the conspiracy theory people are presenting as though it were mainstream to, ironically, ridicule and exclude Sanders supporters.
Why is party unity only important when it comes to certain candidates, anyway?
Surely I'm not the only one who sees the irony in generalizing everyone criticizing Sanders in this way huh? You'll notice, at no point did this post generalize to ALL Sanders supporters. It...
"Sanders supporters are stupid to have a chip on their shoulder about being generalized, vilified, and treated with bias; just ignore their grievances. Anyway, here's an article about how fucking TERRIBLE they all are."
Surely I'm not the only one who sees the irony in generalizing everyone criticizing Sanders in this way huh?
You'll notice, at no point did this post generalize to ALL Sanders supporters. It specifically pointed out a specific article in an actual journalistic outlet saying ridiculous stuff and pointed out how it's ridiculous. If you interpret this as being completely beyond the pale, then it's hard to imagine any criticism of literally any person who alleges support for Sanders that would be "legitimate" in your eyes. You chose to identify yourself as part of the group being criticized even though they left it pretty broad and open to interpretation as to who they're talking about.
This kind of thin skinned reaction where people pretend very normal and typical kinds of attacks on person are completely unprecedented is what so many people find so tiresome.
Sigh. I didn't generalize everyone criticizing Sanders. Nor did I call this "beyond the pale," or that there are no legitimate criticisms of Sanders. The extent of my "thin skinned" reaction is...
Sigh.
I didn't generalize everyone criticizing Sanders. Nor did I call this "beyond the pale," or that there are no legitimate criticisms of Sanders. The extent of my "thin skinned" reaction is that I'm tired of seeing so many segments and articles like these (and people spreading them) acting as though they're tackling a major issue. I mean, this article's title is implying this is as bad or worse than Pizzagate.
I don’t see very many segments or articles like these. Maybe you shouldn’t actively seek things out that you’re sick of? Or maybe, people are just as sick of seeing these kinds of conspiracy...
The extent of my "thin skinned" reaction is that I'm tired of seeing so many segments and articles like these
I don’t see very many segments or articles like these. Maybe you shouldn’t actively seek things out that you’re sick of?
Or maybe, people are just as sick of seeing these kinds of conspiracy theories poisoning the well of leftist discourse and want people to stop embarrassing themselves with this kind of thing?
I mean, this article's title is implying this is as bad or worse than Pizzagate.
I could not ask for a better example to show you why I think you ought to examine your own behavior. And who is really "poisoning the well of leftist discourse?" One article from, as far as I can...
I don’t see very many segments or articles like these. Maybe you shouldn’t actively seek things out that you’re sick of?
I could not ask for a better example to show you why I think you ought to examine your own behavior.
And who is really "poisoning the well of leftist discourse?" One article from, as far as I can tell, a fairly obscure if well-funded clickbait website, exaggerated an inarguably bungled caucus, which itself was seized on for a blog post, which was posted here, hot on the heels of another thread that devolved into Bernie-bashing getting locked.
As for the Pizzagate comparison, no, it doesn't come close to backing up that this is as bad or worse. Pizzagate was invented from whole cloth, made not only zero sense but was demonstrably false, it played into paranormal conspiracy theories, it was actually seized upon by a considerable number of right-wingers, and it led to shooting. I genuinely don't know what to tell you if you think these two are comparable, except that I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion unless you really, really wanted to end up there, and aren't too picky as to how.
Finally, to answer your question, I actually did actively avoid threads like these, but I didn't want the toxicity and, frankly, bullying to go unanswered. It was just too much at a certain point, from an online community I genuinely expected better of.
Good to know but I'm not seeing how it adds up to a bias against Sanders. Are the caucus results somehow a worse reflection of what Democrats in Iowa wanted than they would have been if the poll...
Good to know but I'm not seeing how it adds up to a bias against Sanders. Are the caucus results somehow a worse reflection of what Democrats in Iowa wanted than they would have been if the poll results had been released?
I would strongly encourage broadening your media diet. It's actually quite easy to cherry pick a vast mountain of "evidence" to validate any particular view of media bias if you explicitly go out...
I would strongly encourage broadening your media diet. It's actually quite easy to cherry pick a vast mountain of "evidence" to validate any particular view of media bias if you explicitly go out searching for things to validate the perspective.
We know the media has its biases, but the extra step that takes things into crazy town is the belief that this is some kind of structured, orchestrated plan being executed rather than the media just doing as the media always does. There are narratives about Warren and Buttigieg erasure as well, being as how neither got as much attention out of Iowa as they deserved. And prior candidates, like Castro and Booker, have LOTS to be angry about considering how much attention was lavished on Biden and completely sucked the oxygen out of the room for them.
In some ways, getting cable news nonsense filtered through agenda-driven news sources might actually be even worse for getting a sense for what "the media" is thinking. The news is on 24/7 and...
In some ways, getting cable news nonsense filtered through agenda-driven news sources might actually be even worse for getting a sense for what "the media" is thinking. The news is on 24/7 and their prime motivation is filling up time. They're lazy thinkers and shoddy researchers because they aren't focused on journalism so much as hot takes. It's basically just Twitter with a "appeal to normies in waiting rooms" filter.
In an environment like that people throw out lots of random hot takes and poorly supported claims. You can support basically any narrative because there is just so much nonsense.
The poll in question is pretty influential and could have given Sanders a boost, but it's impossible to really know for sure if it would have or how much it would have helped.
The poll in question is pretty influential and could have given Sanders a boost, but it's impossible to really know for sure if it would have or how much it would have helped.
Here's a Politico article that talks about it: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/01/des-moines-register-poll-not-released-after-apparent-mishap-110284
While it's true that conspiratorial thinking is problematic, no matter the position you start from or end up at, I think it's important to keep in mind that there was concrete evidence of bias...
While it's true that conspiratorial thinking is problematic, no matter the position you start from or end up at, I think it's important to keep in mind that there was concrete evidence of bias against Sanders from the very top of the DNC in the 2016 presidential campaign. Sure, Wasserman Schultz resigned, and Brazile apologized. But I don't think it's beyond the pale to think that DNC bias against Sanders has somehow been magically eradicated.
I'm not saying that the issues in Iowa are a result of DNC bias—the evidence is not compelling to me.
However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Anti-Sanders bias exists, and some of it comes from within the Democratic Party establishment. Recall that Sanders has not been affiliated with the Democratic Party for a substantial portion of his political career, and in course of American politics its not unfathomable that the establishment of the Democratic Party have learned to look at Sanders as an outsider. Whether that perspective leads to any significant resentment or even malice is an open, but not unreasonable question.
I'm not sure how focused or coherent of an entity you think the "Democratic Party Establishment" is. It's basically a bunch of fairly dumb people who happen to be rich and they're run by the...
Anti-Sanders bias exists, and some of it comes from within the Democratic Party establishment.
I'm not sure how focused or coherent of an entity you think the "Democratic Party Establishment" is. It's basically a bunch of fairly dumb people who happen to be rich and they're run by the children of big donors who nepotismed their way into gigs that are often well beyond their abilities (the GOP is, somehow, even worse!). The whole machine is kept running by ambitious and well meaning interns and ops professionals that nobody actually invests in developing or bothers listening to.
This isn't an organization that can competently "rig" anything at a national level and it's rife with internal factionalism. Almost any actual operational work gets done at the state and local level by state and local parties which range from being well-run machines to being completely corrupt cults of personality around local high-school cliquey politics depending on where you are. Almost every irregularity or suspicious behavior you notice is less centralized DNC rigging and more some asshole in a county level office somewhere trying to swing their dicks around.
There is anti-Sanders bias, but there is ALSO anti-Clinton bias and anti-Warren bias and anti-Biden bias and everything else. It's a big tent of a party with lots of groups in it that are all arguing with each other, so different groups will naturally have biases against each other.
Sure, Wasserman Schultz resigned
Just to be clear, you realize nobody actually liked Wasserman Schultz right? The DNC chairmanship was basically a sinecure people gave her to shut her up and Obama didn't really do anything about her because he didn't want to deal with it and he figured Clinton had it in the bag (Sanders announced very late and it didn't look like he was going to accomplish much beyond being a Mike Gravel style gadfly candidate) so it didn't seem worth worrying about how competently a consequence-free primary process was going to be run.
The gist is, you're talking like she's part of some coherent group of people with a fixed agenda when she was really just a fairly terrible manager for very ordinary reasons. The fact is, there is bias against every candidate and part of being a skillful politician is not letting it mess with you. Obama was also an outsider candidate that most of the DC machine did not like (Clinton was their favorite even then). He got over it too, and he did it in large part by not bitching about it constantly and focusing on changing that. It's a lot easier to eventually get people on your side when you can acknowledge that they're allowed to have opinions about what you're doing and how you're conducting yourself without immediately going scorched Earth on them.
So, you think it's a coincidence that Wasserman Shultz, and her direct replacement, both were caught criticizing Sanders in private communications that were leaked? It's true that we have a small...
The gist is, you're talking like she's part of some coherent group of people with a fixed agenda when she was really just a fairly terrible manager for very ordinary reasons.
So, you think it's a coincidence that Wasserman Shultz, and her direct replacement, both were caught criticizing Sanders in private communications that were leaked? It's true that we have a small sample size, but these are people who were at the top of the DNC. You can claim Wasserman Schultz and Brazile were figureheads, or that the DNC and Democratic establishment as a whole are unorganized and ineffectual. I'm not going to dispute that. All I'm saying is that there is documented, though anecdotal, evidence of anti-Sanders sentiment from within the upper echelons of the party according to its ostensible structure. I'm not saying its a conspiracy. I'm just saying that there are people, in and outside the Democratic Party, some of whom have a lot of influence in politics, who don't want Sanders to win the nomination, much less the presidency.
Edit: To be clear, I don't even like Sanders that much, and don't personally agree with some of his policy proposals. And I truly don't think he is the Democrats' best shot at beating Trump in the general election. But, I'm not blind, and I think it's stupid for the party to alienate Sanders' supporters because we need more progressive leaders on the left, and I am not naive enough to realize that a lot of the progressive movement in the US is again resting their hopes on Sanders (as they did in 2016). I think Warren is a better candidate, and she is who I'll vote for in the primary. If Sanders wins the primary, I'll surely vote for him in the general, but I think he'll be torn apart.
The thing is though, people are allowed to have opinions. People are also allowed to express those opinions to each other in private conversations. What's the actual malfeasance you're trying to...
So, you think it's a coincidence that Wasserman Shultz, and her direct replacement, both were caught criticizing Sanders in private communications that were leaked? It's true that we have a small sample size, but these are people who were at the top of the DNC. You can claim Wasserman Schultz and Brazile were figureheads, or that the DNC and Democratic establishment as a whole are unorganized and ineffectual. I'm not going to dispute that. All I'm saying is that there is documented, though anecdotal, evidence of anti-Sanders sentiment from within the upper echelons of the party according to its ostensible structure. I'm not saying its a conspiracy. I'm just saying that there are people, in and outside the Democratic Party, some of whom have a lot of influence in politics, who don't want Sanders to win the nomination, much less the presidency.
The thing is though, people are allowed to have opinions. People are also allowed to express those opinions to each other in private conversations. What's the actual malfeasance you're trying to allege here? What is actually disqualifying about not liking Sanders? Did any of this translate to an systemically unfair process? The worst thing we ever heard of was that someone on the Clinton campaign might have gotten wind of the fact that there might be a question about Climate Change during one of the debates.
If ANY kind reservations about Sanders, even those aired in private get this "how fucking dare you!" treatment then it's hard to imagine any scenario where such people can actually be worked with to accomplish anything. Like, how soft would you have to be to actually get "alienated" by the realization that your guy isn't universally beloved by the very people he's yelling at?
I don’t think it’s about being soft. It’s about being neutral. It’s very hard to lead a party and represent a unified front if you have predetermined the outcome of the primary.
I don’t think it’s about being soft. It’s about being neutral. It’s very hard to lead a party and represent a unified front if you have predetermined the outcome of the primary.
Well, it’s a far cry from neutrality as well. It doesn’t matter if it’s in private. Normal people are allowed to voice their own opinions in private. Officials in the DNC ought to keep the...
Well, it’s a far cry from neutrality as well. It doesn’t matter if it’s in private. Normal people are allowed to voice their own opinions in private. Officials in the DNC ought to keep the interests of the party paramount, which includes not disparaging the candidates. You can personally hold whatever views you want, but you should keep them to yourself.
This just seems like a lot of strawmanning. Take point #1
It's pretty well documented by now what happened. An elderly person working for the polling company had her screen resolution turned down to make the text larger so she could read it. The list of names was one name too short, but it was randomized so she wasn't leaving off Buttigieg from every single poll. She talked to a Buttigieg supporter who noticed his name was omitted and informed the campaign. The error likely had no real effect because the name left off was randomized. It also would be possible to isolate her polling and throw it out. However, because the company running the poll is concerned with their reputation, they declined to release the results at the request of Buttigieg's campaign.
That actually happened, and there is no requirement for the Buttigieg campaign to have stealthily taken over the Des Moines Register.
Edited to add: Why would anyone think there's anything suspicious about the Iowa caucus results?
So many of these stories are just "Sanders supporters are stupid to have a chip on their shoulder about being generalized, vilified, and treated with bias; just ignore their grievances. Anyway, here's an article about how fucking TERRIBLE they all are."
It's just tiring now.
Yeah, there's a lot of gaslighting going on. The primary in 2016 was heavily influenced to favor Hillary Clinton at every step of the process. There have been reforms (championed by Sanders delegates at the convention) but even still, supporters are rightfully wary.
The strawmanning I find with that is, like this article, people are arguing against a massive, complicated conspiracy that few if any people are actually presenting.
The same happened in 2016. The DNC had a clear preference for Hillary Clinton and against her challengers, Sanders especially. This manifested in advanced knowledge of the debate questions, a low number of total debates, and using superdelegates to present the primary as decided well before it actually was. But, some people might have thought the DNC actually rigged the voting, so that's the conspiracy theory people are presenting as though it were mainstream to, ironically, ridicule and exclude Sanders supporters.
Why is party unity only important when it comes to certain candidates, anyway?
The post is literally in response to an article presenting just that in a major publication.
That is an extremely generous use of the term "major publication."
Surely I'm not the only one who sees the irony in generalizing everyone criticizing Sanders in this way huh?
You'll notice, at no point did this post generalize to ALL Sanders supporters. It specifically pointed out a specific article in an actual journalistic outlet saying ridiculous stuff and pointed out how it's ridiculous. If you interpret this as being completely beyond the pale, then it's hard to imagine any criticism of literally any person who alleges support for Sanders that would be "legitimate" in your eyes. You chose to identify yourself as part of the group being criticized even though they left it pretty broad and open to interpretation as to who they're talking about.
This kind of thin skinned reaction where people pretend very normal and typical kinds of attacks on person are completely unprecedented is what so many people find so tiresome.
Sigh.
I didn't generalize everyone criticizing Sanders. Nor did I call this "beyond the pale," or that there are no legitimate criticisms of Sanders. The extent of my "thin skinned" reaction is that I'm tired of seeing so many segments and articles like these (and people spreading them) acting as though they're tackling a major issue. I mean, this article's title is implying this is as bad or worse than Pizzagate.
I don’t see very many segments or articles like these. Maybe you shouldn’t actively seek things out that you’re sick of?
Or maybe, people are just as sick of seeing these kinds of conspiracy theories poisoning the well of leftist discourse and want people to stop embarrassing themselves with this kind of thing?
And it backs it up. . .
I could not ask for a better example to show you why I think you ought to examine your own behavior.
And who is really "poisoning the well of leftist discourse?" One article from, as far as I can tell, a fairly obscure if well-funded clickbait website, exaggerated an inarguably bungled caucus, which itself was seized on for a blog post, which was posted here, hot on the heels of another thread that devolved into Bernie-bashing getting locked.
As for the Pizzagate comparison, no, it doesn't come close to backing up that this is as bad or worse. Pizzagate was invented from whole cloth, made not only zero sense but was demonstrably false, it played into paranormal conspiracy theories, it was actually seized upon by a considerable number of right-wingers, and it led to shooting. I genuinely don't know what to tell you if you think these two are comparable, except that I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion unless you really, really wanted to end up there, and aren't too picky as to how.
Finally, to answer your question, I actually did actively avoid threads like these, but I didn't want the toxicity and, frankly, bullying to go unanswered. It was just too much at a certain point, from an online community I genuinely expected better of.
Good to know but I'm not seeing how it adds up to a bias against Sanders. Are the caucus results somehow a worse reflection of what Democrats in Iowa wanted than they would have been if the poll results had been released?
I would strongly encourage broadening your media diet. It's actually quite easy to cherry pick a vast mountain of "evidence" to validate any particular view of media bias if you explicitly go out searching for things to validate the perspective.
We know the media has its biases, but the extra step that takes things into crazy town is the belief that this is some kind of structured, orchestrated plan being executed rather than the media just doing as the media always does. There are narratives about Warren and Buttigieg erasure as well, being as how neither got as much attention out of Iowa as they deserved. And prior candidates, like Castro and Booker, have LOTS to be angry about considering how much attention was lavished on Biden and completely sucked the oxygen out of the room for them.
In some ways, getting cable news nonsense filtered through agenda-driven news sources might actually be even worse for getting a sense for what "the media" is thinking. The news is on 24/7 and their prime motivation is filling up time. They're lazy thinkers and shoddy researchers because they aren't focused on journalism so much as hot takes. It's basically just Twitter with a "appeal to normies in waiting rooms" filter.
In an environment like that people throw out lots of random hot takes and poorly supported claims. You can support basically any narrative because there is just so much nonsense.
The poll in question is pretty influential and could have given Sanders a boost, but it's impossible to really know for sure if it would have or how much it would have helped.
Where was this reported, do you know?
Here's a Politico article that talks about it: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/01/des-moines-register-poll-not-released-after-apparent-mishap-110284
Thanks!
While it's true that conspiratorial thinking is problematic, no matter the position you start from or end up at, I think it's important to keep in mind that there was concrete evidence of bias against Sanders from the very top of the DNC in the 2016 presidential campaign. Sure, Wasserman Schultz resigned, and Brazile apologized. But I don't think it's beyond the pale to think that DNC bias against Sanders has somehow been magically eradicated.
I'm not saying that the issues in Iowa are a result of DNC bias—the evidence is not compelling to me.
However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Anti-Sanders bias exists, and some of it comes from within the Democratic Party establishment. Recall that Sanders has not been affiliated with the Democratic Party for a substantial portion of his political career, and in course of American politics its not unfathomable that the establishment of the Democratic Party have learned to look at Sanders as an outsider. Whether that perspective leads to any significant resentment or even malice is an open, but not unreasonable question.
I'm not sure how focused or coherent of an entity you think the "Democratic Party Establishment" is. It's basically a bunch of fairly dumb people who happen to be rich and they're run by the children of big donors who nepotismed their way into gigs that are often well beyond their abilities (the GOP is, somehow, even worse!). The whole machine is kept running by ambitious and well meaning interns and ops professionals that nobody actually invests in developing or bothers listening to.
This isn't an organization that can competently "rig" anything at a national level and it's rife with internal factionalism. Almost any actual operational work gets done at the state and local level by state and local parties which range from being well-run machines to being completely corrupt cults of personality around local high-school cliquey politics depending on where you are. Almost every irregularity or suspicious behavior you notice is less centralized DNC rigging and more some asshole in a county level office somewhere trying to swing their dicks around.
There is anti-Sanders bias, but there is ALSO anti-Clinton bias and anti-Warren bias and anti-Biden bias and everything else. It's a big tent of a party with lots of groups in it that are all arguing with each other, so different groups will naturally have biases against each other.
Just to be clear, you realize nobody actually liked Wasserman Schultz right? The DNC chairmanship was basically a sinecure people gave her to shut her up and Obama didn't really do anything about her because he didn't want to deal with it and he figured Clinton had it in the bag (Sanders announced very late and it didn't look like he was going to accomplish much beyond being a Mike Gravel style gadfly candidate) so it didn't seem worth worrying about how competently a consequence-free primary process was going to be run.
The gist is, you're talking like she's part of some coherent group of people with a fixed agenda when she was really just a fairly terrible manager for very ordinary reasons. The fact is, there is bias against every candidate and part of being a skillful politician is not letting it mess with you. Obama was also an outsider candidate that most of the DC machine did not like (Clinton was their favorite even then). He got over it too, and he did it in large part by not bitching about it constantly and focusing on changing that. It's a lot easier to eventually get people on your side when you can acknowledge that they're allowed to have opinions about what you're doing and how you're conducting yourself without immediately going scorched Earth on them.
So, you think it's a coincidence that Wasserman Shultz, and her direct replacement, both were caught criticizing Sanders in private communications that were leaked? It's true that we have a small sample size, but these are people who were at the top of the DNC. You can claim Wasserman Schultz and Brazile were figureheads, or that the DNC and Democratic establishment as a whole are unorganized and ineffectual. I'm not going to dispute that. All I'm saying is that there is documented, though anecdotal, evidence of anti-Sanders sentiment from within the upper echelons of the party according to its ostensible structure. I'm not saying its a conspiracy. I'm just saying that there are people, in and outside the Democratic Party, some of whom have a lot of influence in politics, who don't want Sanders to win the nomination, much less the presidency.
Edit: To be clear, I don't even like Sanders that much, and don't personally agree with some of his policy proposals. And I truly don't think he is the Democrats' best shot at beating Trump in the general election. But, I'm not blind, and I think it's stupid for the party to alienate Sanders' supporters because we need more progressive leaders on the left, and I am not naive enough to realize that a lot of the progressive movement in the US is again resting their hopes on Sanders (as they did in 2016). I think Warren is a better candidate, and she is who I'll vote for in the primary. If Sanders wins the primary, I'll surely vote for him in the general, but I think he'll be torn apart.
The thing is though, people are allowed to have opinions. People are also allowed to express those opinions to each other in private conversations. What's the actual malfeasance you're trying to allege here? What is actually disqualifying about not liking Sanders? Did any of this translate to an systemically unfair process? The worst thing we ever heard of was that someone on the Clinton campaign might have gotten wind of the fact that there might be a question about Climate Change during one of the debates.
If ANY kind reservations about Sanders, even those aired in private get this "how fucking dare you!" treatment then it's hard to imagine any scenario where such people can actually be worked with to accomplish anything. Like, how soft would you have to be to actually get "alienated" by the realization that your guy isn't universally beloved by the very people he's yelling at?
I don’t think it’s about being soft. It’s about being neutral. It’s very hard to lead a party and represent a unified front if you have predetermined the outcome of the primary.
Having private conversations where you kvetch about how something is going is a far cry from “predetermining the outcome.”
Well, it’s a far cry from neutrality as well. It doesn’t matter if it’s in private. Normal people are allowed to voice their own opinions in private. Officials in the DNC ought to keep the interests of the party paramount, which includes not disparaging the candidates. You can personally hold whatever views you want, but you should keep them to yourself.
Criticizing the tendency towards self-destructive conspiracy theorizing.
Alright, this argument hasn't made any progress in 4 years. I legitimately don't understand why so many people want to keep repeating it constantly.