People don’t like Democrats, the problem is the lack of an alternative. There are only two electoral alternatives to Democrats that aren’t the “even worse” option of Republicans:
Run a candidate to the left of Democrats in a Democratic primary, and
Create a third party.
There are major issues with both. There are even bigger issues with non-electoral political action.
Democrats have no legal requirement to run fair primaries or primaries at all. If the leadership doesn’t like the way it’s going, they could just reject the results and choose someone in a smoke-filled room, or, more likely, they could put their finger on the scale in various ways up to and including outright manipulation, and there’s zero legal recourse, even if you can prove it, it doesn’t matter.
If you wanna do democratic entryism, you gotta have an actual threat for if they screw you, you can’t just do what Bernie did and roll over. Part of the reason that the Republican leadership allowed Trump is because there was a credible threat both that the candidate would run third party, and that the voters would follow him. Contrary to the popular narrative that “Republicans fall in line,” the last major third party candidate was Ross Perot who split the Republican vote. Ultimately, it’s probably not possible because the Democratic base is much more conditioned by “reason” and will get upset if you suggest such tactics, while the Republicans are willing to throw a fit and make demands, which gives them a better bargaining position.
I’m not saying Democrats run fair primaries. That article makes the point that even if you run and win as a third party, your new party won’t be able to hold members to a party line. If it’s already near-impossible to win as a third party and doing so leaves you with such a huge problem anyway, it’s not worth it.
If you wanna do democratic entryism, you gotta have an actual threat for if they screw you
I think the appropriate threat (at least right now) for Dems jobbing a primary is for the entryist candidate to not endorse the winner or encourage their supporters to vote for the winner. A “if you screw over my candidate, I won’t vote for you” approach. People already withhold votes in the general for just not liking the primary winner enough.
Just like you need a threat to get a hostile party apparatus to take you seriously, you need to compromise some to actually win mass support. “Give me exactly what I’ll try to spike your chances in the general” is a good place to compromise, because that wins few people over and probably crystallizes some of your opposition.
Based on that link, I think it’s harder to keep Democratic candidates off Democratic primary ballots than it is to keep third parties off general election ballots.
Anecdotally, this tracks. Bernie was a long-time independent who Democrats would have loved to keep out of the primaries in 2016 and 2020, but they couldn’t. Meanwhile (as you point out) de la Cruz faced all sorts of ballot access challenges in 2024.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/16/politics/cnn-poll-democrats/index.html
People don’t like Democrats, the problem is the lack of an alternative. There are only two electoral alternatives to Democrats that aren’t the “even worse” option of Republicans:
There are major issues with both. There are even bigger issues with non-electoral political action.
We had de la Cruz in solidly red states, Dems sued to keep her off ballots in swing states.
I’d take a look at this overview of how political parties are allowed to operate in the U.S. For me, it settles the question of “run as a third party or run in Democratic primaries” decisively in favor of the latter.
Democrats have no legal requirement to run fair primaries or primaries at all. If the leadership doesn’t like the way it’s going, they could just reject the results and choose someone in a smoke-filled room, or, more likely, they could put their finger on the scale in various ways up to and including outright manipulation, and there’s zero legal recourse, even if you can prove it, it doesn’t matter.
If you wanna do democratic entryism, you gotta have an actual threat for if they screw you, you can’t just do what Bernie did and roll over. Part of the reason that the Republican leadership allowed Trump is because there was a credible threat both that the candidate would run third party, and that the voters would follow him. Contrary to the popular narrative that “Republicans fall in line,” the last major third party candidate was Ross Perot who split the Republican vote. Ultimately, it’s probably not possible because the Democratic base is much more conditioned by “reason” and will get upset if you suggest such tactics, while the Republicans are willing to throw a fit and make demands, which gives them a better bargaining position.
I’m not saying Democrats run fair primaries. That article makes the point that even if you run and win as a third party, your new party won’t be able to hold members to a party line. If it’s already near-impossible to win as a third party and doing so leaves you with such a huge problem anyway, it’s not worth it.
I think the appropriate threat (at least right now) for Dems jobbing a primary is for the entryist candidate to not endorse the winner or encourage their supporters to vote for the winner. A “if you screw over my candidate, I won’t vote for you” approach. People already withhold votes in the general for just not liking the primary winner enough.
Just like you need a threat to get a hostile party apparatus to take you seriously, you need to compromise some to actually win mass support. “Give me exactly what I’ll try to spike your chances in the general” is a good place to compromise, because that wins few people over and probably crystallizes some of your opposition.
So why were Dems allowed to keep Claudia off the ballots?
Based on that link, I think it’s harder to keep Democratic candidates off Democratic primary ballots than it is to keep third parties off general election ballots.
Anecdotally, this tracks. Bernie was a long-time independent who Democrats would have loved to keep out of the primaries in 2016 and 2020, but they couldn’t. Meanwhile (as you point out) de la Cruz faced all sorts of ballot access challenges in 2024.
There wasn’t a Dem primary last election.
Because no one ran on the Democratic ticket opposing Biden.
Thanks, I’ll do that.