Bernie’s “Plurality Must Win”
spiel is eliciting some pretty lame responses from the other Democratic
presidential candidates. Heard most often is, “Everybody ought to play by the
rules.” But Sanders isn’t saying that “Candidate
with plurality of elected delegates get the nomination” should be an official rule,
exactly. He’s saying that for other candidates to bow out in favor of the
plurality-winner would be the democratic thing to do.
One not-quite-as-lame
counterargument, which so far I’ve heard only from Biden, is to point out that by this standard 2016 Bernie
should have deferred to Hillary long before he did.
But a stronger approach
would question the “democratic thing to do” premise itself – something like
this:
“Wait a minute. This isn’t a personal beauty contest. It’s a
discussion about the ideas, policies and positions that are now the best for
shaping this country’s future. Let’s
suppose as the convention approaches there are two remaining candidates who want to eliminate all existing private
health insurance and three who would strengthen and improve the ACA
instead. And let’s suppose the Medicare-for-all
candidates have 30% and 10% of the delegates respectively. And suppose the strengthen-ACA candidates are
20-20-20. Does that mean that Medicare-for-all,
despite losing 40 to 60, is the democratic choice?”
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