During the primaries is when covid hit, chaos ensued, the primaries were cut short, right in the tails of (all perfectly legal) fuckery by the centrists and Warren. I’m not saying that’s some conspiracy shit about covid or that it was planned or anything, just that it was crazy, chaotic, no one knew what was going on. There was a plague on. What I am saying is that with 8 years of no real, full primaries I do not think the entrenched powers that be within the Democratic party are going to relinquish the amount of control they gained by cutting primaries short. The Democrats have always had a problem with primaries, and letting the people actually pick the candidates. That’s why they love their superdelegates so much, it gives the party the power to overrule the people. Limiting the primaries further (again, after giving people 8 years to get used to it, even if it wasn’t planned or intentional) is just an extension of party control over the candidate. Primaries are not elections, there’s no requirement that the private corporations that call themselves political parties give us a choice as to the candidate they run, and I see no reason why they would not limit that as much as possible to protect their interests. There is a balancing act within the party: how much control and power can we hold while not pissing off the base so much that they abandon us?

With the tactic of ‘vote for us or watch your loved ones die or end up in camps’ combined with taking advantage of situations like the aftermath of a chaotic and unavoidably cut short primary season, the answer is “quite a lot”