Rather, the Democratic rules grant the party more say in a system that is also open to nonmembers having a say. The American caucus/primary system is pretty unique at way, as parties in other countries prefer to keep their candidate selection process limited to dues-paying members.
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There have been semi-successful attempts to get rid of them though. Seperation of church and state may be a bigger issue.
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This is a really fascinating discussion. I knew that American attitudes towards parties and their understanding of democracy are very different from what I am used to and that the many technical differences result in very different dynamics, but it can be stunning to see just how extreme those differences are.
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When did Goldwater become President?
NixonâŚ
He was in office because heâd already beaten Humphrey once (when a load of right wing Dems decided to vote for Wallace). Do you think heâd have lost to Humphrey in 1972? (Iâm assuming here that Humphrey would have been the candidate instead of McGovern, not MuskieâŚ).
McGovern would have had a better chance if it hadnât been for the Democrats for Nixon. Funny how McGovern gets slated for being âunelectableâ, rather than the Moderate/Centrist Dems getting slated for voting for the other guy. See also the blame Nader gets for the result in 2000, not the Dems who voted for Bush.
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The majority of those rules expire at the end of each election cycle, and have to be re-voted on for each convention. That particular rule is among them. So it can be removed or altered just as easily as it was added. There was a whole segment on that, on TRMS the other night.
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I hate to tell you this but thatâs not her duty.
Iâm a Sanders supporter, I voted for him in the primary, but it is shocking to me how little people understand this process and how parties are NOT held to the same rules as general elections.
Superdelegates exist because of the McGovern disaster in the 1970âs (and I was also a McGovern supporter). He was a candidate like Sanders at a time when that was a losing position. Superdelegates were created to vote the PARTYâS best interests and moderate the passions of the base voters. Donald Trump is what happens when you donât have them.
So the latest meme out of the Sanders camp, that they HAVE to vote the way their states voted or they are immoral, is bull hockey. Parties donât have to use elections to choose their candidates at all. That only dates from the Watergate reforms, which superdelegates were created in reaction to how those reforms failed.
You might not like that, and if you donât, your proper course is not to gripe about it and try to ambush delegates. Get off your ass! Vote in every election. If you didnât vote between 2008 and this year, then you really donât care as much as you think you do. Congress is the mess YOU made. Get involved in the party and work to build a constituency for changing the process. But please donât tell me you need the rules to be broken just because youâre not winning. Thatâs just whining.
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Established the EPA, tried to get universal health care, defused tensions with ChinaâŚwhy exactly would Nixon be so much worse than Clinton? Theyâre remarkably close on the ideological spectrum.
Sure, he was for unlimited executive power, never met a civilian he didnât want to bomb and was as crooked as a three-dollar bill, but again: how does that differ from Clinton?
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Does this make you disappointed in Boing Boing?
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No. How about you?
Iâm never disappointed in Boing Boing, only amused.
Iâve actually had a shit fight on twitter with Cory before on open source politics too (and we both apologized for getting hot tempered).
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See, thats just a ridiculous sentiment. Democrats who voted for Bush WANTED Bush. Blithe Nader fans presumably do NOT want Bush, and should, if they are sentient human beings, realize that a Gore presidency is much more in line with their political sentiments than a Bush presidency.
Think I jumped in here without reading enough up thread. Jumping back out.
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This thread is reminding me of the 1980 election, and John Anderson.
He got less than 7% of the general vote, but that was actually a big deal at the time and so everyone thought this was the start of finally having more than a two-party system. Weâve seen how well that worked out in the following 35 years.
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The point being that Gore was a crap candidate who ran a crap campaign, picked a crap running mate and lost votes all over the place to an idiot (admittedly, only with the help of said idiotâs brother and the supreme court).
It wasnât the fault of Green party voters that he lost. It was his fault. And if Clinton loses (spoiler: she wonât) itâll be her fault too.
The amusing parallel is that in 2000, while Gore ran a campaign as if embarrassed by being Bill Clintonâs VP, Hillary was getting elected to the Senate.
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So, you mustâve been just overjoyed to get 8 years of Bush rather than that âcrapâ candidate?
Alternative question:
If you are a monkey in a cage, and the lab technician gives you a choice of 1 banana or 0 bananas, do you take 0 bananas because you really wanted 2 bananas?
Whose fault was 2004? Sometimes your chosen candidate just isnât good/popular enough. Thatâs how democracies work - you need to forge a coalition and sometimes you canât. You have to earn peopleâs votes (again, I think Clinton will win the popular vote and the electoral college).
If you tell people they have to vote for the least worst option, youâre saying that no party to the left of the Democrats should exist. Do you really feel that way?
I donât like bananas. Iâll take none because fuck your experiment, monkey prison guard.
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This is like arguing with a 12th century Catholic about whether you worship God or Satan because, obviously, those are your only two choicesâŚ
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A structural change that would leave the election process feeling the same for American voters, but not require permission from the party machines, would be to institute a national primary, in like the first week of June or so, with all the candidates from all the parties on it, within reason, where through an instant-runoff process the whole list is reduced to two, who go on to a general election in November.
No conventions, no caucuses, no superdelegates, bye bye.
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How can it not require permission from the parties as to how they pick their partyâs nominees? Unless you mean just put any candidate who is âseriousâ according to some criterion on the ballot and ignore any party endorsement, but (a) what criterion would you choose? The same ones used by the networks to decide who got to debate? and (b) doesnât this just effectively turn the national primary into the first step of a 2-step general election, with the party primaries determining which of their candidates is the one that isnât required by the party to decline to participate in the national primary?
Some states already have nonpartisan primaries. It doesnât seem to be much of a problem. If the question is, âWhat would we do without parties to nominate candidates for us?â then the answer is weâd be fine, really.
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