2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Way America Picks Presidential Nominees Is Dumb
The U.S. has a primary system that prioritizes parties ahead of voters
The South Carolina and Nevada primaries are approaching and Super Tuesday so named during the U.S. bicentennial year to make the party primary process sound like a meritocratic sporting event looms. At this point in the election season, it seems we can draw at least one conclusion: The major party primaries are the biggest scam foisted on American democracy since the founders cooked up the Electoral College.
The primaries cement the importance of the two major political parties in the American system. This importance is unearned and, aside from the right of assembly, has no place in the U.S. Constitution. The idea that the most qualified or effective president and federal representatives would be those chosen by either the Democrats or Republicans to go head-to-head in the general election is a sham. Democrats and Republicans may have dramatic differences, but they have colluded to bamboozle the country. The primary process is Byzantine, undemocratic, un-American and ineffective.
The biggest problem with the primary system is that it prioritizes parties ahead of voters. In a Boston Globe explainer, Evan Horowitz laments that primary voters don't even have real authority to choose their party nominees. "Voters have no constitutional right to decide the winner." Which is true, but misses the larger point, which is that the Constitution spells out no roles for parties to be involved in the first place.
A political party is nothing more than a private club with exceedingly low standards for entry. It's harder for an unskilled practitioner to join a bowling league than it is for a vegan communist to join the GOP in cattle country.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-way-america-picks-presidential-nominees-is-dumb-20160216#ixzz40MwMHDEM
AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)says this: "Tough!"
frazzled
(18,402 posts)We're not running a general election here. Primaries ARE PRECISELY for each party to choose their nominee. If you want to start a Pooty Party or a Social Democratic Party (there is one, I think still), you can have your own primary.
If you want the system changed to a no-party primary system, argue for that. Just a bunch of people with a bunch of ideas, from far right to far left, and no political structure behind them running altogether in a giant, single race. Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, all together. And the top two get to face off in a general. It could end up being Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
In Britain, there is no primary process at all. There are leaders of each political party. Whichever party wins a majority in the House of Commons gets to have their leader become the Prime Minister. In essence, there is no direct election of the PM by the vote of the people. So you have to choose your party allegiance pretty carefully--you get a twofer: a member of Parliament and a PM, if your party takes the majority.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Yes. Mostly with bigger delegate counts than Iowa and NH, but it's not the 20 some that has happened in the past and really prematurely ended the primary season.
Seems are rapidly approaching the end of the Democratic party as it's known. Even Picketty sees the curtain coming down on this show.
The biggest thing holding dems together was the notion that pro-labor progressives had no place to go because of the necessity of corporate money.
Sanders has turned that argument into ashes.