The Elephant in the Room - how Party Primaries mean Non-Democracy!

Many of those of us who are deeply into our support of Bernie Sanders are fully aware of the fact that he is far more electable than Hillary Clinton.

We are aware of the fact that not once but twice, the highly esteemed Pew Research Survey has concluded that both Major Parties are now in disrepair.

In both 2008 and then again in 2015, the Pew Research Survey found that those voters who consider themselves totally loyal to either party are part of a dwindling population.

I have posted these numbers before, but will do again:

Among all registered voters, those totally loyal to the Democratic Party are about 34 to 36% of the total number of voters.

The Republicans who are loyalists fare even worse - they are only 22 to 26% of the total number of voters.

Now it might be that were the Research Folks from Pew do a new survey, they might find that the number of those voters considering themselves to be Democrats are rising. However, this rise is due to Bernie Sanders being in the race for the Nation's Highest Office. Should Sanders not make it, what then?

So in any event about 40% of the voting populace are "indies."

This number is larger than the number that belongs to each party. And is of itself a new type of majority.

To any student of election cycles, this huge population of indie voters is what makes this election cycle so interesting. With a full 40% of the voting population not available to the political machinations of the Democratic or Republican Party Leaders, the two party system is facing a hell of a challenge.

Furthermore, students of election cycles understand that the main thing that ensures the success in this or that candidate reaching the Oval Office has to do with the cross over voters. Obama got into the White House precisely because of the fact that he garnered a huge number of indie voters. Whoever is to gain the WH this year must accomplish the same exact capture of the cross over voters that President Obama succeeded in capturing.

As any regular reader of topics here on DU knows, the last few weeks have featured a barrage of topics up on Bernie Sanders chances of winning this or that primary challenge.

But since much of Sanders' support lies more with the indie crowd than with the "D" party's loyalist crowd, there needs to be a serious discussion of what this absolute control of over a candidate's ability to become a viable Presidential possibility actually means to the electorate.

Democracy, where has it gone?