First Florida, now Michigan.
:dubious: Are they really going to make this stick? Reduce certain states’ primaries to pointless symbolic exercises? Why does the DCN have any investment in Iowa & New Hampshire’s caucus/primary-date supremacy anyhow?
Are the primaries really any more than “pointless symbolic exercises”?
They all eventually lead up to the electoral college choosing a president anyway, but that’s probably not germane to the question.
Now California’s up to something. I missed it. Dang!
Peace,
mangeorge
Eventually eventually, but mainly they lead up to the party’s national convention choosing a candidate. Which does matter, don’t you think?
I don’t like it much, its too authoritarian, too centralized. And way too open a precedent, leaving leverage for political *jiu-jitsu * that thwarts rather than embodies the will of the party at large. Its not democratic, and that ought not to be Democratic.
I guess. I’m just grumpy because I’d really like to actually elect the president.
Well, I’m all for abolishing the electoral college and replacing it with a direct popular vote (ideally, by instant-runoff voting), but that’s a completely different debate from primary scheduling.
Oh, and I forgot – link to story.
This is an absolute mistake!
As I’ve said on another thread, states should not be running elections for private organizations which is what the DNP and RNP truly are (I think there are a couple of SCOTUS decisions about right of association saying the same thing). A blanket primary where anyone can run and the top two vote-getters get to the general election is fine - but when a national party tells the states when to hold elections, then the states are going to start saying, “Run (and pay for) your own damn elections!”
Keep the primaries, drop the freakin’ conventions. The primaries will give us our candidates.
There I go again. :rolleyes:
That’s what we do in Canada, by the way. Seems to work pretty well.
According to this article, the DNC’s decision to strip Florida of its convention delegates and bar presidential candidates from campaigning here is posing a serious obstacle to Florida Dems’ organizing efforts – which might ultimately lose the Dem candidate a crucial swing state next November. And now they want to repeat the mistake on Michigan?!
Why does the DNC care whether Iowa and New Hampshire get to have their caucus/primary sooner than any other state?!
This is something I really want to hear an answer to. Why do they have this stranglehold?
And how can the parties legally take delegates away from states? In theory then, couldn’t the DNC just write it into their by-laws that the only state that can have delegates at the convention is Idaho (or whatever)?
The constitution doesn’t even say anything about political parties, let alone the idea of only having two of them.
So, in theory, could both of the two current political parties write it into their bylaws that the only people allowed to cast votes to decide the presidential candidate are residents of-- say-- Mitchell, South Dakota? And if you wanted to actually be a part of picking the presidential candidate, you’d have to move to Mitchell, or else just accept whoever those Mitchell residents decided on?
And what recourse do we, as voters, have in changing party rules? Does joining the party mean we have a say in setting party rules? Or is it done behind closed doors by party insiders?
In Europe there’s such thing as “membership” in a political party; you join, you pay dues and you get a membership card. It doesn’t work that way here, never has. You can register as a voter for one party or the other, but that just means you get to vote in its primary. (Some voters register for the party they oppose just for the chance to mess up its nominating process.) If you want more say than that, you can always join the local DEC or REC, but then you have to actually attend those boring monthly meetings if you want to make any difference.
Oh, don’t I know it. My uncle Jack lives there.
It just strikes me as odd that the two major political parties have so much power in the process of picking the presidential candidates, but voters have very little control of the parties themselves. I don’t know if I’m saying that right.
This party scheme we’ve cooked up here just seems to be a bit nutso.
There’s a conflict reflected in this between the Democratic Party leadership and the “base” (if such a term is sensible for a herd of cats).
The DNC (which will serve as shorthand for “the leadership”) is decidedly more “centrist”, a term I fear has become a debased currency, politically. What they end up with is being Republican Lite, they are still operating in a reality where centrism ruled and think to win elections, it is best to play a cozy Tweedledee to Tweedledumb.
But the situation, for good or ill (ok - ill), is sharply polarized, we live in interesting times, the kind that try souls and vex the reasonable. The 2000 election made sense that way, we were sold center-left against (what we thought) center-right. (God forgive, I had no idea what a bummer George Bush would prove to be…hadn’t the shadow of an inkling.)
They still operate out of that playbook, and they strongly back Hillary, and they approve of her somewhat hawkish stance. The mechanisms, the money, and the rule book are in her favor, but the people may well be slipping away, they are tilting the playing field in her favor whereever it is possible without being too obvious about it.
This requires authority on the part of the DNC and the central leadership, an authority they need to assert early and often if they are to retain credibility. These seemingly silly struggles are about the legitimacy of that authority: if the party leadership can interpret the rules, they can decide the candidate.
Its also, I think, a rather half-hearted attempt to adapt some of the party discipline enjoyed by the Forces of Darkness, almost at the very instant that it comes unglued.
I think they’re snakebit, I think things have gone badly for so long they don’t have the confidence to be realistic, they are convinced that their advantage will dissolve the instant that they press on it So they want to be utterly centrist and lean just enough to the left to keep the hopping mad liberal wing in harness.
I fully support the DNC in this effort. Could they do the same in NY, CA, and IL? That’d be great, thanks.
Opinions from unspecified locations don’t count.
Thanks.
I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.