Caucuses exist because they are much cheaper than primaries. Most states that have moved to caucuses have done so, because they are all volunteer run. The states don’t even engage their own electoral staff to oversee them.
I don’t think that’s correct. From what I can see most have switched to caucuses to have more control over the timing. It’s true that for the most part, the state pays for primaries the parties pay for caucuses.
Caucuses are unfair because most of them require you to assemble at a particular time and the location may not be nearby. While many are on a Tuesday night, some are on Saturday. Hawaii had theirs on a Saturday night, over Easter weekend! Sanders won, but I didn’t hear any Clinton people whining even though that’s an awful time to have a caucus.
Also, really fanatical supporters can show up early and make it difficult to get in to the caucus location.
Go wash your mouth out with soap.
Regards,
Shodan
I guess Woody is a prophet. 
Not exactly the subject matter I’d choose for a graduation address, but then I’m not him.
Gargle, gargle, gargle. Yuck!
It’s not helping.
Sheesh, no wonder Dennis Miller is starving, he’s too hip for the room.
Wheres’ the phone number? Ah!..“Fatted Calfs 'R Us, for all your Prodigal Party needs!”…get an estimate.
Shodan, you are the kind of voter that every democracy badly needs: country before party.
Respects,
Piper
Be sure to invite P. J. O’Rourke and lay in Scotch!
Oh, I dunno. Get kinda tired of his stories about how he was a pot-smoking hippie but then wised up and became an alcoholic.
Going “Bernie or Bust” is a guaranteed way to reduce your influence. If Hillary still wins, Democrats can shrug and say “whatever: we don’t need you, and we obviously can’t count on you”. And if Hillary loses, the Democrats who stay loyal to the ticket will be super pissed, and a lot of the people doing it will slink away in shame and vow not to repeat their mistake. Go take a look at the Wikipedia entries for the 2000 and then the 2004 elections. Ralph Nader ran both times, but he got a tiny fraction in 2004 of the votes he got in 2000.
There is no version of the story that ends with its increasing power and influence for your faction. It is nothing more or less than a pure example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Tribal loyalties are terrific for sports fans, but rather less terrific for politics and the future quality of your nation.
I am glad that Sanders is holding The Democratic establishment’s feet to the fire. But it seems to me that the party’s focus right now should be winning down ticket elections and taking the house away from the GOP. It could happen.
Can you explain how you can hold both of those beliefs at the same time?
Yes down tickets elections are vital, Senate as a very possible flip and the House as a long shot but, like you said, could happen. Clinton with that would make significant progress in the direction of progressive goals; without it … less progress; Trump with a GOP congress … the stuff of nightmares.
Do Sanders’ slanders that the Democratic Party is controlled by a crooked and corrupt “Establishment”, his portraying most in the party as an enemy to be fought against, his promotion of crazed conspiracy theories, his promise to take this fight to the convention floor, his lack of clear condemnation for the behavior of those who claim to be his supporters at Nevada and following, his stated lack of concern about whether or not this hurts the ticket, etc., help or hurt winning those down ticket elections?
Excluded middle. It might not (and I suspect it will not) do anything at all.
Hmmm. js …
Two circumstances -
a) Sanders kept up the focus of his campaign how it had been at the start, not his current mantra of unfair decks stacked against him by the crooked Democratic Party, but a focus on issues and pivoted by now to reinforcing how much he and Clinton agree. A push from a month before now to making the case “When I win, and even if somehow I do not, this movement must stay involved in getting whichever one of us is our nominee elected and electing a Congress that can allow agenda to happen. Progress is not by the President alone. We must throw out the obstructionist GOP congress.”
b) Sanders works up a froth that Democratic leadership is corrupt, unfair, untrustworthy, and in the pocket of Big Business, and he by so doing discourages bonding of the independents and the often non-voters he has attracted to come out and vote for him to the party overall.
No difference between the results?
I think little to none. I think there is a strain in the American populace that simply wants change. Cue those people who were rabid for Obama who now think that he’s the enemy and are for Sanders. If Sanders won, they’d be for whatever superhero ran next. Those people won’t be swayed by Sanders making nice. For them, making nice would just make him a sellout. (And honestly, if Sanders were the nominee, some of these people would become convinced that his nomination meant he wasn’t who he said and was a sellout.)
I also think there are very, very few of these people. Quite a few hang out on the internet, especially in comment sections, though.
You might be right. Or not.
It could be that eventually telling that most rabid cohort to stuff it ends up being HR Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment.”
Personally though I think “option a” would have had significant benefit both up and down the ticket and in getting progressive interests a bigger seat at the table, in the party and in the country as a whole. That opportunity though seems to have already passed.
I just realized that I’m essentially describing a political hipster.