From the perspective of Dems who don’t like Bernie, this was almost a best-reasonable-case scenario – Bernie was beaten soundly by a “mainstream” Democrat, without any sort of “shenanigans” like giving debate questions in advance. Barring Bernie from the primary would have done a lot more damage to the party’s future, IMO. I wish Bernie had won, but he didn’t, and this is probably the best way for him to have lost, in the long run.
Perhaps some confusion comes from people forgetting that we have no national elections. What we call the presidential election is actually the process of electing electors for the Electoral College, and it is conducted one state at a time, under individual state laws. The party national conventions are a nice show but they don’t control how the states run their elections.
It occurs to me that there’s a failsafe measure in place, and the best one: the voters. If enough people who register as Democrats decide that they want to vote for Sanders as the Democratic nominee, then by definition he’s the Democratic nominee. And that’s as it should be.
Of course you could have “tricks,” where people who don’t consider themselves Democrats ask for a Democratic ballot and vote for Sanders. I’d counter that that’s not a trick: instead, the Democratic party is defined by the collective votes of the people who call themselves, for whatever reason, a Democrat.
If the party doesn’t like that, then they need to disentangle themselves from the state, stop asking for such privileges as tax-payer-funded primary ballots, and become a private club.
But this is demonstrably not true. If the party wanted to have 10x the number of superdelegates, who aren’t picked by the general public voters, decide the nominee there’s not much the states or the primaries voters can do. The primary selected delegates only have the power they do because the DNC decided that’s the way they want to operate.
The failsafe measure is the general election. If people don’t like the way the national party has nominated the candidate then they don’t vote for her and after an embarrassing loss the leadership is purged and the rules are changed.
Not necessarily. Depending on the state rules, a candidate may associate themselves with a party even if not a member of that party.
Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party
(Someone should check that page, it says in the summary that the ruling was against the parties, and in the detail text that it was in favor though it proceeds to describe a ruling against the parties).
And there’s another thing about that: In the USA, a party’s voters mostly are not “dues-paying, card-carrying members”–excluding membership in affiliate organizations like the College Republicans or Young Democrats–at the level of individuals, just people who say they are a Republican or Democrat or support the respective platform, at most who are registered with the Elections Board as one or the other for the purpose of voting in the closed primary.
I keep seeing comments that suggest the US is unique in this regard. How are political parties in democracies organized elsewhere?
For point 1: I don’t see that. It says it favored the blanket-primary that allowed the candidate to declare their preferred party.
For point 2: Under the Washington election rules, you declare yourself to be a Libertarian. The Libertarian Party of Washington says you cannot run as a Libertarian because
[ul]
[li]You are not a registered Libertarian[/li][li]You did not jump through their hoops to their endorsement[/li][li]Your politics are so different from their that Libertarian Party does not want to be associated with you [this is the major issue involved. Don’t political parties have a right of association too?] [/li][/ul]
The ruling says too bad for them. You can call yourself a Libertarian because
[ul]
[li]The Libertarian Party is not compelled to nominate you [non-partisan blanket primaries have candidate run against each other without party nominations][/li][li]The Libertarian Party is not compelled to be associated with you if it doesn’t want to.[/li][/ul]
In Canada, we don’t have mass primaries to nominate a party candidate for the general election. Instead, the party has an organisation in each constituency (called «ridings» informally). That local party organisation nominates the candidate for their riding. That local riding association is composed of people who have applied for a party membership and paid the fee to belong. The nomination is done by the members of the local riding association, not by the public at large. The riding association has to comply with some filing requirements with the Chief Electoral Officer, but the rules for the nomination process are left entirely to the party. The government has no input into the process.
538 had a whole podcast series about this. In some countries, for example Denmark (which, ironically, Bernie loves to tout as a good government), a single party leader picks all nominees for every contest. The equivalent here would be if Tom Perez personally chose every nominee for every race for governor, House, or Senate (not sure if it would extend even to lower offices). Obviously Denmark is a smaller country so this is less unwieldy, but it certainly does not involve the democratic process many people here seem to think is so crucial. Personally, I’d prefer a system like that in Denmark. Or to go back to the “smoke-filled rooms” (preferably without the smoke). Parties have given up way too much power.
I thought it was clear I meant, why are there not hundreds of names on a *primary *ballot? I’m aware of the rules about getting on general election ballots. But in New Hampshire or South Carolina in particular, when presidential years come around, I think there would be a huge number of people who would want to be on those primary ballots if all they had to do was pay a few hundred or even a few thousand for a filing fee.
Even if it were completely disingenuous, like the thought experiment I provided of Don Jr. running as a “Democrat”? If you think this is too absurd, that they wouldn’t go that far, you’re not paying attention. They will do *anything *they can just barely technically get away with.
Usually petitions are required, signed by party members, across the jurisdiction, and party members can only sign one petition for an office. Having worked on collecting such signatures I can tell you it is not easy. So it’s more than simply paying a filing fee. Even if it was just a filing fee the ballots aren’t going to get crowded, it’s not worth the effort to end up with just your family and you voting for you. In many locations there are perennial contenders, especially in the lower state and local offices where the requirements may be easy to meet. It just doesn’t amount to hundreds of people.
Presidential primaries don’t determine who gets on the ballot, they determine what happens at a political party’s privately-organized convention. And they only determine that to the extent that the party says they do.
There were a lot of people on the New Hampshire ballot, just not hundreds. They let pretty much anyone file for $1000, no petition requirement AFAIK, and there were 33 Democrats and 17 Republicans on the ballot this year.
In South Carolina, the parties are allowed to act as gatekeepers. Stephen Colbert ran into this when he tried to put his joke candidacy on the ballot.
I don’t believe that’s true.
In Washington State Grange v Washington State Republican Party SCOTUS threw out the following argument.
Respondent political parties claim that the new law, on its face, violates a party’s associational rights by usurping its right to nominate its own candidates and by forcing it to associate with candidates it does not endorse.
While this is all correct, it omits the fact that the party leader (PM or leader of one of the opposition parties) can veto the choice of the riding association and substitute their own candidate. Doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. The leader could, legally, choose the candidate in every riding.
To hijack the thread a bit, keeping Bernie away would have damaged the Dems enormously. Bernie learned his lesson in 2016 and has now given unreserved support to Joe.