I agree with you. It is a major exhibit in the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department. I am old enough to remember the smoke-filled rooms. Then the good government people started campaigning for primary elections to give the people the choice. What they did not understand is that very few people could be exercised to vote in the primaries and those few were the most militant and often chose the most extreme candidates. It also allowed ratfucking (voting for the weaker candidate in the other party’s primary) which is how a nutter like Bolduc got the nomination.
It might work differently if voting were compulsory, but no guarantees. Or maybe if voting were easy (like all mail-in). One of the most effective voter-suppression tactics is simply to not have enough voting stations so that people may wait for hours. There were polls in Cleveland in 2000 that had to stay open till past midnight to accommodate all the people who had shown up by 8 PM. I am physically incapable of standing in a line for more than about 10 minutes.
Primaries used to be unheard of outside the US as far as I can tell. They’ve only picked up in other countries since the turn of the millennium from what I see looking at the Wikipedia page for them. I think in general parties are going to keep the power among themselves until there’s enough outcry among voters.
I’m also in favor of party insiders picking the candidates, solely because I think it leads to more moderate candidates, and thus a less polarizing political climate. Of course, I don’t think that the entire populace should be voting for anything outside their own neighborhood, and those elected in each neighborhood be the ones to vote at larger jurisdiction elections.
I don’t agree with that at all. I think actual party members picking the candidate and presenting them to the public leads to candidates that are towing to the party platform.
What I really, Really, REALLY hate are open primaries where the general public can vote in candidates they have no intention of voting for in the general election. This skews elections and is the worst form of “democracy” there is. It stinks.
So? They also gave us Rutherford Hayes, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover. The primary system gave us Bill Clinton and Obama (and Ronald Reagan, if you swing that way). I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest that “smoke-filled rooms” produce objectively better candidates.
Again, it just makes me chuckle that so many Dopers look back in longing for a system that was instituted by Gilded Age plutocrats to stymie progressive policies and line their own pockets.
One thing that hasn’t ben mentioned much is that, while many perceive the economy to be bad (mainly due to the real issue of inflation), in fact in some ways it’s doing fine, especially the LOW UNEMPLOYMENT. I think most voters who said the economy was super-important, and they were worried about it, were going to vote Republican anyway. I don’t have data to back this up, but I get the sense that many undecideds and/or independents felt the economy isn’t THAT bad, and low unemployment is the biggest factor in that.
(This could change soon, though…rumblings of a global downturn are out there, like in Europe right now, which could hurt the Dems in 2024).
I know that, I think most educated people know that, but I think a lot of voters don’t know that. Otherwise politicians wouldn’t keep blaming each other for the economy. (That’s one of the few real “both sides do it” situations.)
You think Hoover couldn’t have won a primary? He ran during the middle of a Republican boom. His sin was sticking to economic orthodoxy and not caring about the common person, but do you think that this wouldn’t have worked in a Republican primary?
I’d worry that primaries might have given us Charles Lindbergh or Father Coughlin, which seem more likely than an FDR type of Republican.
