Right, but one of the terms we always hear when talking about small d democracy is “majority rules.” If you do not get a majority, then there are several, equally valid ways of dealing with that. In some situations a plurality wins, but there is no basic tenet of democracy that requires it to be so.
Especially in a convention system where it is important that Republicans nominate someone who can get a wide berth of support. Suppose the delegate breakdown on the first ballot is Trump 48%, Cruz 40%, Kasich 6%, Also Rans 6%. If the 52% of delegates (and remember, these delegates are among the most active party members in the nation) do not have a primary preference of Trump, but could nonetheless support him anyways, then maybe he is a good choice.
But as we see in this election, if most if not all of those 52% hate Trump with a visceral reaction, then it almost certainly is NOT a good idea to choose him. It makes no sense for any political party to cut its own throat just to adhere to some “plurality rules” idea that isn’t even a real thing just to appease that plurality.
So then if we decide not to support Trump, when we step down to Cruz, we have the same problem. I don’t see a single thing wrong with a political party attempting to correct this issue by several rounds of voting and figuring out a candidate that everyone can support.
But this is how it actually appears to most people, and the parties have been complicit in making it appear this way: There are primaries, and the winner is the nominee, and there’s a big party called a convention where everybody has a good old time and drops balloons on the winner and sends him off to fight the other side’s winner.
Now, obviously there’s wiggle room in the definition of “the winner,” where you can say that without a majority you don’t win. But it’s going to be an uphill battle to convince people that the 4th place finisher is the appropriate choice in that situation, and that these random nobodies called delegates are the best people to make that decision. For decades, the parties have been making us think that the delegates are audience members who clap while balloons fall on the winner. Their legitimacy has been eroded by that.
very nice to see. New York rejected Bernie’s anti-capitalism and anti-Zionism; the Dem party across America must now do so too. I’ve given the Democrats their last chance with my ballot yesterday. While I’ll always agree with them on tax cuts for the rich, the environment, LGB rights, I will not see the party turn into what Corbyn turned the Labour Party into. Hillary is the best hope for what Dershowitz describedhere.
If Hillary can pivot to the center on Muslim refugees and disavow Barack Hussein Obama’s poor treatment of Israel, she has my vote.
I agree with you that the people who have not studied history have no frame of reference to what is really supposed to happen at a convention. Yes, the parties are guilty of turning them into coronations, but that is because they have set up the rules to all but ensure that the preferred candidate runs away with the nomination so that there is no need for any real action at the convention.
However, this year we may have such a need. I don’t believe that picking the 4th place candidate or even someone not heretofore a candidate is invalid. We have seen the results of “one of the top two MUST be chosen” at times. That scenario gave us David Duke as a candidate for governor, and that crazy right wing bastard in France a few years ago. In some situations, the voters can be morons, and this is one of them.
If a vote is 49/49/2, and both of the 49 candidates are polar opposites whose supporters will never accept the other, then it makes no sense for the party as a whole to nominate either of them. It really wouldn’t make much sense to nominate someone with 55% support if the other 45% couldn’t accept him. Going into the fall, any party needs to be united behind its candidate. The Dems used to have a 2/3 convention rule for this very reason.
I just don’t see the reason to submit to some false notion of fairness when the result is an unelectable candidate.
The delegates are not random nobodies. If you are active in your local community in politics, chances are that the guy or girl who is always hanging around, shaking hands, and being involved in pretty much everything will likely end up as a convention delegate. I’m not sure how, short of abolishing conventions, that we could end up with stronger party supporters than the delegates we currently have.
It’s over so far as I can tell, so far as who wins the major parties’ nomination for POTUS–barring a death or a scandal–so the next question is whether one of the losers will go as a third party candidate in the general election. Kasich seems too Republican to me, Cruz too limited to the Southern and red states, which leaves Bernie. If he runs as a spoiler this could tip the general election toward Trump, and I suspect that Hillary’s going to have to do some major left shifting to fend this off. As to the N.Y. primary itself, I’m surprised that Trump did so well and flabbergasted by Hillary’s margin of victory. I thought Bernie would have been at least competitive in his home state.
True enough, but as Bernie’s going to turn seventy-five this year I think it’s fair to say that this presidential election is his last hurrah on the national stage politically. He could run for spite, or for selfish or faux idealistic reasons ("I owe it to “my people” and all that), but this could put the Donald in the White House, and Bernie knows it. He’s gotta work with Hillary at this point, push her leftward and then make her keep her promises if elected. At this point, speaking as a liberal (but not radical) I see this as the only hope.
Good grief, it could be so much worse :smack:. This is still the U.S.A. No matter who gets elected in November will still, for good or ill, have Congress to contend with. Even Trump isn’t aiming to be a freakin’ dictator despite his dreadful rhetoric, and if he even tried he’d be taken out by his own part, the G.O.P. just as, more than a half a century ago, Joe McCarthy was.
Huge question, and it’s beginning to look like the answer may be ‘no.’ I’m surprised that Cruz spent so much time in New York anyway, which now seems like a completely wasted effort. Hardly any mention of Cruz in other states like PA, which he badly needs. The one rally he has is in very, very liberal and educated Philadelphia…which might explain why only 150 showed up. His campaign has been brilliant throughout the race but they seem to have misfired badly in the Northeast already.
The one thing that Sanders and his campaign could have done for New York is get the word out about registration by using social media , email, and opt in text messages. I imagine that if you sign up for Bernie’s emails or text messages , they ask for your zip code. Would have been very simple to send out weekly reminders from Labor Day on as well as posting messages on social media.
The super closed New York primary has come up a couple of times in the past, the 1988 race between Dukakis and Jesse Jackson as well as 1992 with Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown.
If Sanders had wanted to win against someone who he knew would run, who has been running for President for the last twelve years, he need to get started before last Summer. When he started this, he just wanted to get his issues on the table. Sometime this Spring, he convinced himself he could win and now is upset he can’t. Starting two years ago, he’d have been able to raise money, get lists of people together, start speaking at college campuses around the country and tell New York “hey, its a closed Primary, if you want your voice to be heard, get in there and register!” He’s like Michael Jordan playing baseball - he’s got a lot of game, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that guys who make it to the MLB trained for years at baseball - they didn’t do something else for years then say “and now I think I’ll try baseball.” It might not have worked - Jeb had been low key campaigning for years - but it isn’t unfair that someone who puts in all the prep work wins.
(I purposely said issues on the table and didn’t use those other words, too early to start drinking)
This was the reason that Team Clinton had to (really pretty gently) start hitting back. Burying him like this last night was required before his team will minimally return to a mutually respectful tone. They may even keep it up through next week (hopefully not) and if so her team will keep it up as well, beating him probably by double digits overall then too. (The bigger prizes are PA - polling +13 RCP, and MD - polling +20 - together 194 delegates.)
If this had been a close race, say 5 points, then the spin would have been enough to keep his team attacking her. Now he’s gone home to Vermont to “recharge” … I do think he’ll minimally return to highlighting issues. And if he does she will give him props, probably even more than are his due, while aiming her rhetoric with the general in mind.
Interesting factoid. Sanders got 45% more votes than Trump did and Clinton got 21% more votes than did the entire GOP field. Democratic turnout a slight bit more than in 2008.
Hillary needs 453 or so more delegates to cross the line. Bernie needs over 1150 to cross it. The math says Bernie better start winning 3 delegates for every one Hillary wins to have a chance. It would be hard to keep up the energy when faced with that reality.
In asahi-world a moderate defeat next Tuesday with, a significant pledged delegate loss, a huge popular vote loss with core sections of the party (all non-White groups) voting solidly against you, does not matter. The pressure will be on the superdelegates to give it to him en masse because White Millennials love him, so long as he has a good last race and polls well in a hypothetical Trump head to head. If they do not the party fractures.
Yep, and as DSeid mentions, if Clinton keeps up the momentum for “It’s the Last Super Tuesday–Promise!!” on 26 April (CT, DL, MD, PA and RI) and takes, say, 225 of the delegates to 159 for Bernie, well, she’ll be over 300+ ahead in pledged delegates, well ahead in the total votes casted, and over 2,000 counting the ‘superdelegates’ (who given the above will have no logical reason to leave Clinton), and I think a lot of folks will be conceding the race in their minds, if not their hearts.
I’m more interested in seeing how this (and next week’s primaries) hurt Cruz’s challenge. To get shut out in one of the largest states has got to hurt, and if he does just as poorly next week (only 118 delegates, since Pennsylvania only commits 17 and leaves 54 uncommitted, IIRC), he’ll be nearly 350 delegates behind and it’ll be that much harder to project a convincing “I’m a stronger candidate” image.
Much as it pains me, Clinton-Trump seem to be our choice in November. Oh joy. I haven’t been this excited since the Herbert Hoover-Al Smith choice in 1928…