Letters to the Editor
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Open Primaries
Despite the potential for poisoning the well, I think open primaries are generally a good idea. That said, I do bristle at the idea of people treating our political process like a game, a la Operation Chaos.
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re: Open primaries
I have never understood how open primaries make sense, since the idea is for the party to choose its own candidates. Of course, as a compensatory measure for a seriously flawed electoral system, they are completely necessary. What a country!
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Be careful what you ask for ...
Republicans might want Hillary to be the Democratic nominee because they think she'd be easier to beat in the general election. However, that might backfire is she is the nominee and she wins.
Does anyone remember the "FBI files" flap during Bill Clinton's administration? As I recall, someone in the White House was getting FBI files on political opponents, presumably looking for information to use against those opponents. Just imagine what life will be like for Republicans when Hillary gets to use Bush's extensive domestic surveillance powers for her own purposes.
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Hillary
Make no mistake. If Hillary somehow manages to pull a nomination out of her ass, she'll win. And that's because democrats will stop being total douchebags and end this neocon madness. And if you're a democrat who claims that you won't vote for the "other candidate" if they win, please just leave the party altogether so that the people who are serious about reform can take care of things.
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*Sigh*
The primaries are all essentially meaningless at this point. Neither candidate will walk into the convention with the votes to pull off the win. We talk about the Superdelegates throwing the election to one candidate or the other.
We seem to forget that the Superdelegates are not anklecuffed together. An even split amongst the Supers can leave this thing just as much in limbo.
The fact that Indiana's primary is "open" serves only to further trivialize the process. We will count the votes and allocate increasingly meaningless delegates, but we will not know the intention of each vote. The process has been irreparably compromised.
We are in the realm of Game Theory now.
Strap on your helmets. We will have a brokered convention to decide which one-legged candidate to send into the ass-kicking contest.
Points of interest:
Who is the Lunatic McCain's VP going to be? This will be one of the most dangerous men in America, and the future POTUS (circa 2010).
How tightly is the GOP going to leash the Lunatic? At this point, all they have to do is stop McCain from screwing up. Thankfully, this is no small task but they do have a complicit media willing to hide the Lunatic McCain's countless flaws.
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indiana will be disastrous
The superdelegates and other democratic bigwigs had better get together and find an alternative to Clinton or Obama, neither of whom can win in Nov. They should get Dodd, Biden or in a pinch Gore to become the nominee. Otherwise, you'll say hello to President McCain.
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"An even split amongst the Supers can leave this thing just as much in limbo."
Actually, if everything falls the way its expected to in the remaining primaries, Obama will be within 100 of the "magical" 2024 number. The remaining undeclared SDs number about 400. Your hypothetical split of SDs would leave Obama well within the 2024 and Clinton just outside.
If Salon wasn't so pro-Clinton, you might see reporting like this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/30/senator-says-obama-has-do_n_99386.html
Which would render all this handwringing moot. But that is what we liberals do best...
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One Stop Voting in NC
Although North Carolina's primary is technically "closed", this year, the board of elections is offering a new process called "One Stop Voting" -- wherein those who choose to exercise early voting (April 17-May 3) have been able to register at the polling place, after the April 11 deadline and/or change their party affiliation, allowing them to vote in either primary.
My wife voted on Monday and told me that at least two people at the polling place were changing their Republican affiliation to uncommitted, so that they could vote for Obama, according to their statements to the election workers.
Info on One Stop Voting: http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/content.aspx?ID=32
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Open Primaries...
I used to think that open primaries were good way to enfranchise independents and possibly bring them into your party, but the flaw is that such only happens if people are voting in good faith (i.e. voting for someone they actually want to see in office).
In today's political culture where I see almost ZERO good faith, open primaries are merely an invitation for the likes of Limbaugh to monkey-wrench the opposing party. (And lest anyone think Democratic hands are clean, in Michigan, know this: Not a few Democrats voted in the Republican primary for similar reasons. I think they trended toward McCain with the assumption that his nomination would keep the Republican base at home come the general election.)
Bad faith voting makes a mockery of democracy, and is ultimately a zero-sum game where all parties end up with flawed candidates who, at best, are unable to energize the party faithful - and who, at worst, antagonize them.
Political parties are private organizations, and open primary laws force them to allow outsiders to choose their candidates (which seems like a 1st amendment violation of the Free Association clause to me). It's like forcing Coke to give Pepsi a vote at the board meetings.
If one wants to be an independent voter, which is one's perfect right, then one shouldn't expect to have a say in selected any party's candidate. If you want a say in who the nominates, join up.
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Watch Clinton Camp '92 call Indiana people ni**ers
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/2/93316/53926/838/507664
its a youtube video posted on DKos
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Closed Primaries not really much better
I used to think that open primaries were good way to enfranchise independents and possibly bring them into your party, but the flaw is that such only happens if people are voting in good faith (i.e. voting for someone they actually want to see in office).
djmagaro
Friday, May 2, 2008 08:19 AM
Here in Kentucky, which has always had closed primaries and where until recently the Democrats had such a majority that the general election was always decided in the Democratic primary, republicans still found a way to fuck with the process.
Republicans in Kentucky just register as Democrats. Until very recently, there were rarely real races in the republican primary, so by registering as democrats, republicans lost nothing in their own primary and gained the ability to vote for the weakest candidate in the Democratic primary.
The republican still usually lost in the general election, but the point is that republicans will always find a way to commit election fraud, whether the primary is closed or not.