Democratic primaries
May. 13th, 2008 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackWait, what?
I know I shouldn't bother about American elections, there being politics I'm so much more relevant for elsewhere. But as I understand it: the Democrat (and republican) party has primaries (ie. like a general election within all x-ist voters to decide the X-ist candidate for the presidential election).
Four states primaries happen first, before Feb 5, then all the others. This year, a couple of states, notably Michigan, rebelled and held their primary earlier, the democratic convention chose to ignore them, and most candidates removed themselves from the ballot.
Remaining were Hilary Clinton, and a couple of others. Now Clinton[1] says the convention should count that election after all. [Edit: or some people do, not sure if she said that herself.]
* Why are the four states that are voted on first voted on first? Is there a good reason or is it just tradition?
* How did Michigan and the convention manage that snafu?
* How by any stretch of the imagination could you count that election?
Even if you accept that Clinton would have come ahead in it, you can have no idea by how much. That 60% of people voted for Clinton instead of not doesn't tell you anything. The exit poll has Clinton beating Obama 46% to 35% and that's only of people who actually turned up to vote, and she voted and he didn't. And you can't base a result on an exit poll. No result other than an implausible revote could reenfranchise Michigan, so the only argument is which flawed result to take. But since the purpose of the primary is to produce a popular presidential election candidate, surely the fact that Obama is more popular with any likely Michigan result is more important than how the primary was run?
[1] It's pleasantly surreal reading old wikipedia pages which refer to Bill Clinton as "Clinton". Style guides successfully made the switch to "Clinton" being by default Hilary. Though now I wonder, were there no examples of this confusion before? No couples (or other people with the same name) equally prominent? I don't remember ever any ambiguity.
I know I shouldn't bother about American elections, there being politics I'm so much more relevant for elsewhere. But as I understand it: the Democrat (and republican) party has primaries (ie. like a general election within all x-ist voters to decide the X-ist candidate for the presidential election).
Four states primaries happen first, before Feb 5, then all the others. This year, a couple of states, notably Michigan, rebelled and held their primary earlier, the democratic convention chose to ignore them, and most candidates removed themselves from the ballot.
Remaining were Hilary Clinton, and a couple of others. Now Clinton[1] says the convention should count that election after all. [Edit: or some people do, not sure if she said that herself.]
* Why are the four states that are voted on first voted on first? Is there a good reason or is it just tradition?
* How did Michigan and the convention manage that snafu?
* How by any stretch of the imagination could you count that election?
Even if you accept that Clinton would have come ahead in it, you can have no idea by how much. That 60% of people voted for Clinton instead of not doesn't tell you anything. The exit poll has Clinton beating Obama 46% to 35% and that's only of people who actually turned up to vote, and she voted and he didn't. And you can't base a result on an exit poll. No result other than an implausible revote could reenfranchise Michigan, so the only argument is which flawed result to take. But since the purpose of the primary is to produce a popular presidential election candidate, surely the fact that Obama is more popular with any likely Michigan result is more important than how the primary was run?
[1] It's pleasantly surreal reading old wikipedia pages which refer to Bill Clinton as "Clinton". Style guides successfully made the switch to "Clinton" being by default Hilary. Though now I wonder, were there no examples of this confusion before? No couples (or other people with the same name) equally prominent? I don't remember ever any ambiguity.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 11:48 am (UTC)Unsurprisingly, I think that it's an unsurprisingly awkward compromise between the two :)
I'd guess you might describe the general idea as letting the members of the party choose what presidential candidate to put forward: and let them choose whether to pick one who fulfills their ideals, or someone likely to get elected, or somewhere in between.
But it has sufficient inertia that the only way of getting a president you want is electing them to be one of the two large parties' candidates. So not being able to vote is a sort of disenfranchisement, but not a be-all and end-all one since if they're actually being left out in the cold they can sponsor a new presidential candidate.