Walter: Definitely lots of good points for fodder of future discussion. I just offer my two cents worth.
Circa 1968, the American public was getting too cynical about the "boys in the back rooms" making deals to get their people nominated as D and R candidates. In other words, the process was looking not-so-democratic. To supposedly fix the distrust, both parties opened up their primaries more to the public.
The Republicans went "all the way". Some political scientists claim that opening up in this way removed the filter to prevent a rogue candidate. They might be right for eventually Mr. Trump came through.
The Democrats went 80% open, keeping 20% of votes for the back room players. If we were to suggest that this 20% tilted the nominee in the last two presidential primaries, we would probably be right.
If we were to do a social-economic analysis of those 20% super-delegates, I would wager that most of them come from the American Aristocracy, which I have written about here:
https://medium.com/politically-speaking/the-american-aristocracy-c9c9055c3323
Which is better, 100% open or 80% open? Hard to say. Pros and cons for both systems. But as you know, I am looking beyond this current system.
BTW, my system will allow people from the economic classes to be elected and rise higher if they prove themselves as competent for governance.
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In Canada, our federal and provincial elections are well run. There probably is a little cheating, but not enough to tilt the final outcome.
But the internal party elections are not so well run. The back room players can tilt the rules to their favorite candidate--which sometimes means favors need to be paid back. Astute aspirants who want the nominations have be wary that there are internal forces for these internal elections to be less-than-fair. Even when shenanigans are well known, the party is unlikely to investigate and rectify the first outcome. It will try to bury any counter-claims as it does not want to give the impression it cannot govern itself. If this is happening in Canada, it is likely happening in the USA--at the party level.
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Anyways, great article Walter. Keep putting some doubt that the American system is flawed.
Some
