At 11:44 PM -0700 21/7/05, andie nachgeborenen wrote: -Yeah, but what's to stop people who support an opposing political -platform and hence have an interest in preventing the Democrats from -running a strong campaign, from voting in the Democrat's primary and -foisting an unacceptable candidate, with an unacceptable platform on -them?
The main thing is most people aren't so strategic so they vote in their own party primary. Second, if you do vote in an opposing party primary, you can't vote in your own. But there are definitely cases where people have strategically tried to influence the nominations in opposing parties.
So the parties from the grassroots level have the coherence of the collective choice of the voters in each party, not of power from party leadership.
-- Nathan Newman