Many have argued that we got better candidates in the days when the conventions actually determined the nominees, instead of becoming media-celebration-rubber-stamps. Given the way our primaries actually work, that's not hard to believe. The last candidate so nominated was Hubert Humphrey, a man of some proven character, who in previous decades had risked his future driving the worst sort of racists out of the party (and ultimately into the Republican party). If we had primaries then, we might have gotten Eugene McCarthy, a man who stood for nothing that anyone has ever been able to determine. Supporters of McCarthy said you could oppose the war by campaiging for clean 'Gene. But he was not actually an antiwar leader (sound familiar?) and he did nothing to help his followers as they were being pounded in the streets of Chicago.
It does look like caucuses are more democratic than primaries, and conventions are like a giant caucus.
In every case, it's ultimately party bosses who make the rules. But not all "insiders" are party bosses. A lot of them are mavericks. And insiders, being people of considerable political experience, are likely to be better at smelling the fakes than the media circus (which thrives on fakery). Their political futures depend on making rational choices. Primary voters take a few minutes of their time to vote after watching a political ad and then get on with their life, the result having very little personal importance.
A similar argument can be made as to why judges should not be elected. We have elected judges in Texas, and there is no state supreme court with more pro-corporate justices. It doesn't help that judges get political contributions from those with interests that are or may be before the court.
So I don't buy into this anti-superdelegate business that has electrified all the "progressive" outfits like Move-On, DFA, etc. It would be fine with me if the superdelegates selected the party nominee. Just as long as I ultimately get my vote in the general election (where the now irrelevant "Electoral College", now merely an anti-democratic mechanism rather than a caucus like forum, ought to be abolished), and don't try to restrict my freedom of speech about it.
It could hardly be worse than what we have now.
Charles Peterson
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