Sometimes I agree with this author. Sometimes I don’t.
This is one of the times I don’t.
I see both political parties abandoning the presidential primary process.
True. If the democrats had followed it to the letter, the candidate I favored (and put a significant amount of my money behind) would have won the nomination, and probably would be sitting in the White House right now.
That would have been this time.
But what about next time?
Look what happened to the Republicans.
Now they’re stuck with a president whom only enjoys the support of the shrillest screamers in their party, a man whom many believe, including me, is patently incapable of governing (or maybe even changing his own shorts, for that matter).
I’ll go even further.
I don’t believe popular elections for the office of the presidency are a good idea. They probably have never been, even though this system, from time to time, has produced a few real winners.
I believe that the rank and file voters, including myself, are dangerously uninformed and misinformed throughout this process.
This is not like a bunch of ordinary Janes and Joes sitting on a jury.
In their case, their are strict rules of evidence, which bind both sides. There is also a formal process in which violators of it will be, at the very least, reprimanded and, if they continue, thrown out of the court room. At the very worst, such violators can expect to serve some jail time or even go to prison. Even with this strictness of procedure, the system is probably at best about 70% accurate in determining true guilt or innocence. (I think it needs more rules. More on this at a later time.)
The United States presidential elections are nothing like that. They have devolved into a sort of national pie fight, which can easily be dominated by the candidate who has the most show business experience. I have seen it happen twice. Once in 1980 and once again in the latest election.
Neither the candidates and their backers themselves, nor the national media, which reports on them, is required to act in anything like a true evidence backed manner.
The media scoffs at this notion. They prefer headline producing bad behavior, which candidate Trump was willing to provide on an almost minute to minute schedule. They loved him. Why? Because headlines sell newspapers, get internet clicks, and rope in TV and YouTube viewers. A pair of boring candidates is simply bad for business.
At some later time, I would like to publish my entire diatribe against popular elections for the US presidency, followed at a later time with my recommendation for a system to replace them.