Awoke this morning to the news that Bernie Sanders had swept Washington State, Hawaii and Alaska, giving him the “momentum” to carry forth into Wisconsin, California and New York. “Momentum” seems to be the big word now, among those who continue to fight the other big word, which of course is the “inevitability” of a Clinton win in the Democratic primaries and caucases. Which, as I chimed in on yesterday, are an unholy mess for anyone who tries to actually understand the process, be it “open” or “closed.”
Don’t think so? Try and find a list of the states that have proportional primaries or caucases compared to those which feature winner take all contests. I did. After three or four searches I gave up. I think the three states Bernie won yesterday are all proportional, but I’m not sure, because none of the news outlets seems to know. If they do know, they aren’t reporting it, which is strange, since this should be a key part of their political reportage.
Could it be that some of the political insiders on tv assume their viewers don’t need to be educated and enlightened? Isn’t that a dangerous assumption? Aren’t assumptions generally dangerous?
It shouldn’t be this difficult to figure out how one party or the other chooses its candidate for President of the United States. But it is. It’s a mess, and maybe the party leaders want to leave it as clouded and messy as possible because all the confusion makes it easier to rig the system. You know, changing the rules at the last minute, as the Republicans are threatening to do in their effort to stop Donald Trump.
If you didn’t major in political science and think you understand our primaries and caucases, then good for you. You are undoubtedly one of the few who does. And maybe a little delusional. Oh no? Ask the next five people you bump into whether the state they reside in has a proportional or winnner take all contest. I suspect you’ll be lucky to find anybody who has even a clue as to what you’re talking about.
One of the reasons Americans don’t vote in the primaries could be because the system is so fouled up that almost no one can understand it. It’s a condition of American politics that screams out for stronger federal intervention, with one easy to understand system of primaries for all the states, giving the power to the people and not a relative handful of party apparatchiks who gather behind closed doors laying plans to game the system in favor of one candidate or another.
A system that’s next to impossible for average folks to understand sort of undercuts the sincerity of the candidates and their party leaders, doesn’t it?
Gonna watch the Sunday morning shows now. Maybe somebody will straighten this all out for me, but I doubt it. Once they get in front of that interactive map and start comparing Clinton to Carter and Trump to daddy Bush and Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon, with red states and blue states and sqiggly lines and numbers everywhere, my mind starts to wander. The process of getting someone elected to a national office in the U.S. shouldn’t be this difficult to understand.
Hillary Clinton’s new slogan is “Fighting For Us.” If she really wants to make a difference, she should fight to change the system into something we can all understand. But first she’ll have to get the money out of politics. Which is Bernie’s whole bag.
Candidates who are mostly happy with leaving the system as it is, aren’t really willing to fight for “us” at all. Consider Hillary Clinton, raking in millions (by one account as much as $15 million to her superpac) in support from Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry and other big business concerns, not to mention $675,000 in speaker’s fees from Goldman Sachs, while Bernie Sanders relies on small individual donors. Imagine that. Do you really think the billionaires and millionaires on Wall Street are pouring all that money into Clinton’s campaign beause they believe she will fight to level the economic playing field for middle America, that she will fight for “us?”
Add: CNN just reported on the percentages Sanders won yesterday, meaning, all three contests were proportional. As of this morning, the delegate count, according to the Guardian newspaper, is Clinton 1243 and Sanders with 975. That’s with half the states yet to be counted and excluding Democratic Party “superdelegates.” Which is another problem.
Excluding the supedelegates, counting only real delegates who are being sent to the convention by the will of the people rather than efforts by party leaders to rig the system, Bernie trails HRC by just 265 delegates. In just four states, all of which have yet to be counted, Maryland, New York, California and Pennsylvania, 1006 delegates are still up for grabs.
And some pundits continue to say the race is all but over for Sanders? MSNBC, is about to take that same tac this morning, interviewing Clinton on the topic of what she’s learned in her battle with Donald Trump. As though the race has been decided and Bernie should pack up his posters and go home. A better topic would be Bernie’s uphill battle against media bias.