James Carville: "Let a thousand flowers bloom" at Open Democratic Convention

[axiomsofdominion]

This would be correct except that "the people" have no say at all. Only party insiders who are convention delegates, which are almost all for Biden.

Now if we could rerun the primary, sure. But we can't.

[axiomsofdominion]

This would be correct except that "the people" have no say at all. Only party insiders who are convention delegates, which are almost all for Biden.

Now if we could rerun the primary, sure. But we can't.

That could be true, but it does not have to be. Like Carville (and others) have said, you could very easily organize a bunch of debates and town halls and other events prior to the convention, which would allow potential candidates to make the case for themselves publicly.

Polls would obviously be taken, which would provide some measure of public opinion and delegates would inevitably take into account. The public would also obviously participate via fundraising, and candidates that could quickly get a large number of small donors (demonstrating some broader appeal and excitement) would help themselves.

If the DNC wants to, they can also find a way to have some sort of public participation via some sort of voting in the process, even if only on a limited basis. Tech companies could help the DNC set something like that up if they wanted it.

There are lots of different variations on how exactly things could be done, but it is not like nothing can be done.

No, this is totally unrealistic. I've been involved in campaigns and elections.

You simply can't set up anything representative nationally with so little time and no government support.

[axiomsofdominion]

I am also extremely disappointed in any political official who disagrees with even 1 of my opinions.

[axiomsofdominion]

This would be correct except that "the people" have no say at all. Only party insiders who are convention delegates, which are almost all for Biden.

Now if we could rerun the primary, sure. But we can't.

That could be true, but it does not have to be. Like Carville (and others) have said, you could very easily organize a bunch of debates and town halls and other events prior to the convention, which would allow potential candidates to make the case for themselves publicly.

Polls would obviously be taken, which would provide some measure of public opinion and delegates would inevitably take into account. The public would also obviously participate via fundraising, and candidates that could quickly get a large number of small donors (demonstrating some broader appeal and excitement) would help themselves.

If the DNC wants to, they can also find a way to have some sort of public participation via some sort of voting in the process, even if only on a limited basis. Tech companies could help the DNC set something like that up if they wanted it.

There are lots of different variations on how exactly things could be done, but it is not like nothing can be done.

No, this is totally unrealistic. I've been involved in campaigns and elections.

You simply can't set up anything representative nationally with so little time and no government support.

Democrats though do this all the time. It's a party that completely hates primaries and actively seeks to avoid them, via people resigning mid-term to allow caucus appointments for the replacement or having placeholder candidates that win primaries and then resign when someone stronger comes forward. There are people in Indiana right now that want their candidate for Governor Jennifer McCormick to resign the nomination so the State Central Committee can appoint Joe Donnelly in her place. McCormick like Biden de facto was the only person on the primary ballot.

To dig into this statement a bit:

You simply can't set up anything representative nationally with so little time and no government support.

If American political parties were actually real political parties, you could setup something representative of party membership nationally on short notice. And those interested would show up.  It would be the equivalent of county political party functions with the county political party being the base-level unit of political organization in most states nationally. But Democrats and Republicans are not real political parties, they are just ballot access lines where the masses not engaged in political parties push their preference (which is how Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders happen, FYI). And "no government support" demonstrates how Democrats and Republicans do little organizationally, they just get the government to pay all their costs to select people.

Other countries don't directly elect presidential candidates, and in the small number that do, they are multi-party democracies and all of them are smaller than the US by large margins.

In the UK for instance there are less than 400,000 members of the Labour party and that's more than 2x the total members of any other party. And that is also a parliamentary system with a PM, not a president.

The reason for the American presidential primary system is because of FPTP and nationalization. If we implemented proper ranked choice and had an appropriate number of parties for our population and geographical size, things wouldbe totally different.