It took me until this year to figure out that the Presidential primaries in the United States are an absolute joke. I knew very little about superdelegates, contested conventions, and a whole host of other obscure rules before 2016. Now, this stuff is in the news every single day, because the Democrats and Republicans may both be heading to contested conventions for the nominations.
For the Democrats, you have Hillary Clinton leading Bernie Sanders by a slim margin among voters, and thus in regular delegates. But, in part because Hillary Clinton is a corrupt career politician in everyone's pocket, she is destroying Bernie in the superdelegates. Of course, superdelegates do not officially support a candidate until the convention, so if neither gets enough regular delegates outright, there will be a contested convention. And if Bernie continues to win states and ends up winning the popular vote, it is very likely that many of the superdelegates will support him at the convention. But they don't have to. Actually, the whole reason superdelegates exist is so the party's elite can better control who the nominee is, just in case it's relatively close and the voters choose someone they don't like. Some Democracy.
At least the Republicans don't have superdelegates, but don't worry, in a close enough election where no candidate gets the magic number of delegates, the party elite can still control who the nominee is at the convention. And while Donald Trump may still win outright, he may not, and then we can end up with a whole lot of fun at the convention in Cleveland. Ted Cruz and John Kasich will both try to wrestle the nomination away from Trump should a contested convention take place. The funny thing about that is that it is almost impossible for Cruz to win the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination ahead of the convention, and it IS impossible for Kasich, yet he's still hanging around anyway. He knows the rules. At a contested convention, Democracy be damned.
The funny thing here is, I am rooting against the will of the people in the Republican primary right now. Let me take this moment to officially endorse John Kasich, the one person out of the five remaining candidates for President who actually has a shot at uniting this politically-divided nation. I am not a fan of Trump or Cruz for a whole host of reasons, though I would vote for either over Hillary, but a great thing about Kasich is that he would almost certainly garner enough support from Independents, Republicans, and even some Democrats that he would handily win the presidency should he be nominated. Trump and Cruz are almost certain to lose in a general election, barring the unlikely event of a Hillary Clinton indictment (I imagine enough of the right people are paid off to stop that from happening). This is reason enough for Republicans to root for a Kasich nomination, but the man also speaks with common sense and conviction, and he has proven that he can govern and bring people together rather than tear them apart.
All of this being said, the primaries are an enormous scam. If we truly want the people to decide the nominee, the rules should be changed to allow that. Otherwise, why the fuck are we even voting in primaries? Oh, WAIT, not all of us are. In my particular state, Connecticut (yes, the one with possibly the worst Governor in the nation), I CAN'T vote in the primaries. Why? Well, like some other states, Connecticut voters who are registered as Independents can't vote in the primaries. And I have, thus far, refused to change my affiliation to either the Democratic or the Republican party. By exercising that freedom, I have disenfranchised myself during the primaries. So, with all the rules varying by state and the strange delegate rules, it seems there exists the option to just do away with the broken primary voting altogether and let the party elite pick their nominees, and then the people can vote in the general election. This, I believe, could also be the downfall of the two-party system, and I am perfectly fine with that. Democracy in the primary process seems to make more sense though, but the rules have to be cleaned up and standardized. We should do away with the electoral college too, but that's another topic...
I'm not even sure any of these things are even the most absurd thing about the primaries. Did you know that Jeb Bush spent like $60 million on his campaign? It was clearly doomed from the beginning. I knew that, and just about everyone else knew that. There is no way there was going to be another Bush in the White House at this point in history. He never had a shot at the nomination, no matter how much money was poured into his campaign from wealthy donors and SuperPACs. Add up all of the totals of all the losing campaigns when we finally have our nominees, and I am sure the number will be staggering. Hundreds of millions. Probably well over a billion dollars! For what? How many things could this money have been better spent on? Feeding, sheltering, and clothing the poor? Helping the sick? I mean, just about anything else would have been a better use of that money, except for counterproductive things like donating to the ACLU.
I'll be over here hoping against all odds that John Kasich gets the Republican nomination. And that Hillary goes to prison. That has a nice ring to it, like a great title for a children's book. Hillary Goes to Prison. Yeah, I like that a lot. But not nearly as much as I like the thought of President Kasich being sworn in. It would be wonderful to see that page in a history book one day.
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