It's Democracy, Stupid- Time for Primaries

I think most Democrats, in their ideals, think more people should vote. They think voting should be easy. They think that the system we use should be conducive to getting a result that the majority of Democrats want in our nomination process. They think that the actual votes should decide our nomination.

Now I lived and worked on an Iowa Caucus, and I can tell you that I have full confidence in their system. Iowa's not a big state, and yet they have six-figure turnout on the regular for the Democratic caucuses. It works there. They are an outlier. In Nevada, Clinton won cleanly on the day of the caucuses, but was behind after county conventions, and then won at the state convention. That's a hair-pulling system if I've seen one. These caucuses just offer far too many variables in many of these states, some of whom show they just aren't capable of managing it.

Worse yet, the caucuses produce an unnatural result. In both Nebraska and Washington, the winner of the caucus was clearly and decisively Bernie Sanders, and then he cleanly lost in the non-binding primaries later. The caucus results don't really match the overall will of the Democratic voters, many more of whom showed up for the non-binding primary, but over-sample the passionate activists who are willing and able to come sit through a caucus. While i'm sure some of them won't like this, I think it's a lot more important to get the "common man's" view than the most loud and passionate types, some of whom are frankly living in an alternative reality. We don't need a "nominee of the privileged."

The Democratic Party is a party of working class people, people who often times are unable to get to a caucus. The primary system allows a lot more flexibility about voting than most caucuses do. The question of opened or closed primaries, while I 100% support closed primaries for Democratic voters, is secondary to having a system where our voters can all have a voice. It gets more "real" results and tells us the will of the public. Move to primaries, push for more early voting systems and easier absentee voting, and make sure that our Democratic voters can all have a say in picking the nominee of the Democratic Party. It's Democracy, stupid.