28th August 2018, 12:30 AM
It's true that most "populists" these days are right wing, though as an aside I find it hard to describe anything Trump or other right-wing nationalists do as "populist", given that when I think of the term I think of left-wing agitators, like the original (in US politics anyway) populists from the early 1900s... but anyway. Just because all of the worst demagogues of recent decades come from the right doesn't mean that's always going to stay that way. Again, I'm not expecting the superdelegate change to have any major consequences, I just think that while there have been reductions in the superdelegates' role before, this time the change probably happened because of Bernie supporters' complaints, thinking that unelected party officials were trying to stop their guy from winning and such... and sure, many were, but that was not why he lost.
I might agree with this, but what is the alternative? The problem with having more states compete early is that it's very hard for a small-budget candidate to compete in larger states. This is one reason why all the early states are small, to make things a little bit more fair for all candidates. The more you frontload the primary and caucus calendar, the more that only the top candidates really have a chance.
The other problem is that states do not always listen to national parties and keep trying to increase their influence by moving up in the calendar. This is one reason why some states use caucuses, because they have laws saying when their primary day is which would not be easy to change, but want more influence, so they hold a caucus months earlier. This is an issue that will need solving. More rarely, sometimes states move up regardless of whether the national party wants it on that day or not. This has been an issue in the past.
Really, the whole choosing-candidates issue is really tricky, and I'm not sure what the best solution should be... I know our system is crazy complicated and nobody would design a system like this starting now, but it's really hard to fix these things once set up.
Quote:It makes a big difference not having the fate of what the rest of the country is going to be able to pick decided entirely by a handful of states.
I might agree with this, but what is the alternative? The problem with having more states compete early is that it's very hard for a small-budget candidate to compete in larger states. This is one reason why all the early states are small, to make things a little bit more fair for all candidates. The more you frontload the primary and caucus calendar, the more that only the top candidates really have a chance.
The other problem is that states do not always listen to national parties and keep trying to increase their influence by moving up in the calendar. This is one reason why some states use caucuses, because they have laws saying when their primary day is which would not be easy to change, but want more influence, so they hold a caucus months earlier. This is an issue that will need solving. More rarely, sometimes states move up regardless of whether the national party wants it on that day or not. This has been an issue in the past.
Really, the whole choosing-candidates issue is really tricky, and I'm not sure what the best solution should be... I know our system is crazy complicated and nobody would design a system like this starting now, but it's really hard to fix these things once set up.