Quote Originally Posted by Hooahguy View Post
It wasnt long ago that Rep. Tlaib led a Bernie rally in booing against Hillary Clinton. Hillary's comments aside (which I think are 100% true), a member of congress leading a chant against the former Dem nominee who is still very popular among the base doesnt really make me think that unity will come easily. Especially when after Iowa a number of other Reps like AOC and Omar go about spouting unsupported conspiracy theories about the DNC.

And things are only going to get nastier I think.
For my part I disagreed with most of Clinton's bellyaching and found it unhelpful, but look at it this way: a leadership contest is exactly when all a party's divisions should have their fullest expression. That's what this process is for! If we can't criticize each other now of all times then we never can, and that's not healthy. I'm pessimistic about a lot of things, but our ability to keep our eyes on the ball when the time comes is not one of them.

About your national primary idea, that seems pretty interesting but logistically I can see it being a nightmare. Getting people to the polls once a month for 3 months is hard so turnout might be low.
In New York, until a year ago it was the case that to vote in a party's primary you had to register with that party like 9 months beforehand. The recent NY electoral reform moved the registration deadline up to just 2 months - or at least, the deadline is Feb. 14 for the April 28 presidential primary; I don't know if there's a different deadline for the subsequent state/federal primaries. Speaking of which, last year's legislation finally consolidated the state and federal primaries on the same day. It also introduced same-day registration, early voting, and voting by mail.

The point I'm making is that we can continue to progress in making voting easier at all levels, and streamlining the process so it is easier to understand and to keep voters informed of. Iowa-style dysfunction is not our destiny in this country; with a little effort we could have a navigable and responsive electoral system.

(Also, we could just get rid of the national conventions entirely and nominate the winner of a ranked-choice popular vote.)

Quote Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus View Post
The system is a pastiche of the Roman Assembly, either deliberately or as a post-hoc justification. It's obviously not a democratic system so we have to conclude, it having been this way for so long, that it's not designed to be democratic. I would suggest the point is to wear down the candidates, so it has to be torturous and somewhat incoherent.
The Framers explicitly designed an oligarchy, and distrusted most of the democratic features we take for granted today, let alone the ones we wish to implement.

But don't be confused - the current primary system has only existed for about a century. Before then we had party conventions and national conventions that were more like the legendary "smoky room."