Noga Sachs is a candidate for Missouri’s 2^nd Congressional District in the upcoming Republican primary. She’s running against long-time incumbent Ann Wagner. Recently, I was part of a group that interviewed Sachs about her views. [The interview was part of an internship project sponsored by Civitas, a St. Louis non-profit that encourages young people to become civically engaged.] While we definitely did background research (including watching her jogging to a gym video discussing birth control), we didn’t expect our conversations to be as full as they were. From her past to her purpose as a politician, Sachs is full of heart.

Many Republicans are hostile to Sachs and worry her red politics may be more blue than they thought. Some refer to her candidacy as a “trojan horse, ” and she says that that label has contributed to her limited media coverage, The GOP even attempted to kick her out of events, and, she said, one leader said to her face that “there is no other candidate here [other than Ann Wagner]”. Plus, she claims that her rivals are trying to mix up her name to make her lose.They substitute  “Noah” for Noga, and all of a sudden voters can’t find her name in the media. Clearly, this candidate faces a lot of obstacles in the upcoming primary.

Parkland was a pivotal moment for Sachs, who was working in South America when it happened. Although she had never before been civically involved, the shootings motivated her to return to the U.S. to join other people working for political change. Realizing that Ann Wagner was up for re-election, uncontested, Sachs saw an opportunity.

Sachs calls her brother her “moral guiding light” for her political involvement He is a Democrat, and at first, she listened blindly to his opinions. After a while, though, Sachs says, “I realized that both sides are guilty of a lot of really not nice things.” However, when asked about why she is running as a Republican, she did not offer an immediate answer. [Editor’s note: In a post-interview phone call, Sachs said that she was running as a Republican because she sees Republicans as more organized in their approach to policies and legislation.] Her claim to “no labels” is somewhat misleading, since she, is in fact, running under the very red Republican label.

Red doesn’t mean, however, that Sachs couldn’t vote for Hillary, oppose Ann Wagner, and criticize Trump. She’s done all of those things, actually, and she’s proud of it. To her, Democrats protect freedom of choice, but “it ends up sort of this capitalistic sort of orientation, whereas the Republicans say…they’re protecting morals,” she says.

One of her strongest opinions centers around Israel, from which her parents emigrated. Her eyes were filled with passion as she discussed the topic without even being prompted. To her, Jerusalem is the obvious choice for the U.S. embassy. “It’s a completely laughable thing that anybody talked about putting the embassy outside the capital,” she says. “That’s just impractical, it just doesn’t make any sense. The capital of Israel is Jerusalem.”

Sachs’ pro-Israel stance coincides with some of her other more conservative leanings, and her passions (red or blue) don’t stop there.

On campaign financing, Sachs says, “You shouldn’t be extravagant during your campaign if you’d like to indicate that you’re going to be responsible with tax dollars.” That commitment to financial responsibility would work well for her, she says, because “I’m seeing a lot of people who are looking for a fresh face, looking for an honest person, an authentic person.”  And, when asked about avoiding corruption, Sachs notes that she is self-employed, making her financially independent.

Some of Sachs’ stances are a little more vague. She calls pro-choice and pro-life “too late,” stating that she thinks intervention should happen before a pregnancy ever occurs.

“Insemination education” is the best solution, she says, because it avoids  uncomfortable feelings around sex-education while still teaching about safe-sex practices. When asked about how to implement those plans when in Washington, though, Sachs did not offer specific solutions.

Sachs emphasized the need to have open lines of communication with her district at all times. “How can I bring home groceries if I don’t know you needed bacon?” she says.

On gun control, she says that taking away one gun would lead you to find another. To her, the answer is not gun control but, instead, culture change. [Editor’s note: After the interview, Sachs stated that she is an expert on culture change, giving her special perspective and know-how.]

With all of these policy issues, it’s hard to imagine anything happening without bipartisan action. Sachs’s solution: “Talk to people on both sides. Figure out what matters to them, and figure out where those two intersect. And then bring the two together. And actually what I’ve been doing…is exactly that. So I talked to Democrats, they love me. They’re willing to pick up the red ticket and vote for me. I’m flattered. I talk to Republicans and they’re also willing to do the same. We’re all on same page, we all want to get Ann out.”

Sachs reaches across party lines, listens to her voters, attends events, and blurs the blue and red lines into a nice, even purple. Sachs’ views are optimistic and hopeful. She wants to push for a change of culture. “’We need to re-establish a culture which is pro-social. One which enables us to live together, thrive together, work together,” she says.

While she admits to a lack of political experience, she makes up for it with gusto and heart. She said, in closing, “The number one thing is we need to be working together, and I love that you guys are working together on making this country a better place, and it’s not just a better place for me or for you, but it’s a better for place for us.”

Sachs clearly has the best intentions for her constituents and for democracy. Her work across party lines is a clear model for how politics should be able to function. With Trump in the White House, and a never-ending stream of polarized media coverage, it is easy to see how America could be leaving behind the moderates in a storm of extremist opinions. What hope do we have left for people who are (like the majority of America) moderate? In Sachs, we may have found a candidate who can navigate that predicament in a polarized world, where she claims her only labels are the four on her birth certificate: “Noga Chana Louis Sachs.”

The post Purple politics in Missouri’s CD2: Noga Sachs appeared first on Occasional Planet.

When 28-year-old, first-time, Latina candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pulled off a stunning primary upset against 10-term Democrat Joe Crowley in New York, it was cause for celebration. At least that’s how I saw it. But, apparently, I had a different reaction than that of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill.

Pelosi downgraded Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise victory calling it a random outlier and saying, “It should not be viewed as something that stands for everything.” And McCaskill, asked what she had in common with Ocasio-Cortez, said, “Not much.”

I view these dismissals of Ocasio-Cortez as both offensive and counter-productive. I can’t understand why leaders of the Democratic party aren’t celebrating the success of a candidate who is doing precisely what the Democratic party should be encouraging: coming off the sidelines, getting engaged in politics, putting herself on the line for progressive ideas—and representing the exact demographic that the party needs to move forward and to regain its mojo.

Well, actually, I think I do understand why Pelosi and McCaskill are distancing themselves from Ocasio-Cortez, but the reasons aren’t  pretty. It’s all about the internal politics of the Democratic establishment. Ocasio-Cortez knocked off a big name, a party insider who was on the short list to replace Pelosi as House Minority Leader [or possibly majority leader, if the blue wave actually hits in November]. The party elite had a succession plan—it was Crowley’s “turn”—and now Ocasio-Cortez has messed up the pre-determined order of things. That’s a no-no.

I’m afraid, too, that Ocasio-Cortez also carries with her—in the narrow view of the Democratic party apparatus—the “taint” of being an organizer in Bernie Sanders’ bid for the Democratic nomination in 2016. His candidacy was viewed by the party power elite as an insurgency, an assault on democratic centrist orthodoxy, and a threat to the prescribed order of things, in which the presidential nomination rightfully belonged to Hillary Clinton. They’re still mad about that, apparently, even though Sanders’ ideas remain popular–as demonstrated by Ocasio-Cortez, who describes herself as a Democratic Socialist, like Sanders. So, while America retreats into the 19^th Century on social and economic issues under Donald Trump, the Democratic party seems to be re-litigating its 2016 internal battle between Bernie-ites and Clinton-ites—and taking it out on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

As the party of Trump increasingly moves to the right, espousing radical, retrograde ideas that were once too extreme to talk about in public, it’s clear to me that the Democratic party must offer a choice as the party of the progressive ideas that have made life in America better for a wide range of people. They should be standing up for the New Deal ideas that Republicans, in their current orgy or power, are assiduously tearing down, day by day, one by one.

Democrats are not going to win by pandering to the right—as McCaskill did in her dismissive comment delivered on a conservative, St. Louis-based talk show. [Question: Would she have said the same thing on MSNBC?] Hasn’t the Democratic party learned that we can’t out-Republican the Republicans?  Democrats need to go left, as Ocasio-Cortez did—and won doing it. Instead of putting Ocasio-Cortez down and downgrading as a “fluke” a victory that should be seen as an energizing event, they should be asking her for advice.

Pelosi, McCaskill and other higher-ups in the party hierarchy are wishing for blue wave in November. They’re desperate to find strategies that will increase voter turnout, especially among younger voters. So, here’s a candidate who has the potential to do exactly that,  who may be a role model for others, and whose improbable victory could offer an object lesson in the perils of complacency. Dissing her is just plain dumb.

The post Pelosi, McCaskill dis Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she beats entrenched NY Dem. WTF? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Democratic party’s rules for nominating presidential candidates are deeply flawed. Unfortunately, cycle after cycle, the party has failed to make changes that would make the process more…er,…democratic. Now, with less than two years to go until the 2020 primary season, the Democratic party is looking at some alterations.

A recent article in the New York Times spells out the problem and some possible solutions:

The most significant, and divisive, step would involve reducing the role and power of superdelegates — the unpledged party insiders who are free to back any candidate regardless of how the public votes — ahead of the 2020 election. Their influence caused substantial tension two years ago when supporters of [Bernie] Sanders zeroed in on superdelegates as “undemocratic” and said they created an unfair and even rigged system favoring [Hillary] Clinton.

Now, party officials, including loyalists held over from both the Sanders and Clinton camps, are inching toward a compromise that would not only minimize the role of superdelegates but change the party’s operational structure as well.

The ideas on the table range from eliminating superdelegates altogether to reducing their numbers significantly — from more than 700 currently to about 280. Some officials said they preferred a proposal in which only elected government officials, and not party leaders, retain their superdelegate status.

…Several D.N.C. officials familiar with the negotiations said the Democrats most averse to change were state party officials and elected members of Congress who would stand to lose their coveted superdelegate status and the exclusive level of candidate access that often accompanies it.

The superdelegate structure has been in place since 1982, when some Democratic party leaders—mostly state and national elected officials—felt that they were being sidelined in the voting.

In “A Brief History of Superdelegates,” Daily Kos blogger Poblano explains that one of the original intents of having superdelegates was:

“..as a mechanism to “break glass in case of emergency”.  Thus could run the gamut from providing some experienced, stabilizing voices in the event of a procedural fight on the convention floor, to potentially picking a different nominee in the event of an Eagleton-type crisis.

Party leaders will vote on the proposal to limit or eliminate superdelegates later this summer. [The Republican party does not have superdelegates.]

Other rule changes under consideration

Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic party, is also planning to work on additional changes. He is quoted in the New York Times as saying that:

“…he will set a presidential primary debate schedule much earlier in the nomination process to minimize the perception of bias. The change is another nod to the factions created by the 2016 election, when Sanders protested vehemently that the debate schedule disproportionately benefited Clinton.

The New York Times reports that Perez also plans to decide the debate schedule in advance, instead of negotiating it after all of the candidates have entered the race.

Perez has also encouraged the D.N.C. commissions that are drafting reforms to recommend changes that would streamline the process of registering to vote in primaries.

Of particular interest to Democratic leaders are state caucuses, which may now be required to accommodate absentee voting, incorporate paper ballots and publicly report statewide voter counts. States that use the traditional primary system may soon be forced to allow same-day registration for voters to register as Democrats.

All of these proposed changes will be presented at a series of party meetings over the summer. It’s sure to be an interesting and lively debate, and the outcome is far from certain. One thing is for sure, though: The 2016 presidential primary season was a debacle—for both parties—and something’s gotta give.

These changes could be a good start. Keep in mind, though, that every time the party tweaks the rules—which is not very often—there can be unintended consequences. Also, one thing that the Democratic party seems not to be addressing is the primary schedule itself—the whole Iowa,  New Hampshire and South Carolina craziness and its disproportionate effect on the nominating process. But, alas, here we are, less than two years away from the next potential disaster, and not a peep from Democrats about this. Without a fundamental change in that schedule, we’re in for another out-of-whack primary season.

The post New rules for Democratic Party: Will they get it right this time? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Democratic party should be gearing up–right now–to completely revamp the presidential primary system. Of the many things that went horribly wrong in the 2016 Presidential election cycle, one of the fundamentals was the major parties’ system for deciding on their presidential nominees.

Our current presidential primary system is a disaster for political discourse, for serious candidates, and for our democracy. Just listen to what passes for political debate—particularly among the 2016 crop of Republican primary candidates—and you have all the evidence you need. For candidates, it’s all about proving that they are more right-wing conservative than the next person. And it’s all in pursuit of the brass ring of winning the earliest primaries/caucuses in the most conservative states: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

And that, right there, is the problem. Because of the structure of the primary cycle, front-loaded with these ultra-conservative states, candidates feel compelled to tailor their messages to extreme right, because that’s who is motivated to come out for the caucuses and primaries. In addition, the early states have no big cities, so candidates do not feel the need to talk about the issues that concern urban dwellers: No mention of Ferguson, Black LIves Matter, Flint’s poisoned water system, etc.  They are interested only in pandering to the narrow concerns of rural and small-town voters, because their votes are the ones they need to build momentum for the rest of the crazy primary season.

So, what’s the solution? A total re-think of the way we determine the presidential nominees from each party.

Want to “repeal and replace” something? Let’s put that energy into coming up with something completely different.
I’m not proposing that we go back to the smoke-filled rooms of yore, when party bosses decided who the candidates would be, without any input from the electorate. [There is, however, a strong whiff of a new kind of party-boss smoke out there. It comes from the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Missouri’s billionaire would-be-kingmaker Rex Sinquefield, , and other super-wealthy men. They’re spending huge sums of money to push their personal agendas by buying politicians and funding their campaigns. But let’s put that aspect of our current system aside, for the moment, and look at other alternatives.]

Many people have said that a better structure would consist of a series of regional primaries. But before I get to that—and some of the other ideas that have been floating over the years, here is…

A brief history of primaries

It’s easy to think that the current primary structure is a built-in part of American political history, and, therefore, is not to be tinkered with—you know, that whole “originalist,” traditionalist thing. It’s not. Neither political parties nor primary elections are included in the U.S. Constitution: Primaries evolved over time, invented by political parties. There were primaries in some states in the early 1800s, but they were mostly non-binding, and they gave way to the party-boss system by the mid-1800s.

The current system of binding primaries [in which delegates are required to vote for their state’s nominee in the first round of voting at the national convention] is actually rather new.

According to Wikipedia:

The impetus for national adoption of the binding primary election was the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention. Vice President Hubert Humphrey secured the nomination despite not winning a single primary under his own name. After this, a Democratic National Committee-commissioned a panel led by Senator George McGovern –that recommended that states adopt new rules to assure wider participation.

A large number of states, faced with the need to conform to more detailed rules for the selection of national delegates, chose a presidential primary as an easier way to come into compliance with the new national Democratic Party rules. The result was that many more future delegates would be selected by a state presidential primary. The Republicans also adopted many more state presidential primaries.

Iowa and New Hampshire

The now-all-important Iowa caucus began just 40 years ago. The New Hampshire primaries began 60 years ago, and they have become the center of attention in the battle to nominate the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates. It’s obvious that the current system is terribly skewed, front-loaded with rural states that represent a tiny fraction of the ultimate number of delegates, and whose issues and preferences do not remotely represent the mainstream of American political discourse.

Resistance to change

But changing the system has proven to be a Sisyphean task, because states love going first and don’t want to surrender the advantages first-ness brings—even if sharing in a regional primary would be better for the common good of our electoral system and democracy.

Elected officials, political scientists, pundits, party leaders and many others—although I doubt that the list includes many state party chairpeople–have suggested alternative systems. The Congressional Record is littered with failed proposals going back decades. You can look ‘em up: 1980, 1985, 1991, 2007, 2011 for example. But, for what it’s worth, here are some current ideas:

Alternatives to the current presidential primary system

Fix The Primaries offers a handy summary of a range of alternatives–the links take you to helpful infographics with more detail. Solutions–some more logical than others– include:

The American Plan
Starting with small states and working towards large ones, the American Plan also incorporates random order to afford big states the chance to go early as well.

The National Plan
This plan calls for a national primary where voters can vote once between January and June and ballots are counted and tallied at the start of each month.

The Delaware Plan
This plan relies on “backloading” the primary schedule, that is, allowing less populated states to go first and the most populated to go last.

Interregional Primary Plan
Six groups of primaries or caucuses would be scheduled between March and June. On each date, a state or group of smaller states from one of six geographic regions of the country would go together.

Rotating Regional Plan
Under the proposal, the country is divided into four regions – Northeast, Midwest, West, and South, which take their turns voting first, then one region per month from March to June.

Regional Lottery Plan
State order would be decided by lottery on New Year’s Day. Two small states would be randomly selected to go first, followed by four regions also determined randomly.

One Day National Primary
This plan simply calls for primaries and caucuses in all states on the same day.

The Texas Plan
States are divided into four rotating groups with equal number of both electoral votes and total number of states per each group to provide an equal number of predominantly Republican states and predominantly Democratic states.

Please, people. Get over yourselves and pick one, already. [Personally, I think the Rotating Regional Plan–proposed by the National Association of Secretaries of State–makes the most sense.]

Political thought leaders on both the right and the left are dismayed by what they are seeing in the current system—and I use that term loosely—of presidential primaries. Even Republicans are recoiling from the monster created by our current system. On the left, Think Progress recently issued a call to “ban the Iowa Caucus,” stating that:

It’s as if Rube Goldberg designed a method of polling, implemented it in an unusually unrepresentative state, and then decreed that this state’s votes would receive greater weight than other state in the union.

We’ve finished the 2016 election cycle with an unlikely outcome. There are a lot of reasons we got what we got. No single factor or group is 100 percent culpable. But it’s painfully clear that the nominating system itself bears some of the responsibility. Neither party is happy with the result. But it’s going to be as difficult as ever to get the two major parties to agree on a new system.

To me, the answer is for one party–preferably the Democrats–to take the initiative and pick a new plan.They don’t have to look very far to find options [see above]: These ideas have been rolling around for years. And they don’t have to wait for consensus with Republicans. If the Democratic Party is in as much disarray as insiders and media are reporting, this is the time to do something transformational about one of the party’s most fundamental activities.

Don’t wait for the translation [to quote former UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson] or for the other party to catch up, just do it.

[Editor’s note: This is a post-election update of an article first posted on Occasional Planet in February 2016.]

The post The presidential primary system: Time to repeal and replace it appeared first on Occasional Planet.

What happened at the Nevada Democratic Convention is awful and inexcusable, and Sanders needs to apologize; demand that his supporters stop such terrible, hateful, stupid, counterproductive behavior; and then carry on campaigning and talking about issues until the convention, by the end of which he should strongly endorse Clinton.

All that being said, a lot of what Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, Koz, and Paul Krugman are saying is overwrought, and I don’t pay much mind to them anyway, because they made it clear from the start they don’t like Sanders. All of them have been beating up on him for months.

I am going to engage in some you-tooism here. Not on the behavior of some of his supporters, which is despicable, but on “feeling sorry” [as Krugman said about some Sanders supporters]—for Clinton supporters. I am truly shocked and disappointed by people who call themselves strong left-wing liberals who have been reduced to defending Clinton’s positions and actions on a wide range of things on which they would never have defended anyone else.

I appreciate Clinton supporters who say, “I agree with Sanders on the issues but I don’t think he can win.” I understand that. But I have seen way too many Clinton supporters who defend her blatant changing of positions depending on who she is talking to (as we just saw last week with coal miners), her being buddies with people like Kissinger and Blankfein, her multi-million dollar contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street interests, her hawkishness on foreign policy, her actions in Honduras, her refusal to support Elizabeth Warren on major issues like breaking up banks and reinstating Glass-Stegall, her opposition to an immediate moratorium on fracking, her turning back decades of Democratic support for single-payer health care by saying “it will never, ever happen” and chastising people who support it, and several other items.

For those of us who care about issues, this has all been a very sorry sight. We will vote for Clinton in November because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. But don’t sugar-coat her poor position on issues.

None of which is to excuse Sanders for not forcefully condemning the actions of his supporters and demanding that those behaviors stop. It is extremely maddening and disappointing that he has not done that.

I do want to add one addendum here, lest I be accused of being a fraud and hypocrite this fall: I did not mean to imply that I will vote for Clinton only because Trump is worse. In spite of my many and major policy differences with her, I also admire her in some ways. I think she has good experience, I like her strength on other issues including guns and reproductive rights, and I admire her for standing up to all the phony scandals and other crap that the Republicans have thrown her way. And I am excited to vote for the first woman president!

Much like I feel about Obama– I strongly disagree with him on some issues and on some things he has done, but overall I greatly admire him and think he has been an excellent president. I am optimistic that Clinton can be the same.

And I also recognize that this mainly a fight between liberals, albeit moderate liberals and left liberals. It’s not like we’re all conservatives!

The post Sanders, Clinton, Nevada and squabbling liberals appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The 2016 presidential primary season has started for real–kicked off by the Iowa caucuses. But our current presidential primary system is a disaster for political discourse, for serious candidates, and for our democracy. Just listen to what passes for political debate—particularly among the 2016 crop of Republican primary candidates—and you have all the evidence you need. For candidates, it’s all about proving that they are more right-wing conservative than the next person. And it’s all in pursuit of the brass ring of winning the earliest primaries/caucuses in the most conservative states: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

And that, right there, is the problem. Because of the structure of the primary cycle, frontloaded with these ultra-conservative states, candidates feel compelled to tailor their messages to extreme right, because that’s who is motivated to come out for the caucuses and primaries. In addition, the early states have no big cities, so candidates do not feel the need to talk about the issues that concern urban dwellers: No mention of Ferguson, Black LIves Matter, Flint’s poisoned water system, etc.  They are interested only in pandering to the narrow concerns of rural and small-town voters, because their votes are the ones they need to build momentum for the rest of the crazy primary season.

So, what’s the solution? A total re-think of the way we determine the presidential nominees from each party.
I’m not proposing that we go back to the smoke-filled rooms of yore, when party bosses decided who the candidates would be, without any input from the electorate. [There is, however, a strong whiff of a new kind of party-boss smoke out there. It comes from the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Missouri’s billionaire would-be-kingmaker Rex Sinquefield, the Wicks Brothers of Texas, and other super-wealthy men. They’re spending huge sums of money to push their personal agendas by buying politicians and funding their campaigns. But let’s put that aspect of our current system aside, for the moment, and look at other alternatives.]

Many people have said that a better structure would consist of a series of regional primaries. But before I get that—and some of the other ideas that have been floating over the years, here is…

A brief history of primaries

It’s easy to think that the current primary structure is a built-in part of American political history, and, therefore, is not to be tinkered with—you know, that whole “originalist,” traditionalist thing. It’s not. Neither political parties nor primary elections are included in the U.S. Constitution: Primaries evolved over time, invented by political parties. There were primaries in some states in the early 1800s, but they were mostly non-binding, and they gave way to the party-boss system by the mid-1800s.

The current system of binding primaries [in which delegates are required to vote for their state’s nominee in the first round of voting at the national convention] is actually rather new.

According to Wikipedia:

The impetus for national adoption of the binding primary election was the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention. Vice President Hubert Humphrey secured the nomination despite not winning a single primary under his own name. After this, a Democratic National Committee-commissioned a panel led by Senator George McGovern –that recommended that states adopt new rules to assure wider participation.

A large number of states, faced with the need to conform to more detailed rules for the selection of national delegates, chose a presidential primary as an easier way to come into compliance with the new national Democratic Party rules. The result was that many more future delegates would be selected by a state presidential primary. The Republicans also adopted many more state presidential primaries.

Iowa and New Hampshire

The now-all-important Iowa caucus began just 40 years ago. The New Hampshire primaries began 60 years ago, and they have become the center of attention in the battle to nominate the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates. It’s obvious that the current system is terribly skewed, front-loaded with rural states that represent a tiny fraction of the ultimate number of delegates, and whose issues and preferences do not remotely represent the mainstream of American political discourse.

Resistance to change

But changing the system has proven to be a Sisyphean task, because states love going first and don’t want to surrender the advantages first-ness brings—even if sharing in a regional primary would be better for the common good of our electoral system and democracy.

Elected officials, political scientists, pundits, party leaders and many others—although I doubt that the list includes many state party chairpeople–have suggested alternative systems. The Congressional Record is littered with failed proposals going back decades. You can look ‘em up: 1980, 1985, 1991, 2007, 2011 for example. But, for what it’s worth, here are some current ideas:

Alternatives to the current presidential primary system

Fix The Primaries offers a handy summary of a range of alternatives–the links take you to helpful infographics with more detail. Solutions–some more logical than others– include:

The American Plan
Starting with small states and working towards large ones, the American Plan also incorporates random order to afford big states the chance to go early as well.

The National Plan
This plan calls for a national primary where voters can vote once between January and June and ballots are counted and tallied at the start of each month.

The Delaware Plan
This plan relies on “backloading” the primary schedule, that is, allowing less populated states to go first and the most populated to go last.

Interregional Primary Plan
Six groups of primaries or caucuses would be scheduled between March and June. On each date, a state or group of smaller states from one of six geographic regions of the country would go together.

Rotating Regional Plan
Under the proposal, the country is divided into four regions – Northeast, Midwest, West, and South, which take their turns voting first, then one region per month from March to June.

Regional Lottery Plan
State order would be decided by lottery on New Year’s Day. Two small states would be randomly selected to go first, followed by four regions also determined randomly.

One Day National Primary
This plan simply calls for primaries and caucuses in all states on the same day.

The Texas Plan
States are divided into four rotating groups with equal number of both electoral votes and total number of states per each group to provide an equal number of predominantly Republican states and predominantly Democratic states.

Please, people. Get over yourselves and pick one, already. [Personally, I think the Rotating Regional Plan–proposed by the National Association of Secretaries of State–makes the most sense.]

Political thought leaders on both the right and the left are dismayed by what they are seeing in the current system—and I use that term loosely—of presidential primaries. Even Republicans are recoiling from the monster created by our current system. On the left, Think Progress recently issued a call to “ban the Iowa Caucus,” stating that:

It’s as if Rube Goldberg designed a method of polling, implemented it in an unusually unrepresentative state, and then decreed that this state’s votes would receive greater weight than other state in the union.

I’ll be watching the 2016 presidential primaries closely. But I’m going to be grumpy about the whole process, no matter who comes out ahead—even if it’s somebody I like—because the system stinks. And even though I know that performance-enhancing substances are banned in other professional sports, what I think American presidential politics needs is a large dose of Human Political Grow-Up Hormone.

The post We need a new presidential primary system, ASAP appeared first on Occasional Planet.