This has been a good year for politics, and a great year for any media that covers politics. Never before have the practitioners of the visual arts in politics -- editorial cartoonists -- had such easy material: working from the top down, the space above the top of the character's skull is easily used to define the remainder of the image and much of the message. Audio and visual broadcasting, as well as all manner of print, have had to work a little harder to maintain an audience for their offerings, but not much harder.
These things happen when the outsiders want to become the insiders. It helps their case if the outsiders can make it seem that they are valiantly trudging and slogging the path to insider-dom. At the risk of invoking a simile that could be all too apt, the outsiders might be tempted to compare their labors to that of Herakles at the Augean stables.
However, lacking an inclination to make classical references in the serious context of presidential campaigning -- an inclination that, arguably, could improve the orations of all candidates for president -- two contenders in particular have chosen to openly berate the processes of presidential nominations.
Bernie Sanders has repeatedly said that the Democratic presidential primary process is "rigged" against him. Donald Trump warned that he had better be treated "fairly" by the Republican nominating convention if the party is to avoid his wrath. (Since he seems to be the winner, let us assume that he no longer feels wrathful.)
The presidential primaries -- fair or foul?
(Classical references fail us at this point, so we must descend into the realm of baseball metaphors.)
Anybody in the Republican leadership who is smitten with the idea of Donald Trump as the GOP's presidential candidate is doing an excellent job of staying far out in left field. There continues to be a simmering desire that the upcoming party convention nominate somebody other than Trump who better represents the principles of the Republican Party -- in other words, for these people the outcome of the primaries does not fit with the intended ideals of the Republican Party and therefore should be overthrown. Inevitably, this would re-energize the Trumpian wrath.
Bernie Sanders and many of his supporters seem to think that next month's Democratic convention in Philadelphia is an opportunity to force their game into extra innings by capitalizing on the free-agency of the superdelegates. But this game is in the last half of the ninth inning, the Sanders team is trailing the Clinton team badly, Bernie is at bat, nobody is on base, and the count is full.
LWC conclusion: Everybody should look at the scores. There might have been some foul plays along the way (what game does not have them?) but Hillary and The Donald have won fair and square.
The Democratic contest is straightforward: after some out-of-the-park home runs -- notably in California, New York, Florida and Texas, the four most populous states -- Clinton's popular vote in the primaries is 15.8 million; Sanders' is 12.0 million. That is 57% to 43%. Without the much-maligned superdelegates, Clinton's delegate lead is somewhat slimmer: 55% to 45%. With superdelegates it becomes somewhat larger: 60 - 40. (Notably, the party's rules have actually favored the Sanders' candidacy in the awarded delegates, despite oft-repeated gripes about "rigging." ) If there were no superdelegates, and all the Democratic convention delegates were to be awarded proportionally according to popular vote results in primary elections, Clinton would still have the delegate majority. The choice of Democratic primary voters for the 2016 presidential election is Hillary Clinton.
On the Republican side: Consistent scoring with singles, doubles, triples and homers, ending with a grand slam in Indiana, gave Team Trump a solid advantage; everybody else was left with demoralized players. Trump enjoyed a cakewalk of forfeits for the remainder of the season. With everything put together, Trump has won more than enough delegates to be awarded the nomination at the Republican Party convention simply by following the rules (something of an irony, considering Trump's apparent disregard for behavioral norms).
The rules for the Republican nominating contests have been far more complex than those of the Democratic contests. While the Democratic delegates have been awarded proportionally to the popular vote, the Republican delegates have been awarded by a variety of formulas: proportionally; winner-take-all; winner-take-most; and maybe one or two other methods. Trump's popular vote of 13.3 million far exceeds that of his nearest challenger, Ted Cruz at 7.6 million, and represents about 46% of the total Republican primary vote. By the rules of the game -- even if by a plurality and not a majority vote -- Donald Trump is the presidential choice of the 2016 Republican primary voting.
Can the presidential nominating process be made more transparent and less chaotic?
Yes. But it probably will not happen. The U.S. Constitution balks in its pitches for qualifying and selecting candidates for president; it also takes no notice of political parties.
Such a change would require an unprecedented amount of political and legislative cooperation. Don't try to think about the bipartisan cooperation that would be needed, because before reaching that stage something even more difficult would have to happen: each political party would have to begin by arranging for intra-party consistency, and that would mean having cooperation among more than 50 Republican state and territory parties, and similar cooperation among more than 50 Democratic state and territory parties.
Only then could the various state legislatures begin crafting the laws needed to define, develop and implement a presidential nominating process that is different from, and hopefully better than, the one that we have now. I hope nobody holds their breath waiting for these things to happen.
Fortunately, there is an unending supply of editorial cartoons.
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