-Many people are calling Tuesday's big primary showdowns in Texas and Ohio the political "Groundhog Day." Either these two states will end Clinton's campaign or give her momentum in the race and basically a restart for her. The reason that this has lately been called the political Groudhog Day is because the next big delegate state is 7 weeks later in Pennsylvania. Clinton's campaign team said she will clinch the race in June, while Obama's campaign thought this remark is mathematically crazy for Clinton. Bill Clinton didn't win his Democratic nomination until June. No one wants to have this prolonged race and the Democratic leader wants April to be the deadline. Howard Dean, Chairman of Democratic National Committee, believes that if there isn't a nominee in March or April they are going to have to get the candidates together to make an arrangement. I really don't understand what this "arrangement" would be, and it is clear by looking around that no one else does either. I didn't know that the party leader could make arrangements to finish the race early.
-Thanks adam for pointing out my mistake about Florida and Michigan. The thing I am confused about what seeding actually intales.
-Also in respect to Nader running as an independent. Nader will not have to run in any primaries since he will be running under his own independent party, not Democratic or Republican. If I'm not mistaken anyone can run for president seeing that under democracy this is possible, but the main thing is that you need the money to run.
2 comments:
There are usually state laws governing who can be on the ballot. Primaries (and caucuses) decide who will be a party's pick - to run under their ticket. Usually, that candidate then submits a certain number of signatures to each state's electoral commission to get on the ballot - or the party does it for them.
As for graingerworker's question - if a candidate files on time, pay filing fees, etc - of course. You could, theoretically, run in a single state - file there. Or not be on the ballot at all, and wage a write-in campaign. The question is - why do we only have two candidates? It has to do with a simple concept which political scientists call Duverger's Law.
Basically, in our system, where one candidate wins after receiving the plurality of votes, expectations and rational choice cause people to select between one of two choices.
An example might help. Say you have three candidates, A, B, and C. A and B are perceived as being neck and neck - say, at 40% of the vote each. Candidate C is perceived as having 20% of the vote. Now, as time goes on, and as you approach an election, where does your support tend to go? Well, what's the utility of voting for candidate C? A vote for him or her is 'wasted'. The utility for voting for either candidate A or B is now much higher - your vote directly impacts the result, and you can pick the 'lesser of two evils'.
I hope that wasn't too long of an explanation!
I too was suprised to see the possiblity of an "arragement" It seems almost undemocratic.
Recently I have encountered many people complaining about the 2 party system saying that it is corrupt. But like Adam was saying, it is mathematically inevitable and I really dont understand how math can be corrupt
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