National Caucus & You Tube

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Iowa? New Hamsure? How about a nation wide Caucus held all at the same time?

They did it on Dec 12th here with the new idea of having a "virutal caucus"

http://www.nationalcaucus.com/120707_results_announcement

Democrats

1. Barak Obama

2. John Edwards/Hilliary Clinton (tied)

Republicans

1. Ron Paul

2. Mike Huckabee

2. Fred Tompson

Its an interesting idea You Tube video about it here:

http://www.youtube.com/NationalCaucus

[ttogreh]

Good lord. What would it mean? Would it be a winner-take-all thing, or would you only need to place in order to get some of the delegates? Would it replace State by State primaries, or complement them? How could you get fifty separate, sovereign states to agree on a date for it, let alone how many delegates each state would get? What about the many, many, many states with no experience or little experience with caucuses??

It's a cluster____. I am more than skeptical.

[the eternal]

Interesting idea.

We are a long, LONG way from doing that though.

But it's interesting.

I love that every Ron Paul supporter has theor own website.

I fear surfing the web now. They're EVERYWHERE! (except the polling places )

[ttogreh]

11,790 Supporters of Ron Paul were at Iowa polling places, Eternal. I think this constant bashing on Paul supporters belies a deeper, more sinister opinion than just that they are less than mainstream thinkers...

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Good lord. What would it mean? Would it be a winner-take-all thing, or would you only need to place in order to get some of the delegates? Would it replace State by State primaries, or complement them? How could you get fifty separate, sovereign states to agree on a date for it, let alone how many delegates each state would get? What about the many, many, many states with no experience or little experience with caucuses??

It's a cluster____. I am more than skeptical.

The state by state system critics are legion. In most circles its not even a question of "if" it should be changed, its just politically difficult. The details of how to make it work would be the issue, not the overall concept.

Really its very well thought out (and has been suggested for at least 50+ years, i assume longer) Its not some idea that they just pulled out of the air with no thought of how the details would play out. (I'm talking about the actual idea of a national primary, rather than this sort of "for fun" system they have here)

The current system is the one that is fraught with loopholes and unbalanced impact due to the 50X elections with the earlier ones having far more impact than later elections. A nation wide caucus would smooth out a lot of the current systems issues. This has long been suggested by political theorists (and poli sci teachers) but due to situational realities isn't going to happen , not because its not better, just because candidates and special interest groups LIKE being able to "play with the system" the way they can now, far more easily than they would be able to do if we just had one set of primaries, rather than 50.

Not sure what your saying about the "winner take all" thing.. yeah its winner take all , same as it is now... the current system is a "winner take all" we just waste a lot of time and energy doing all the individual state-by-state votes and then tally them all up at the end and pick 2 candidates. This would do the exact same thing in one big caucus not giving any individual state any favoritism the way we do now with the timing issues involved (as well as a lot of other things).

What it would mean is a real national caucus , not a state by state vote. Democrats nationwide , Republicans nationwide would all vote all at once. Its long been suggested by political theorists as a better system than we have now.

It would negate the some would call "grotesquely out of balance" impact that state-by-state caucuses have on the national candidates. It would be a country-wide caucus.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

11,790 Supporters of Ron Paul were at Iowa polling places, Eternal. I think this constant bashing on Paul supporters belies a deeper, more sinister opinion than just that they are less than mainstream thinkers...

Any national figure will be heavily criticized, especially ones with (seeming) minority opinions. Its part of being a public figure. We tend to be more sensitive to this criticism of candidates (or political parties) that we personally care about or identify with more than the "others" bashing, and assume our side is picked on more than any other.

A favorite tactic is to not address the actual criticism but to attack the character of the critic. Not sure why that is exactly.