Excellent and highly rec'd post. Saturday could have, indeed, been so much uglier than it was. And your added comment gives you a .5 Recommend, if only there was such a thing.

Sensible ideas in post and, LisB, good wit.

Agreed, reform is long over due. I'd just like to add that there was an acceptable compromise this year as to who would be the early voting states. The problem has always been the DNC being unwilling to enforce the rules against NH or Iowa. If NH had been sanctioned for moving its date from third to first its likely that Iowa, SC and MI would not have changed their dates.

I would add, more or less ad nauseam

• the number of delegates from each state = 10x the number of seats it has in the House of Representatives
• Delegates are awarded on statewide results, not by districts or some other region within the state
• 
  

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I'm pretty impressed with the democratic nominating process. As I mentioned in another post, a relatively unknown but immensely dynamic and talented politician beat the most powerful couple in our party. What could be more democratic than that?

Yes, our system has flaws. We saw those flaws magnified because one of the candidates felt so entitled to the nomination, she tried to overturn the whole process, even though it was clear she couldn't surpass Obama's delegate count in Feb/March. Had the DNC stuck to the rules regarding MI and FL, and had the party and superdelegates had the balls to stand up to the Clintons when it was clear she couldn't win, things would have gone a lot smoother.

Again, I admit there are flaws. It went on too long and the Clintons have been out of control.

But Obama is about to win this thing. Has it been rough? Yes.
But let's not be naive. We all knew supporting the first black American candidate wasn't going to be a day at the beach. There was bound to be serious divisiveness, even if the Clintons didn't exacerbate the situation.

But I digress.

Anyway, aren't the losers the ones who are supposed to blame the process?

I don't see the need for the changes you're suggesting.

Why should Iowa be forced to give up their caucus? Caucuses didn't cause a problem and they're actually very good for building community and connections between activists.

As long as the only meaningful choices in November are members of two parties, I think that voters who aren't party members should be able to vote an opinion on the candidates. Yeah, it's crappy that some Republicans apparently swung margin in Ohio and maybe elsewhere, but I don't think those actions are worth attempting to close the primary to those who aren't party members. As long as everyone can only vote in one primary, I think the damage is minimal. Again, if it's not close, it's not an issue.

I don't have a strong opinion on getting rid of the superdelegates. Perhaps their number could be reduced. Their effect is only noticeable when the election is close, and if it's close it'll be contentious no matter what the system is. Getting rid of superdelegates won't fix the issue of what to do if it's very close again.

The problem with regional primary groupings is the same as what we have now. How do you decide who goes first? Someone will get an advantage, and someone will be disadvantaged no matter how you do it. Rotating them doesn't solve the problem because Mrs. Smith isn't going to be able to wait for 4-5 cycles for it to come around to benefit her. Who goes first, and who decides?

National primaries, which you didn't mention but which solve the "who goes first" problem, have a big problem of their own: Unless there's public financing and lots of time for Q&A and so forth before the vote, the candidate who has the most money and name recognition will clean up and knock out challengers very early. A benefit of the long campaign this year is that we know how the 3 of them react under stress. We wouldn't have that if everyone voted on just a very few days, or one day.

Yes, it could have been much worse, but it also might not have happened at all. The problem this year is that the race was very close for a long time. The RBC meeting didn't have to happen at all - they could have said, "Look, we decided this months ago. Case closed." They didn't because the race was very close. That doesn't happen very often.

I would want to see much more detail before arguing that big changes are necessary in the Democratic primary / caucus system. Remember that PACs were designed to be a fix for the broken political donation system and give small donors an equal voice. We see how that turned out...

My $0.02.

I think of all the reforms needed, by far the most important is the need to abolish the superdelegates.

Also, if the candidates agree with the DNC on a penality given to a state (say for moving a primary up too early), then those candidates should have to sign some sort of pledge not to participate in that state's primary. Doh!

Although the Clinton demonstrators had enough passion and vitriol to make for good news it really looked as if there weren't all that many of them - so that was a good thing.

As far as your suggestions I agree on closed/semi-closed primaries. Not up for the malevolent "throw" votes.

But I'm tired of everyone talking about getting rid of caucuses just because Hillary didn't win them. They are traditional and encourage active participation with your neighbors and in your party. They allow you to just be quiet, vote and leave if you prefer, plus they give everyone the chance to become a delegate.

Superdelegates? Ambivalent.

Early states? Probably best to have some variety but I like that Iowa goes first. Call me a romantic or traditionalist or whatever but it's a quaint tradition. It would be like Christmas without a tree to have it start elsewhere.

I'm going to both agree and disagree.

Get rid of superdelegates, yes. At the beginning of the primary process, Hillary had a completely unearned major boost from the SDs, especially until the news orgs started reporting pledged dels and SDs separately. If it hadn't been for SDs, Obama would have been ahead from the very beginning and the perception of the race would have been different.

Now at the end, the SDs are dragging their feet, artificially keeping the process in Limbo. Even now, Hillary is spouting nonsense about how SDs might switch to her and give her the nomination (and technically she is right).

The superdelegates have been an unmitigated disaster. Not only they are IMO a bad idea to begin with, they aren't even doing their job.

But I don't agree about streamlining the process. One of the cool things about the US is that states have relatively high degree of independence. So what I would say is this: who are you to tell states how they should run their nomination process?

I don't see anything wrong with assigning each state a number of delegates and letting the state apportion the delegates in any way it sees fit.

However, I believe the DNC should penalize candidates who are trying to undermine the nomination process. Hillary should have been docked delegates for constantly trying to invent her own rules.

Oh, one more point. Having the nomination process go from January to August is a Bad Idea. Start later, end sooner, or both.

And make sure you never, ever have six weeks of black void between voting in two states.

The two big problems were the MI/FL mess, and the superdelegates.

1.MI/FL should have been dealt with in a more decisive fashion. The RNC halved Florida's delegates and stuck to it. Their threat was credible. The DNC's stripping of all deleggates was untenable.

I also agree on some sort of rotation of early states.

2. The other big problem, perhaps the bigger one, is the superdelegates. Without them, it would have been a simple delegate race, and whoever had the most wins. Because of the SD, it became a big sales pitch and mroe about spin and arugments and backroom deals. This corrupted the process.

Caucuses are not the problem -- and are a good measure of enthusiasm, versus, say, name recognition or tv ad budgets. Republicans voting is not a problem either -- I think stealing GOP voters should be the goal. I think states should still be allowed to choose their local process however they choose.

If there were no superdelegates, I think most of these other problems would have been minimal. It's because of the temptation to steal the nomination via SDs that we heard months of endless bullshit about primary states, big states, momentum, white voters, etc. etc.

DNC: GET RID OF THE SUPERDELEGATES!!!!!!

Thanks everyone for weighing in with your opinions.

Let me tackle two of the issues that have been brought up: caucuses and Republicans voting in the Dem primary.

1. Caucuses. For those who don't know, I've got an Obama bumper sticker and so I realize that the caucuses have been very very good to the next President of the United States. But I'm also the father to two small children and my wife and I both work. If the caucus is held at 7pm and one of our kids is sick or we have needs with one of our jobs, it could be challenging to attend. If my home state said that primary voting would be available only from 7-9pm, election advocates and the NAACP would be filing lawsuits and shouting disenfranchisement. The caucuses are unique and a different way to hold an election - but we should be making elections as open and accessible as possible...

2. ...except in the case of Republicans voting in a Democratic primary (or vice versa). Independents can certainly choose which ballot to participate in. But even this doesn't bar Republicans from voting in the primary - if they are truly excited by the Democratic candidates they could change their registration to Dem or independent. This is what we want to encourage. Otherwise, if you're a Republican you can always vote for the Democratic candidate in the general election. But ultimately, the DNC cannot control this - it's a state by state issue.

Excellent ideas.

I'm surprised to see people stand up for the caucuses. The defenses can be boiled down to: they're fun, they build community, and they're traditional.

Problem is, I think it's more important that our selection process is truly democratic (one vote per party member on a private ballot) and that it encourages participation by as many party members as possible (it should not demand too much of people's time).

And really, I don't think the existence of caucuses (or not) would have swung the election. Were there no caucuses, both campaigns would have used different tactics.

But there's one thing we do know: Absent caucuses we would have an actual, accurate tally of the popular vote. That would have ended a lot of lunacy before it started.

How many people who are defending a caucus have participated in one? (I have not)

I do think that the smaller states should go before the large states. Having the large states go first biases the race towards the establishment candidate with the most name recognition and money. Moreover, the large states are so big that they matter and get attention even if they come at the end of the primary cycle. Small states like Iowa, or New Hampshire wouldn't matter for practical purposes if they came at the end.

Open primaries are only a problem if one party already has a nominee and the other one doesn't. But I think that, all in all, each state party should decide how it wants to award its own delegates. Remember, state parties don't have to accept the state sponsored primary as legitimate. They can hold their own caucus or firehouse caucus if they wish.

Superdelegates are destructive if you have a system with proportional representation in every state like the democrats have. Superdelegates are only necessary if you don't have a significant amount of winner-take-all states, and then superdelegates only be congressmen, who must answer to the people at every election.

I've floated this idea before, but here goes.

1. Five primary dates, one each month from Jan-May.

2. Jan primary is a few small states totaling about 5% of the total delegates.

3. Each successive monthly date awards increasing amounts of delegates until you have about 40% in May.

4. States rotate (although obviously only small states can be in the Jan date).

5. No caucuses. No open primaries. No superdelegates.

The advantage of having small states early is that it lowers the entry barrier. It's possible for a candidate with meager resources to compete in small states. With a win, more resources will flow.

By the end you'll almost certainly be down to two candidates facing off in a final primary date to actually decide the nomination.

What's really the rationale for superdelegates? It never made any sense. Can you actually imagine a situation in which they overturn the results of the primaries?