I just wanted to say that I don't think there is anything unusual going on with how our political party candidates are chosen. I thought a short explanation of the process and some history might clear things up a bit. I'm sure some of you already know these things but others may not and I think it's important to understand this so we don't form our angry mob for the wrong reasons. Hey, I'll try to keep it entertaining if I can and I will say that I think there are plenty of reasons why we should be forming an angry mob but these candidates and the primary process don't really rate as one.

Let me start by saying that it is true there are favored candidates and these candidates do have a large advantage over everybody else but what I'd like to do is explain that advantage. I will often make broad statements here like "the Democrats are idiots" and when I say that I don't mean us (I'm a registered Democrat at this point), I mean the people who actually run the party...the Howard Dean's and such...elected officials, super delegates, party bosses etc...these are the people that make decisions on what's best for the party, or at least what they think is best. Both sides have these people in place, the Republicans and Democrats and both sides do look at the people who choose to run from their party and decide who their best option is. I know someone at one point mentioned the super delegate thing and really all that shows is who the party thinks is their best candidate. It's really not that important except to show who the leaders of that party feel is their best shot. That's what I mean when I say a Ron Paul or a Dennis Kucinich have no shot, it's the fact that their party leaders do not feel these candidates are their best option to win the general election. It's as simple as that, no bloodlines, shapeshifting lizards, or giant world government global ruling class pulling the strings. It's just that each party wants to win the election and they do what they think will give them the win...that's it period.

Now, these favored candidates, like Hillary for example, she is favored for a number of reasons and money is certainly one of them. She is backed by the big business types, Hollywood hotshots (like Harvey Weinstein for example) and any number of other corpo-conglomerate types that will throw money at her campaign and support her in other ways. She's high profile, there is no way around that, the whole world knows who she is, who she is married to, and all sorts of other nonsense about her. She is a media darling because the media is all about branding and name recognition and we all know the Clinton "brand" and what it represents. So, her party thinks she can win, the media will gladly promote her because her name sells, and there is big money behind her because they think she can win. Now is it reasonable to wonder if all the people throwing big money at Hillary might want something in return...that she may be more likely to do something for the people that supported her in that way than she would for others? You bet it is and sure it's likely she's gonna favor her big money backers...she owes them. That's not a conspiracy though, that's just business...which seems to be the motto for American politics these days.

Now, in business there is nothing wrong with any of the above behavior. In fact we would just call anybody who did these things a smart business man. Securing media attention, financial backing, getting big money types interested in what you are doing...in a business sense that's all good...in government though it's another story.

Let's back up here for a second and look at history. First, we did not always have this primary process and when we did get it, it did not work the way it does now. In fact, we have more say now in who we elect president than we ever did before. Our founding fathers did not use this system. The way it worked was the party bosses picked who would represent their party and the people would get to pick from those choices. Can you imagine if we went back to that system? Holy shit! If people think they are being forced to vote for certain candidates now, imagine if we had to pick from just the two people the Republicans and Democrats said was their guy or gal?

Now I know some of you are sitting there saying "Well, Reg, nothing really has changed, they are still telling us who we can vote for!" and I'm sure you could hold up Kucinich getting cut from the debate the other night and tell me that proves it...but you would, in fact, be mostly wrong.

Sure there are candidates that get much more attention, more money, and in the end they are getting more votes too. There is all sorts of tampering done along the way, that's true too, but the fact is Democracy allows for that. Any way you cut it Hillary Clinton has a lot of, what most of us would call, unfair advantages...but Democracy allows for that too. In our Democracy we can make all kinds of noise about how the system sucks and try to change it...and in fact we do change it. As an example, did you know that the way our primary system used to work was even though the people would vote for their favored candidate, the delegates from each state that would go to the convention were not required to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in their state. In fact, the delegates votes were allowed to be negotiated or bartered at the convention by the party bosses. This means that the public vote was basically meaningless. See the parties and the party bosses have always felt that because it's their party and they want to do what's best for it, they should have some sort of say in who the public chooses to represent the party. Not entirely unreasonable and certainly not hard to understand. As we have moved forward and people have felt that the public vote should have more relevance the bartering and negotiating was downplayed and they attempted to make the system more transparent. Due to this they added a new wrinkle to the process where the delegates had to sign a pledge to cast their vote for the candidate that won their states popular vote...so we the people made our voice heard and the system changed.

What you need to know though is that the primary process is not governed by our Constitution and there are no guidelines in it to oversee this process. The primary process was developed by the states and political parties to allow the public more of a voice in choosing these candidates but it is a system developed by the parties to allow them some control over who represents them. So because it's a system created by the Republicans and Democrats it does favor their interests. Still we have more say now in the process than we ever did and events like Watergate, Iran-Contra, and all the crimes of the Bush administration will continue to allow us even more of a foothold. If you want an example of the fact that the parties control the primary process just look at what the Democrats did in Michigan this year. They took away the Democratic primary in Michigan and stripped them of their delegates because the state moved up their primary. See because the party runs and controls its nominating process they are within their rights to do that...no mystery or conspiracy there.

This is why I always say that Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich can't win because their party is not behind them. In a way it's their own fault because they keep running for their respective parties knowing they don't have their parties support and trust me...they know all about what I'm writing about in this post. They come in knowing they are a long shot, that they do not have party backing, and they hope that somehow they can win public support just through their message. Nothing wrong with that but knowing what we know about the system there is no chance in hell for that to happen. They don't pass muster in the nominating process to begin with and it's not because the process is rigged it's because they really do not represent the interests of the people who run the party they decided to join. So when NBC cut Kucinich out of the debate the other night, it was not a big surprise or because they were trying to rig the election...it was because the media people get their info from the political parties and the party bosses are telling them "Hey, this guy is a joke, he can't win these are our serious candidates." and they are totally within their rights to do that.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post and maybe it cleared some things up a little. I promise I'll shut up about politics for a while now and post only stuff about movies, music, or shit I think is funny...obviously this was not very funny...except maybe to Mick.