Phil AmmannDonald Trump appears to have only just realized that the GOP does not pick its nominee by a popular majority of votes. But Trump suffers from a common misunderstanding.
After all, it seems only reasonable that a political party should pick its leading candidate by getting its membership to the polls, counting all their votes, and awarding the top position to the person who gets the most votes.
Any other scheme simply wouldn’t be democratic, right?
But let’s not raise the question whether the parties’ nominee selection schemes are actually democratic. In fact, the Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, and other parties can use whatever method they want.
And it’s an amateur mistake to think that all a candidate has to do is win a majority of votes in a primary or caucus.
In fact, it’s not now – if it’s ever been – a one person, one vote system in presidential primary races. The selection scheme is determined at the state party level.
Maybe your state party will allocate delegates in proportion to the primary vote numbers. Or maybe the rules make for a “winner takes all” situation.
Throw so-called superdelegates into the mix, and we have to remember what Tip O’Neill told us: All politics is local.
If you don’t like how your state party selects its presidential candidate, then get involved with your state party and seek to change it from within.
If you want to run for president, then you should research the process state by state and do your work on the ground. This takes time and person-power, no matter how many billions of dollars in unpaid TV appearances you get.
Barack Obama’s campaign figured out his party’s complicated delegate math a decade ago. Since then, tea partiers and the rest of the GOP appear to have chosen to focus on Obama’s birth certificate and blocking his policy initiatives.
Instead, they could have been spending the past eight years re-creating his ultimately successful 2007-08 strategy. It seems clear that both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders did get the memo.
One wonders if the GOP’s candidates will choose to learn their lesson this time around.
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Michele Grant is an attorney in Philadelphia. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
