Winning and Losing the Non-Election

Well, Donald Trump got spanked over the weekend when a lot of presidential voting delegates who do not like him were put into position. Regardless of what the various state citizens value or who they would vote for in a primary, delegates were installed by party insiders to vote against Trump on a second round Republican convention vote.

Now, I know that primaries do not belong to the general population. The constitution guarantees representation in the presidential election, not individual party nomination contests. Colorado made that clear when party leaders decided in August decided to eliminate all popular voting and just install people they wanted to install.

Politico writes about Indiana, itemizing, “among the delegate applicants who made it on to recommended slates: several district GOP leaders, State Treasurer Kelly Mitchell, Secretary of State Connie Lawson, Congresswoman Susan Brooks, Carmel, Indiana, Mayor James Brainard and Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder.  ‘One of my criteria for filtering out folks was whether or not they support Donald Trump,’ said one district GOP leader.

Remember, this is the party that intended to bind up and control Trump by making him pledge allegiance if someone else became the winner. Tables were turned when Trump turned out to the popularly favored candidate. Now insiders are shutting out popular opinion because they don’t like it. This all feels dirty. And sneaky. Makes me want to vote for Trump. But I guess that wouldn’t matter because we’re moving into territory where individual citizen opinions overtly do not matter to the Republican party – replaced by power preserving insider forces.

I’m not as familiar with the Democratic side politics, but it seems equally wrong that Hillary Clinton starts out with a huge “golf handicap” of delegates against Bernie Sanders. As of today, he’s won state after state after state and yet everybody knows that Hillary will be the nominee.

All around, it looks like the constituency, per se, is becoming irrelevant for anything before the main election. Or worse, the constituency is becoming only pawns of the power structures that really select who gets into office.