Morning Joe: Democratic Primary system rigged against voters

Have you seen the final four candidates??? idiots are determining your actions.
I know you feel the same way I do and the odds are I'm going to have to vote for a candidate that will make me want to be sick in my polling booth.

 

That's part of my point though, if the GOP had simply said "no" to Trump's candidacy, they might have had a better primary and maybe we'd have better candidates at this point. I think having Trump in the mix the whole time poisoned the well and it led to total BS candidates being all the Republicans have to choose from.

On the Dems side, well, I doubt that many would admit that their final 2 candidates are garbage. In their minds, Hillary is an awesome candidate.

 

F.i.f.y.

 

LOL, yeah, that's true but isn't that sort of the problem? If you want to praise Hillary you have to say "compared to Trump", not just "Hillary is a great candidate". Cruz is a great candidate compared to Trump, Kasich is a great candidate compared to Trump, Bernie is a great candidate compared to Trump.

 

Garbage is a little strong but it's certainly fair to question the lack of an under-60 governor or Senator in the DNC'S succession plans. I don't think the Republicans had particularly bad primary competitors; they might be having the same identity crisis they had in the mid-60s when they were pushing out the Rockefeller Republicans and finally branding as social conservatives.

 

The reason I say "garbage" is that both Democrats have essentially fatal flaws that would make them easy to beat in a normal election cycle. Hillary has her criminal issues with mishandling classified information as Secretary of State AND she had pretty high unfavorable numbers even before that.

Bernie is much more likable but he looks very old and calls himself a Socialist. Normally a guy like that has no chance.

Same thing goes for the Republicans, in a normal election cycle, none of the 3 remaining guys makes it to South Carolina.

The Republicans can blame things on Trump if they like, him being in the race forced out a lot of better options and probably led to some not wanting to get in the mix but what is the excuse for the Democrats?

 

This has more to do with that we have a system dominated by two parties rather than the rules of how those two parties nominate. In my lifetime I can't think of a single major party nominee that I've agreed with 100%. That goes for this election too. By nature both parties are massive coalitions of often conflicting interests and it should be no surprise that the candidates they produce are compromised. Even Ronald Reagan compromised a lot. Arguably that is a strength of our system that prevents single issue and / or ideologically rigid leaders. Given how large and diverse this country is that is probably a good thing.

 

I can think of one, although technically he doesn't fit your description. Senator Robert Kennedy. He had just won California when he was murdered. Getting the nomination at that point was assured based on everything I knew at the time, and certainly the vast majority of the media and "talking heads" thought so. I've talked about the event more than once here. I was an ardent supporter of Bobby and had stayed up very late to follow the returns of that election and the hear his victory speech. I was watching when he was shot. The whole awful moment was live on my television screen. It's the only time I can remember shedding tears due to anything related to politics. Those images are still burned into my memory like it was yesterday.

 

I think I was -7 months old when Bobby was shot (I was born later that same year). I can't imagine what that would be like to experience, even if it were someone whose policies I detested.

Bobby to me....emblematic of the Democratic Party. No, he wasn't a saint, and he made his mistakes, but he did own up to mistakes (that he could talk about, anyway, saying the Vietnam War, which he had originally supported, was an error, etc).

He did genuinely care about the working class, the poor, minorities...

When he was campaigning in '68 he actually stopped at a nowhere Indian reservation and mixed it up with the locals, and didn't rush his way out, didn't say, "This is a waste of time, how many votes will this be worth, 12? and they're voting for me anyway?" He actually wanted to be there and hung out with the people living on that out-of-the-way reservation.

I don't suppose you read "The Last Campaign." Good book, quick read.

 

Is there anything more American than the Kennedy family? You have a family rise to wealth via the dirtiest of business practices both legal and illegal and eventually buy the presidency with the money they "earned" with the pain and suffering of the American people. Take all of the worst things about Bernie Madoff, Enron, and the bad business practices that led to the housing crisis and you have how Joe Kennedy built his fortune.....and those were just the "legal" ways he made his money.

You have arguably one of the worst families in America but a charismatic young screw up that they bought the presidency for changed that image forever when he got shot.

'Murrica