The party regulars designed the caucus system, not the Sanders campaign.

[Ken Burch]

It's not as though the caucuses are some sort of a Sanders plot, something we somehow imposed on the party against its will.

The notion that the Sanders campaign had an unfair advantage in the caucus system, a system set up by people who wanted to make sure that insurgents and progressives could never prevail, is absurd.

All that happened was that the Sanders people organized effectively and legitimately in every state where caucuses were held and managed to win most of those caucuses freely and fairly by simply playing by the rules involved.

It's not our fault that the caucuses were and are exclusive. We didn't WANT them to be exclusive(again, that is solely the responsibility of the party regulars for designing them that way) and there is nothing the Sanders people did in any of the caucuses that caused people to be disenfranchised or excluded.

The nominating process needs reform(every state should be a mail-in primary with re-registration allowed with the ballot that is sent in)but none of the problems in that process were caused in any way whatsoever by the Sanders campaign.

Finally, if any of our massive caucus wins are in question in anybody's mind, then the wafer-thin Clinton win in Iowa is equally in question. You can't it's cheating when OUR side wins a caucus but not when your side does.

[hrmjustin]

1. Sanders is not at fault. I agree.

But the results are very interesting and might speak to California.

[Ken Burch]

2. Most likely, the preference result in WA

was due to HRC people campaigning in this while Sanders supporters are focusing their energies in states where delegates are actually in play.

A state should either have caucuses OR primaries, but not BOTH.

HRC is ahead in California at this stage, agreed.

[oberliner]

3. There were no HRC campaign events in WA

She is campaigning in California.

[hrmjustin]

4. Well at this point there are 660k votes counted with more to come.

In March 230k voted in the caucus.

I think caucuses disenfranchise voters.

[Renew Deal]

6. Is there any evidence of this?

Also, the caucus three times more people. Your reasoning would make sense if fewer people showed up.

[Renew Deal]

5. I don't think anyone is blaming Sanders for winning them

But people notice that the caucus winner and the primary winner don't match. And in both cases, the caucuses got fewer votes.

[Recursion]

7. It also explains what I call the "rally fallacy"

People look at the size of Sanders's rallies and can't fathom how he loses elections. But a big Sanders rally is 40K, 50K people; that's also the turnout in a caucus state on average.

In contrast, a medium-sized primary turnout is a half-million people.

[Ken Burch]

8. Well, it's unusual to have a caucus and a primary for the same state.

And the thing is, nobody here is a defender of the status quo in the nominating process.

I think we should replace the "fan-out" caucus system with a ranked-ballot caucus(if we have caucuses at all)that would allow people to leave as soon as they have voted(rather than forcing them to stay until the fan-out process is completed or have their vote not count)with the preference ballot redistributing the votes of those who supported non-viable candidates, OR

Replacing the caucuses with closed mail-in ballot primaries with re-registration allowed to happen with a voter reg form sent in WITH the ballot.