The First Democratc Candidate has entered the Race. Who will be the next & who should s/he/they be?

[Drunken Irishman]

143. I never said no primaries...

If you think the primaries were open back then, you need a refresher on your history. I said not traditional primaries - they weren't. Most no one voted in primaries back then and if they did, often times it was beauty contests that had no impact on the nomination.

Take the 1968 Democratic Primary. Guess how many states Hubert H. Humphrey carried?

ZERO. He didn't win a single state. McCarthy, Kennedy, Stephen M. Young, LBJ and George Smathers won states, though.

Guess how many states actually held a primary? 13 out of 50.

And those states didn't ultimately matter in the end, as the delegates decided to pick HHH. Imagine if, this go around, Hillary didn't run in a single state, didn't win a single vote, and still won the nomination? That would be the system of old.

The old system was bad. That's why it changed after McGovern. Most states didn't even have a voice in the primary and it often came down to the delegates. It was not entirely rare for a candidate to throw their hat into the ring a week before the convention and seriously contend for the nomination. In 1960, even though he ran in zero states, LBJ did this and forced Kennedy into a debate, even though Kennedy had won the most primaries of that season (only 10, as there were, again, minimal amount of states who even participated). Kennedy ultimately won, but it did help push LBJ on the ticket, something that would never happen in today's system as the party's nominee always gets to select his running-mate now with no real input from the party bosses or delegations (though, the delegates still vote in a ceremonial role).

That last part is important because the old system, the vote wasn't ceremonial. It was the whole ball game. The winner of the Democratic nomination since 1968's fiasco has locked it up through the votes - not by winning rounds at the convention. Kennedy was forced into a convention fight, HHH had one, too, but after McGovern, the convention voting became more and more ceremonial. The last 'fight' was the 1980 Democratic Convention, but that was on the heels of a full primary and Carter won handily over Kennedy - taking 37 states and Puerto Rico compared to Kennedy's 11 (a huge difference between the 10 states JFK carried in his 1960 win).

The winner of the primary vote wins the nomination and becomes the presumptive nominee. It would take a scandal, illness or death to force a candidate who won the most votes to step aside and not win at the convention during the ceremonial delegate count. Even in 2008, the craziest primary in a long, long time, Hillary didn't put up a fight at the convention.

That's the difference between today and the primaries of yesteryear. The delegates actually were more than ceremonial - they nominated the person. Today, the voters have much more say and it's proven historically since - as every candidate who's won the Democratic Primary votes has locked up the nomination in every primary since 1972. Before that, though, and you had huge swaths of the country that didn't even vote and in some instances conventions where a candidate, who didn't even run on any ballot, winning the nomination.