a contested primary season may not be such a bad thing, actually [View all]

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a number of posts here have expressed worry that a contested primary doesn't set us up well for november.

i actually don't believe that to be the case.

a contested primary for the party that already controls the white house is definitely a problem. elections are in many ways a referendum on the status quo, especially when the incumbent is running for re-election. as such, a contested primary for the "in" party is certainly a problem as it indicates that even the "in" party isn't happy with the status quo.

the same does not at all apply to the "out" party. a vigorous contest to determine who gets to challenge the incumbent is actually, if anything, a good indicator of the vulnerability of the incumbent.


consider the democratic primaries in 1992 and 2008 that produced clinton and obama. both were hotly contested, yet we won.

now consider the fairly quiet republican primaries of 1996 and 2012. people weren't exactly clamoring to challenge strong incumbent presidents, so the primaries were relatively quiet and the challengers lost.



argument by example isn't the best, and in know there are counter-examples, such as the democratic primary of 1984.

that said, i don't think we need to overly worry about it.

let's just pick the best candidate and then worry about the general election, which will mostly be a referendum on donnie and dictatorship vs. democracy no matter which candidate we choose.