Does anybody remember when there were no primaries???

[msanger]

Was there a time when bald men smoking cigars picked the democratic candidate in back rooms.

I seem to remember hearing such stories when I was young, but don't really know about it. Could anybody here provide some context for our current situation, by telling us what happened in the bad old days, when party professionals picked the candidate in back rooms.

[WoodrowFan]

1. Nobody here is THAT old

Presidential Primaries go back to the very begining of the 20th century. Oregon had the first Primary in which voters chose WHICH candidate they wanted in 1910. The smoke-filled room generally mean that the campaign managers for the leading candidates would try to win the support of lesser candidates delegates in order to win the nomination. Let's say you are at the 2004 Democratic Convention and no one candidate gets the required majority of votes even after several rounds of voting. For our purposes let's say that Dean has 40% of the vote (ie delegates) and Clark has 35%, Kerry has 10%, Edwards 9% and Sharpton 6%. Clark and Dean would each try to convince the other candidates to throw support to their candidacy. The "smoke-filled" room is actually those meetings where the various party leaders would try to win support from the other candidates, maybe promising a position in a new administration, or promising support for a pet issue.

The most famous "smoke filled room" was at the 1920 republican convention when party leaders chose a compromise candidate, Warren Harding, when the leading candiates found themselves in a stalemate. The equivalent for our example would be the DLC and the DNC and various Congressional leaders such as Dashle, throwing their support behind Kerry if it appeared that neither Dean nor Clark would get the required majority of votes.

You can find some history of primaries at..

http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/side/primary.html

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Party hacks...

in smoke filled rooms were very bad, and gave us very bad candidates. State party leaders got together and chose their favorites, and then the delegates voted for them in the convention.

It didn't always work, though, and there were actually deadlocked conventions and deals were struck during the convention to get a candidate.

So, we declared democracy triumphant and got primaries to fight over and demand money for. And got more bad candidates.

It was actually pretty exciting that way. Made watching the conventions and the voting worthwhile. And it was all over in a couple of days.

For a while, the "spontaneous demonstrations" with the ballons were actually spontaneous.

[SheilaT]

3. I remember when there were very few

presidential primaries. When JFK won the West Virginia primary in 1960 it was a huge big deal because WV was not then a state that looked kindly upon Catholics, and his victory there was seen as proof a Catholic could be a viable candidate for president.

The few primaries that were around some forty years ago served mainly to be a bell-weather of public opinion, to help all the other delegates to the convention decide who they would support.

Keep in mind that what ultimately matters is who the actual delegates are to the national convention, and exactly how they are selected, and how bound they are to vote for a particular candidate at the convention. In the end, the person nominated will be the one with the most delegate votes at the convention, and these days the vast majority of those are selected in primaries or caucuses.

In the old days of "smoke filled rooms" the delegates were selected that way by party insiders. The current system seems to give the average joe and jill out there more voice in who the nominee will actually be.

[imhotep]

4. its not much different today

super delegates are the same white men smoking cigars in back rooms picking the candidate. The Republicans' primary system is more Democratic than the Democratic one.

[SheilaT]

5. How is the Republican primary

system more democratic than the Democratic one?

[Moderator]

6. locked

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