This is only true because people fail to vote (or even pay attention) in the primaries
... which is only true because they don't really care who the candidate is as long as they have the R or D after their name.
More than most people want to think about problems and their solutions, they want to feel like they belong to a family, a tribe, a team, or an organized religion.
A set of half-a-dozen or so candidates goes into the primaries as potential winners. Last time they were McCain, Romney, Guiliani, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton. Those were the only people who could have become president. The composition of that set of people is more-or-less outside the power of any democratic activity. The people who decide that are the only real voters.
There are primaries and third parties, you know? That the final choice comes down to two mediocre individuals says more about the intelligence of the average voter than any sort of corporate conspiracy.
I'll give you though that the first-past-the-post system is terrible and you would be better off with a proportional system.
Perhaps it's because the two leading independent candidates have terrible policy proposals? (Not to say that both major party candidates have great proposals, either)
even if people cared a lot, you think they’d get presidential primary candidates that they want? or a vice president that they want? these things are faze choices.
I think that there is a big problem with having so few candidates, even for the president there are only two candidates.
This is a very big problem if one supports acta and the other one supports baning abortions or something like it, choose the smaller evil? this is stupid, the system must be changed.
While this does kinda suck, note that Marianne Williamson is excluded from many (if not all) of these same examples, while having announced her candidacy well before (and even making it into the televised debates as well). Politics aside, my guess is this is more than anything else a symptom of not knowing what to do with candidates who don't already hold an elected position.
The staggered nature of the primaries combined with the inanity that is FPTP makes for poor fairness. ~No one will vote for their preferred candidate if they find out he/she is doing poorly - they’ll vote for the most electable candidate that they can stomach.
At least with the Democratic primary, there's three crusty old whites leading the polls, and the only gay candidate is drowning in petty race and class-based critiques. The field doesn't inspire any confidence they're capable of lighting a fire under people to beat Trump.
Probably the same place real liberals are... not getting elected because two-party system and primaries make it so the more outrageous people make it to the elections.
It's routine to make sure potential candidates who won't fall in line don't get their voice heard with equal footing. I would say the majority of the primary candidates in any election are cookie cutter. Trump and Bernie are rare exceptions I haven't really seen in my lifetime until recently.
"I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating."
Heaven forbid one of them end up in the white house.
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