I don’t remember things being like this

Being a kid watching political competitions I remember Primaries and Caucuses being such a foregone conclusion there was no such thing as real competition. I used to see good candidates get passed over for the smooth talking good looking well funded insiders. It happened all the time in 1980 especially. I kind of wish Howard Baker had been President in the early ’80s. Who knows how that would have turned out. And why pray tell me did Democrats think Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale represented the best the party had to offer in the ’80s? I’m still disappointed by that time period. But the real point is this, starting in 1980 and going onwards the Convention had no role whatsoever in determining who the party chose as its candidate. It was more or less a week long free press opportunity for the party to show off and get its message out before the election. Now, this year things are different, everything is in the air more is at stake, and it’s looking more and more like the Convention is going to be the device by which the candidate is selected. In particular for the Democrats it appears as though the Rules Committee may decide who gets the nomination based on if they change their mind and let Florida and Michigan delegates participate in the Convention. Michigan and Florida’s decision to disobey and move their primaries up in the calendar is more likely to upset the usual Convention party held once every four years. And no doubt everyone in the Democratic party is so out of practice with an old fashioned REAL convention, nobody really knows how to handle the maneuvering and delegate counting people used to do back in ’30s and ’50s when things weren’t sewn up by the time of the convention. These are truly interesting times.