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Comment by Tiltowait-- | Hacker News Reader

> Political primaries are now democratic, so less centrist candidates are being selected than from when candidates were selected by party leadership

That's not true at all. At least on the Democrat side. The party chooses the nominee, not the people.

"The DNC, led by Wasserman Schultz, Admitted In Court they Rigged Primaries Against Sanders"

>A Federal Judge dismissed the lawsuit after DNC attorneys argued that the DNC would be well within their rights to rig primaries and select their own candidate.

http://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wass...

"DNC Lawyers Argue No Liability: Neutrality Is Merely a ‘Political Promise'"

https://observer.com/2016/10/dnc-lawyers-argue-no-liability-...

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Isn't that a gross misstatement of the ruling? I'm not even a lawyer and it seems to be saying that when making a motion to dismiss, you assume the plaintiff's argument is true and then see if the case has merit.

So the ruling saying "even if the argument is hypothetically true, we can dismiss the case" is not the same as saying, "the argument is true".

> The party chooses the nominee, not the people.

Compared to many other countries, this is only true in a very weak sense in the US. What do I have to do to have a vote in a D or R primary? "Register as a D (or R)". That's it. Nothing more. I don't have to actually join an organization, let alone pay anything or play any role in the party other than this vote. That's fairly different from (for example) the UK, where you have to be an "actual member" of the party to help choose a nominee.

That's quibbling over details, or the exception that proves the rule.

Candidate selection used to be a backroom affair. Now it's an open democratic process.

Party leadership obviously has their favorites, and can certainly try to push voters a certain way. But at the end of the day, people are still voting in primaries. Yes there are superdelegates too, like there's also an electoral college.

But political primaries are based on voting by the people now. They weren't before. That's the point.

> the exception that proves the rule.

Off-topic: I was presented with the argument that this sentence should be taken to mean "this is the exception that shows the rule [as in law] is needed" rather than "this is the exception that the rule [as in inference/deduction] is correct".

I have not looked into whether this interpretation is historically true, but it makes much more sense.

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