The truth of the matter is that we need to make it possible for our young people, if they desire to go in the military, they can go to a recruiter's office, instead of telling campuses that if you don't let recruiters on campus, you're going to lose your money. That, to me, is antithetical to a democratic society.
We should be finding ways for young people to be able to go to college tuition-free, and I have such a proposal that would enable every person, every young person who wants to go to a two- or four-year public college or university go tuition-free, by the government spending money into circulation.
We need to reorient our society. These kind of questions really are intent on continuing the militarization of our society and of telling young people in a very covert-well, actually in a very overt way, "Well, here are your options for a career in the military," which is an honorable career, of course, but at the same time, in our society, young people are finding not only are they having trouble being able to afford a college education, but once they get that degree, what are their options after that? I mean, our economy has been a mess.
Until the Democratic Party asserts control of its own debates and takes the question of who may be in or out of the debates out of the hands of the corporate media that is dominated and literally owned by the same people who are benefiting from the war contracts and prevention of a fair health care system, among other things, the primary system is broken in such a way that it can not be called democratic.
As I see it, the most logical, fair, and reasonable way to determine who should be in the debates is to be consistent with the purpose of the primaries which is to gather delegates for the convention. This is a two-prong test to determine if a candidate is a bona fide candidate. so that every bona fide candidate will be in the debates. Any candidate who is on the ballots of enough states to theoretically get a significant and substantial number of delegates should be in the debates as long as he or she is an active candidate.
The first prong is not whether the candidate has simply declared as a candidate, but whether the candidate has a national campaign that has gotten the candidate on the ballot in a certain number of states. I would suggest that the number of states should be any combination of states that control between half to two-thirds of the delegates. It doesn't make much difference to me whether the cutoff is 50%, 60% or 67&, but it should be a discrete number that is objective to measure. There is no personality preference involved, no polls or ranking of candidates.
The second prong is a practical question of whether the candidate still has an active campaign. This is most important to keep objective and not subjective. Many, if not most, people who address this question confuse their subjective impression of an active or inactive campaign for objective indicators. I suggest the following as truly objective indicators of an active campaign: (1) Obviously the candidate has not announced withdrawal. (2) The candidate is continuing to actively raise money and report to the FEC. (3) The candidate has visited and personally campaigned in or has an open campaign office in the states in which the candidate is on the ballot. (4) The candidate has won at least one percent of the vote in one primary on the previous three primary dates. I call this a "three strikes" rule. Failure to hit at least once on three consecutive primary dates and you're out of the debates until you get at least a one percentage hit in a following primary.
These four qualifications would insure that the barrier is low enough to guarantee an open and fair access to the debates not depending on the super-rich status of the candidate's supporters while also keeping the number of participants to a realistically practical number. Having an objective measurement for the cutoff prevents the irrational arguments that are currently being used which amount to nothing more than rationalizations why "my" candidate should be in the debate and "you're" candidate is boring.
Rigging the Voting System by the 15% Solution
By moving to direct party primaries, the voters were able to have direct influence on the conventions. The primaries, not the party bosses, selected the delegates to the convention. The delegates were then only beholding to the candidates they were pledged to, and to the voters who elected them, not to party bosses who appointed or controlled their appointment.
Thus, a candidate who represented a minority view could go from primary to primary collecting a minority of delegates, but still have enough delegates at the convention to have a potential to effect the outcome. In addition to presenting that minority view through the debates, that candidate representing a minority view could represent that view at the convention itself.
However, by changing the rules, the Democratic Party has created s primary system that rigs the process even more in favor of the most well funded candidates who of course are the very candidates who are beholding to the Party bosses and their corporate backers and masters. Now, in order to be awarded delegates in a state primary or caucus a candidate usually must reach a 15% threshold.
That 15% barrier guarantees several results: (1) any candidate who is under 15% can't collect delegates (2) primaries are no longer about collecting delegates for the convention but about public perceptions of "winners" and "losers", (3) the playing field of the primaries is tilted toward the early frontrunner who becomes perceived as a winner well before any significant number of delegates have been distributed.
Since a candidate under 15% may still represent up to 14% of the voters, those voters are disenfranchised by a system that removes them from the process. Whether a candidate represents 2 to 14% should be irrelevant in a representational democracy where that 2 to 14% should be represented as a minority viewpoint within the party. However, but ensuring that a candidate uner 15% doesn't win any delegates at all, there can be no incentive for voters to continue supporting the candidate who gets nothing for their efforts.
If a minority of voters sees that their candidate is receiving his or her fair share of delegates in the process then they can be happy to continue supporting their candidate who they know will take their minority of delegates to the convention to represent them. However, if they get nothing for their efforts, there is no way the minority candidate can continue to solicit the financial support needed from event the minority of constituents who suport them. Thus the party bosses use the 15% rule to get rid of the minority voices within the party as soon as possible, makeing a charage out of the process p2etending that the primaries are fair but rigging them so that the minorty gets nothing for their efforts and is instead guaranteed to be left out of the delegate distribution.
We have only to look to the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary to see how the party bosses and their media backers and masters have competely distorted the process. As far as the caucus distribution of delegates was concerned, Iowa was a virtual three-way tie. Obama won 16 delegates, Clinton was a close 2nd with 14 delegates, and Edwards was a close 3rd with 14 delegates.
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