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Should Democrats End Proportional Primaries?

News Channel 8’s connpolitics.tv is reporting that Joe Andrew, appointed Democratic National Committee chairman by then Preident Bill Clinton from 1999-2001, is switching his allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.

“I am convinced that the primary process has devolved to the point that it’s now bad for the Democratic Party,” Andrew said. “While I was hopeful that a long, contested primary season would invigorate our party, the polls show that the tone and temperature of the race is now hurting us,” Andrew wrote. “John McCain, without doing much of anything, is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates. We are doing his work for him and distracting Americans from the issues that really affect all of our lives.”

All this was predictable after the Democrat Party had put forward two strong candidates for the presidency, one a woman and the other a black American. The Republicans, relying on winner take all primaries, put their primary season to bed early. The Democrats, relying on proportional primaries, are still going at it, arousing fears in the Democrat Party of a real nominating convention and a foreshortened general election.

The obvious solution to this problem is to revert back to winner take all primaries, and yet no one has asked the leading Democrat contenders whether they would approve such a party reform.

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