I am now convinced even more then ever we have no choice. At our caucus, it was clear that almost no one wanted McCain. Everyone was split on who they wanted, as long as it wasn't McCain. In fact, the people in our group said they would vote for Ron Paul before him, just to send a message that anyone was better. Well, in the end the vote was something around 75% saying anybody but and 25% saying McCain. I think Romney had a good chance if he hadn't said he was backing out, but in the end the choice was clear, anyone but. It was clearly expressed at the caucuses that we were choosing delegates and that the delegates would be able to change their votes until a clear winner emerged at the national convention. What we were doing was choosing people to express our opinions and to do what they felt we wanted them to. Well, in the end I guess that was all a lie. with 25% of the delegates, barely edging out Huckabee, McCain was declared the winner. So, in the end, all the opposing candidates drop out. The winner by attrition is McCain. At the Pierce County Convention, before the we pared down our delegates to go to the state convention, Luke Esser stood up, thanked us for being there, and asked us to get behind the Republican Candidate, McCain. Excuse me, if he is already chosen, why are we here and why do we have delegates? When we finally go to choose our districts convention, everyone had alreadly given up. No one there even mentioned anyone but McCain and Ron Paul. Yes, the candidate had already been decided for us. There was no way I was going to pony up the money to go to the state convention to have more of the same. Our little group in the 29th had 10 delegates to send to the state. About half of those said they would vote for no one but Ron Paul. At first I wasn't to keen on this, but on second wished I would have fought to make them all Paul supporters. Their preferences were noted, but, as you can see, those preferences haven't been talked about in the Media. Cause you see, they could all swear they were voting for Paul. It doesn't matter. In the end, the candidate was chosen for us. Considering there were between 400 to 500 delegates representing the whole county there, I would say about 1/2 of 1% of the counties republicans may have been at the convention. So I guess the party choices are being made by a much smaller number than that. If you met the local party leaders, it is pretty clue the majority of them have no idea how anything works or what is going on. So, my guess is that the number is much smaller than even what would appear on the surface, meaning maybe 5 to 10 people (mostly elected politicans) are influencing the majority of the county positions, and then, seeing how everything works (and knowing how clueless some of them are), it appears that a smaller number then that are making the decisions, and the rest are just saying Amen. Pretty scary to see how fast our democracy turns into a joke or a country run by a very small majority that are more concerned with staying in power than what we want. I am starting to think my brother has the right idea. He is fairly wealthy, so he just personally gives a contribution to his local candidates. After a few years, they all know he gives them money. Then, when he needs something, hejust gives them a call and asks them for a little help. Since most of them are clueless anyways, or simply just don't care, he gets what he wants a lot of the time. Pretty sad, but I guess that is the reality of America.
I know a lot of you are going to say thats the republican party, but I am convinced it is not much different with the Democrats.