My father mentioned that Sigfried & Roy were attacked by the very tigers they trained. Sometimes the dangerous animal you need in order to do the show, turns on you.
That said, even among politicians there is a sense of borders. And that the Senator has found that they are interpreted differently by others isn't a huge surprise. I still hope to get her out of the Senate at her next election cycle.
I really hate that being used as a reference. There was a lot more going on in the Sigfried and Roy case than the news would talk about. The tiger had no intention of killing him or even hurting him (if the tiger did, he would have been dead). Roy himself says the Montecore, the tiger, relocated him off stage [0]; and, I've read other articles that say the tiger was stressed because of the situation and a particular way the crowd was acting. I've also read articles that said that if people hadn't responded in a panic to the Monticore's actions, that Roy would have been much better off. The people around him panicked, and Monticore went into defend-Roy mode, unfortunately harming him in the process.
I apologize. I note the irony though that if you replace "Sigfried & Roy" with "Foreign Intelligence Committee" and "Roy" with "Senator Feinstein" and references to "Montecore" or "tiger" to "Intelligence Community" you get this (with some artistic license I grant you :-):
"There was a lot more going on in the Foreign Intelligence Committee case than the news would talk about. The intelligence community had no intention of harming them or even implicating them (if the community had they would have been dead), Senator Feinstein herself says that the NSA, the intelligence community, tried to protect her. And I've read other articles that say the intelligence community was stressed because of the situation and in particular the way the public was acting. I've als read articles that said if the public hadn't reacted to the NSA's actions, that Senator Feinstein would be much better off. The committee around her panicked and the intelligence community went into defend the Senator mode, unfortunately trouncing the constitution in the process."
i've been considering running against her. would there be interest in a young guy with startup cred but no political background? i think i have a pretty good ability to express myself and see multiple sides of an issue.
edit: i grew up as a republican, but i hate where the party is now. i'm not sure which party would make the most sense, because i like some of the republican rhetoric - limited govt, lower taxes - but their implementation of it is terrible. in my experiences both parties support huge companies with different reasons.
i worked at microsoft and google, twilio and uber. i did electronic trading for two years before joining the startup scene, and was cto of a small gaming startup that was acquired.
i think my personal story is compelling, and i'd campaign on a platform of honesty. if you look me up online, you'd find all this "incriminating" shit on me, and i'd just say "yes that's because i'm human". i went from serious student with no social skills, to struggling drug addict with serious mental health issues, to solidly turning my life around after learning people skills, as a result of an obsession with P vs NP.
i think it's extremely unlikely that anyone will be electable in 50 years if there _aren't_ pictures of them doing ridiculous things online. nobody will trust you otherwise. i'm hoping to get that party started now.
So I was briefly a candidate for Congress in 2012 :-) There is an interesting set of things here. Setting aside the money issue (its really a _visibility_ issue rather than a money issue) there is a certain amount of support that is needed by voter influencing groups. Well known vote influencers are Unions, Churches, and Civic groups such as the Rotary club. Additionally if you're running as a member of a party, that party should nominally know you exist (they will be asked questions).
The idea that you can get elected just by direct influence of the citizens is not well founded. :-). So when I was doing this and got more serious (I had permission from Google for a 2 year leave of absence if elected) I talked with some political consultants, and their input was that like jobs, politicians have a resume and a 'trail' which is to say they do simpler, smaller, roles and the people around them develop a notion of what it is like to work with them. It is that credibility that allows people to believe you can serve them if you are elected. So if you want to run for congress, you should ideally get a job that exposes you to the politicos in your area so they are at least somewhat aware of your existence. That also shows that you can do the scut work of being a politician, and for any job above a certain level of influence (city supervisor, county supervisor) it will inform on how you can be influenced.
Easier to launch a run for the Senate as the former Mayor of San Francisco for example, than it is to launch it as "Oh hey, I can do this! Vote for me." guy with no name recognition. Not that the latter is impossible, but Meg Whitman shows that someone with a ton of money can be beat by a better political record.
"Meg Whitman shows that someone with a ton of money can be beat by a better political record."
Heh, for me the defining moment of that campaign was Whitman waxing rhapsodic about how she wanted to bring California back to how wonderful it was when she first got here. And someone pointed out that, when she first got here, her opponent was Governor.
I'd actually say that that counts against her opponent - things got worse as her opponent was in power. (And the effects of policies often only start being felt years later).
Yeah... no. He had already been in power for years when she got here, and there were decades between then and the campaign in question. The evidence under discussion doesn't rule out that interpretation, but it doesn't actually make it particularly likely.
Ah ok, fair, I'm not familiar with the particulars of CA politics. I was mostly commenting on the how people arguing in politics frequently try to blame things on people whose fault it couldn't possibly be and take credit for things they couldn't have caused.
I actually want to run for Congress (House, not Senate) in WA in a decade or so. Indifferent which party, and in central WA (a few districts, might change in the interim); would generally be running on a pro-local-business platform with libertarian national policy. Ending the drug war would be a bit more key in my mind than NSA, but you could count on my vote for NSA issues too :)
> would there be interest in a young guy with startup cred but no political background?
The novelty/outsider schtick, alone, rarely does much for a candidate unless they are also a well-known non-political celebrity, and youth isn't all that powerful a selling point. You need a message, and you don't yet seem to have a compelling one.
> i'm not sure which party would make the most sense
Which suggests that you're currently pretty far from the level of political sophistication that it would require to function effectively as a Senator. That's not an insurmountable barrier.
> i think my personal story is compelling, and i'd campaign on a platform of honesty. if you look me up online, you'd find all this "incriminating" shit on me, and i'd just say "yes that's because i'm human".
That's perhaps a nice way to deflect potential attacks, but its far from even the beginning of a platform. "I don't lie about my past" doesn't tell anyone anything about what you'd do as Senator.
- add two new brackets to capital gains taxes. positions held for more than 5 years pay 5% capital gains taxes, to encourage long term investment. positions held for less than a week pay 50% capital gains taxes, to reduce churn.
- use a shortest splitline algorithm to make congressional districts fair
Three point rebuttal to expect from your opponent (we play devil's advocate with each other in my company, nothing personal). I won't even smear you explicitly or lie outright.
--
1a. Of course the Silicon Valley tech elite want to cut capital gains tax - they already offshore American jobs and American incomes through tax loopholes. This is just the latest in a long line of attempts to escape contributing their fair share to our state and cities. And the candidates suggestion of a week-long tax bracket has no bearing on reality, it will simply increase the complexity for already strained small businesses and make it harder for them to hire and expand our economy.
1b. The candidate has proposed a radical restructuring of our tax system to include time worked at a company - something already accounted for by raises due to hard work - making it expensive for California's workforce to move to better jobs. That sounds un-American to me. The candidate has yet to show a single shred of solid independent evidence that this is even a problem, let alone that he has a solution for it.
2. Here we have a first-time candidate suggesting that we simply redraw the political map of California - again. I'm sure that he and his party won't personally benefit of course. Let's not forget, the Citizens Redistricting Commission just finished their work a couple of years ago on the taxpayer's dollar, and California now has some of the most competitive districts in the nation. We should focus on real issues facing our state, not tweaking lines on a map.
3. America is a great democracy, the greatest the world has seen. We have to make sure we take care of that, and steward it for the future. Lowering the voting age might seem noble, but it opens the floodgates to coercion, to intimidation in schools and homes. We should focus instead on engaging our young people with civic duty and the political process.
"1b. The candidate has proposed a radical restructuring of our tax system to include time worked at a company - something already accounted for by raises due to hard work - making it expensive for California's workforce to move to better jobs. That sounds un-American to me. The candidate has yet to show a single shred of solid independent evidence that this is even a problem, let alone that he has a solution for it."
I'd read the proposal as "[short/long] positions", not "[job] positions". I'm curious to know which the parent intended.
Probably, for sure. I wouldn't quite rule out "capital gains on equity you are awarded for holding a [job] position" entirely, but I do think it unlikely.
> add two new brackets to capital gains taxes. positions held for more than 5 years pay 5% capital gains taxes, to encourage long term investment. positions held for less than a week pay 50% capital gains taxes, to reduce churn.
So, reward the megacapitalists that are most able to hold long term positions, but penalize people who get equity-based compensation (like stock options) that can't afford to hold it long term by taxing it far heavier than even the top rate for regular income?
> use a shortest splitline algorithm to make congressional districts fair
Blind, perhaps, but fair? And, as a federal mandate, replacing the judgements of the citizens of many states --including California, which might be important to consider if you are running to represent California in the Senate -- that have already adopted non-partisan commissions to solve the threat of partisan districting? That's a good way to hurt your chances of getting elected with a proposal that would go over like a lead brick even if you did get elected.
> lower the voting age to 16.
What's the argument for this? Politically, you'd better have a good one, because without it its a good way to threaten to reduce the voting power of the people you are asking to vote for you in order to appeal to people that won't be able to vote for you until after you win, at best.
So, as the freshman junior Senator who just unseated Dianne Feinstein, you must be pretty confident to take on some of the most contentious issues in contemporary legislation: restructuring capital gains, redistricting, and expanding the voting age. What will you do if everybody else laughs at you? There's almost 250 years of structure and tradition in the Senate, they aren't going to respond to a suggestion they run everything according to the Agile Manifesto.
I'd just keep short term capital gains as normal income rate, which is what they are now. 50% isn't actually that punitive compared to 39.4 + state + local today. The majority of the "tax" on a long term capital gain position isn't the 23.8% capital gains tax, it's inflation -- a 50 year position which 4x in nominal turn is a loss.
What I would do on capital gains is end the favored treatment of carried interest; that's income, and should be taxed as such.
Ending jerrymandering, sure. (I'm not sure of the technically best way to do that, but you could make an argument based on territory or some deterministic population metric. The problem is there enough plausible fair deterministic methods which turn out in various ways that the question of which one we use could be a debate. I'd actually like to see an evaluation of sortition instead of election for many roles.
The voting age issue is kind of irrelevant IMO, but in general a push to mail-in ballots (to improve voter turnout) would be good.
Why is it 18? Up until the 70's, 21 was common. Sometimes higher. So why is 18 the magic age until which it is acceptable to disenfranchise you?
Note that the argument that someone younger doesn't really understand the consequences of their actions etc. - whether right or wrong - is severely diminished by a representative system where the candidates must be older, combined with a system where, if, say, the voting age is lowered to 16, the 16 and 17 year olds are extremely unlikely to skew the results so much that the candidates elected end up being someone that isn't also believed to be suitable by a large percentage of 18+ voters. So the potential "damage" if 16 and 17 year olds all decide to vote completely and utterly irrationally is quite limited.
But unless there is concrete evidence that 16 and 17 year olds objectively will make substantially less informed choices in an election than other groups we let vote, why is it any more acceptable to disenfranchise a 16 year old than it was to disenfranchise 18 year olds? Or blacks? Or people who didn't own land?
The burden of proof should be on those who wants the limit set higher to justify, with evidence, why specific groups needs to be/remain disenfranchised.
The major source of political pressure behind the 26th amendment (and, yes, nationally lowering the voting age for all elections takes a Constitutional amendment) was that 18 was the age of conscription and, well, Vietnam.
Why is it more acceptable to disenfranchise 15 year olds than 16 year olds? Would your logic lead to all citizens being allowed to vote, including 1 day old babies? If not, why?
Did I say it was? I argued for 16 on the basis of this comment thread.
All countries have constraints based on mental competency. The point is that a typical 16 year old (and yes, probably 15 year olds too) are well above the mental capacity where we still allow adults to vote.
The current age limits are not justified with any evidence of that the group is substantially less competent to make the relevant choices than many other subsets of the population that we don't hesitate to allow to vote. If someone for example started arguing for iq tests, or a test on knowledge of current affairs, it would be exceedingly hard to put the barrier low enough to not exclude any enfranchised adults, and you'd almost certainly end up including children well below the age of 16 (e.g. political youth parties in many countries have a lower age of 14, some even lower, and you'll find people in those organisations that are schooled in political science beyond what most adults ever will be).
This would not extend to 1 day old babies because a 1 day old baby lack the ability to make any kind of informed choice. In fact, a 1 day old baby lack the physical ability to observe the alternatives and indicate a choice. They would be excluded by any kind of mental competency standard.
Where exactly to draw the line would be hard, but expect it to drop substantially over time, as it already has.
Lowering the voting age would be good for young people, particularly the people who would gain the vote.
Here in the UK, politicians often take money from students and young people, while leaving older people untouched or better off - because older people are allowed to vote, and have high voter turnout. I could run with a policy of "I will double university prices to cut taxpayer subsidy... taking effect in three years" and nobody who bore the costs of the policy would be able to vote against it.
Of course, given that the main beneficiaries are people who can't currently vote, the policy might not be a vote-winner.
This explains why politicians who have youth appeal would favour the policy, but gaining political traction is not an achievement in and of itself (to the non-politicians).
And a bunch of politically interested older people working against your campaign. Ever look at the observed relationship between political engagement and age?
A factor, but the issue strikes me as far more likely to be the reason a 16 yo supports a candidate, then the reason a 40 yo opposes them (if they otherwise agree). The question is 1) what does the product of those two PDFs look like, and 2) can you actually do something useful with a bunch of 16 yo volunteers?
Well Feinstein's not up until 2018 (if she runs again, I guess), so you have time. But really trying to run for Senate is a multi-year process. You ultimately have to convince hundreds or thousands of people to volunteer for you, and round up millions (if not tens of millions) in cash. Especially in California - it's literally a tenth the size of the country population-wise, so you're basically running a race that's a tenth the size of a Presidential campaign. In the Primary alone you're going to need 600K or so votes at least.
To do those things (recruit volunteers, bring in donations, get attention) you need to start in advance by networking, building contacts and gathering favors. You should get involved now in the local House race or a county/statehouse race to start that process or at least to get familiar with the political process or how people commonly run campaigns. A lot of people sort of subscribe to the notion that politics is or should be simple, but the reality is that you have to know what you're doing to be effective. Charisma and ideas only get you so far.
A good number of politicians already have "startup cred," having launched their own businesses prior to going into politics. Many successful businessmen used their financial success to launch political careers. Examples include the notorious Darrel Issa; nearly every Midwestern doctors-turned-politician, and most lawyers-turned-politician.
Indeed, the tech concept of "startup cred" is essentially meaningless. It means you know how to launch a company and perhaps sell the company but says nothing about your ability to make it profitable or to maintain its profitability. When you're running a government, you can't just sell it or bail--you have to keep going. In this regard, many voters could even view serial startup experience as a negative.
Unfortunately, her constituents won't want to give up the political power she wields as one of the most senior Senators, even if she spends most of her time abusing that power. Next weekend, do a House of Cards marathon and you'll have all of the "political background" you need to understand what you'll be up against.
House of Cards is a fictionalized view of politics based largely on the parliamentary system (specifically, the UK parliamentary system on which the original series was based). The political maneuvering in House of Cards simply isn't possible in the U.S., including most especially, Frank's ascension in Season 1 to the VP or any of the bizarre inter-party maneuvering that dominated Season 2.
My point is, people tend to think of Congressmen as fungible commodities with equal power. They're not. Seniority influences committee assignments, among other Very Big Deals. If you replace Feinstein with a freshman Senator, nobody will owe him or her any favors.
I'd agree that Season 2 strains credulity, but the arc of Season 1 isn't that unrealistic given Frank's position in the party at the beginning of the season and the general uselessness of the VP position.
Its not the fictionalized ascention that hits so close to home: its the (seemingly) completely believable connoving and inter-personal backstabing that makes me wonder if any government worker at that level are actually human.
Its like watching a horrific massive car crash at national scale.
I'm very political. I've run for office. Once as ballot filler, second time as a serious threat.
Every one should run for office at least once. How politicians behave is obvious once you've campaigned.
I will support (contribute) to any young, progressive candidate, with bonus points for female and minority, provided that candidate has:
taken training (e.g. Camp Wellstone, Institute for a Democratic Future)
has worked on policy (lobbied) or campaigns
does not use one of the bottom feeder campaign consultants
I don't even care of the candidates I support has a chance of winning. I'm motivated by increasing participation and building the farm team of future leaders.
Running for office is not a light decision. It's a marathon that will wear you down.
Challenging a US Senator out of the gate is ambitious. On the positive side, the loyal opposition will champion you. And as a vanity candidate (sorry), you'll be able to say whatever you want (ala "Bulworth").
It's not a popularity contest. You have to build up your ground game and patronage. Your start up cred is only as good as your ability to something disruptive through tech or a campaigning model that upends modern campaigning. For example set up a constituent services operation that can serve citizens directly rather than going through (paying off) advocacy groups and community organizations.
There'd be some interest, but it'd be hard to be credible without a ton of money behind you. What party were you thinking of affiliating yourself with? That changes potential strategies dramatically.
In any event, though, it's not the best way of fighting this issue since it can't make any difference for more than 4 years.
Given its California, it's probably going to have to be a primary challenge. Looking at how the DNC is handling the South Dakota Senate race, it will be a tough fight because the party establishment is going to put the hammer down (not near as bad as the RNC lately).
Given recent changes to CA electoral law, a primary challenge to Feinstein would open the possibility of there being no Republican option on the general election ballot, which might change the calculus a bit. In the last election, if everyone who voted for Feinstein had instead flipped a coin, and voted for Feinstein on a heads and some particular other Democrat on a tails, the general election would have been a choice between two Democrats - which would have been interesting.
Wow, I didn't realize that CA had gone that far off the track. I get mad when they don't allow 3rd parties on, so I guess this is just vote from the approved choices crap.
The actual system is a bit more nuanced, (or less nuanced, depending on your perspective) which is everyone runs in the same primary, there are no party divisions and the top two candidates proceed to the general election.
FWIW, it was proposed and supported by Abel Maldonado, who is a GOP politician, and it was opposed by the state Democratic party.
A lot of people just assume the democrats are responsible for everything that happens in California. It is somewhat notable when this isn't the case, so I thought I'd mention it. I don't really buy the logic either way, but if someone else wants to, I figure they should buy something that's accurate.
It moves the more important, and potentially decisive, election for all affected offices to the lower-turnout, more-conservative-electorate, and now badly-misnamed "primary" and only has a "general" election at all for an office if there is no majority vote winner in the primary.
Basically, most offices (but not Presidential elections) in California now have what is really the general election as the "primary", with a potential runoff as the "general election" if needed.
Do you know how often a majority in the primary occurs?
In anything actually contested, I wouldn't think it common. Feinstein had almost four times the votes of any challenger in the primary, and still did not have a majority.
I expect it would be more common for more local and/or more obscure offices, but I don't know at all just how common.
> Do you know how often a majority in the primary occurs?
Its early enough that the political strategies and funding streams haven't really adapted to it yet, so I'd be cautious in generalizing either way from the experience so far with the new system.
That being said, AFAIK, there have been very few, if any, first round majorities so far in the offices that used to have party primaries.
"Its early enough that the political strategies and funding streams haven't really adapted to it yet, so I'd be cautious in generalizing either way from the experience so far with the new system."
> I get mad when they don't allow 3rd parties on, so I guess this is just vote from the approved choices crap.
Actually, its, at least superficially, the reverse -- California replaced traditional partisan primaries with non-partisan "open primaries". Under the old partisan primary system, the general election featured the winners of the partisan primaries plus qualified non-party candidates, under the new non-partisan primary system the "primary" is a poorly-named open general election run using majority/runoff, if no candidate wins a majority in the "primary", a so-called "general election" is held which is actually a runoff election between the top two vote winners from the "primary".
Approval voting is a poor choice for most political elections (its good for non-secret-ballot group decision-making where the voters are people who can opt-out of participation after the election and an approving vote is a binding commitment by the voter not to do so if any of their "approved" alternatives win.)
Now, if you said the general elections held in the spring (they aren't "primaries" in the usual sense and shouldn't be called that) should use ranked ballots voting and select the Condorcet winner with tie-breaker elections held in the fall, where necessary, as FPTP elections between the members of the Smith set of the spring elections, I'd agree that might be a worthwhile improvement.
I don't agree that approval voting is a poor choice for political elections. I particularly reject any implication (if present) that plurality should be preferred to it.
I recognize that ranked methods have some substantial benefits over approval voting, but there are drawbacks. Considering just the theoretical benefits and drawbacks in this context, I would agree with a preference for ranked methods. However, when we consider the complexity (and resulting decrease in transparency) I've come to prefer approval. Even so, I wouldn't strongly object to a ranked method.
> I don't agree that approval voting is a poor choice for political elections.
It is because "approval", unlike relative preference, doesn't have a consistent meaning across different ballots (which is why it isn't a poor choice in open-ballots where it has a defined meaning, like a commitment to opt-in to the result where otherwise there is an option to opt-out.)
> I particularly reject any implication (if present) that plurality should be preferred to it.
Plurality is also a bad choice for most political elections. Or, for that matter, most elections of any kind. But if you are changing from plurality, approval is about the worst change you could make other than ones that could only be deliberately malicious (e.g., modifying plurality to elect the candidate with the lowest number of first place preference votes.)
> Considering just the theoretical benefits and drawbacks in this context, I would agree with a preference for ranked methods. However, when we consider the complexity (and resulting decrease in transparency) I've come to prefer approval.
I personally have no problem with democracy requiring expecting citizens to deal with concepts more complex than approval voting, since, actually, most of the things they are voting on are things more complex than approval voting.
'It is because "approval", unlike relative preference, doesn't have a consistent meaning across different ballots (which is why it isn't a poor choice in open-ballots where it has a defined meaning, like a commitment to opt-in to the result where otherwise there is an option to opt-out.)'
There is a technical sense in which that's correct, but you're reading more into it than is there. Both approval and ranked choice methods have consistent meaning across ballots when the meaning is taken to be the impact on the election. Neither method expresses how much one candidate is preferred to another.
"Plurality is also a bad choice for most political elections. Or, for that matter, most elections of any kind. But if you are changing from plurality, approval is about the worst change you could make[.]"
I'm not sure I strongly disagree with this, when considering only the act of voting and the theoretical results. I do see the gap between plurality and approval, here, as far larger than the gap between approval and ranked choice (plurality is both a scoring method and a ranked method and so has all the theoretical problems of both). And I do think that other practical concerns are tremendously significant and favor approval (as I mentioned in the previous comment and elaborate on below) over ranked methods.
"I personally have no problem with democracy requiring expecting citizens to deal with concepts more complex than approval voting, since, actually, most of the things they are voting on are things more complex than approval voting."
First and most trivially: otherwise accepting your argument here, your comparison shouldn't be to the complexity of approval voting, but to the complexity of the proposed alternative.
Second (most significantly), I don't mean, mostly, "O NOES VOTERS WILL GET CONFUSED". I mean that counting ranked choice ballots is tremendously ugly compared to counting approval ballots. You have 10 candidates? You're tallying instances of 3.6 million possible ballots! The number that will actually be represented will surely be a fraction of that, but even so this is going to involve more (and uglier) mistakes and more opportunities for fraud (and appearance of fraud) because the system is so much more complicated. Further, running statistical analysis of IRV elections is, in practice, significantly harder than doing the same of other methods (say my connections in opinion research) though this could arguably be a feature.
Third, just because we're hoping they're able to deal with more complex issues doesn't mean adding complexity is a good thing. Complexity typically stacks. If there is a maximum complexity people can deal with, adding more in one place is going to reduce the amount they deal effectively with elsewhere.
I'm not convinced it's "off the track". Third parties are allowed in to the primary, they just need to place in the top two to be allowed into the general (just like anyone else).
Its a good way to make sure 3rd parties never get the first 5% in an actual election or become any kind of factor (spoiler candidate). Its an establishment trick.
They can still play spoiler in the primary. In fact, might be more of a factor there: I'm more comfortable voting for a third party candidate when I know that I'll be able to still have effect in keeping out the greatest evil down the line.
Obviously, if ballot access or funds are still apportioned based on general election results, that's inappropriate.
"No, since there is a big difference between reducing a person enough in a general to lose versus keeping them from being one of the top two."
In 2012, keeping Emken from being in the top two in the primary would have required removing 278,800 votes. Giving Emken the victory in the primary would have required removing 3,098,000 votes.
To the degree that this is typical, I would say that there is a big difference but it favors spoilers.
"Which they would be."
What do you mean "would be"? This isn't hypothetical - is that the case in CA or isn't it? If it is, then it's a strong objection. If it isn't then it's an objection to a system that doesn't exist.
"Plus, party collusion that happens (see federal election commission) pretty much locks a third party out of the general."
Agreed, I just don't think this is a strong example of that.
If this system had been implemented at a national level Perot wouldn't have got his 5% and thus no matching funds for the next election[1]. Also, if I remember the vote totals correctly, Bush 41 would have had a second term with no Perot in the general.
I believe the math favors the two parties on primaries because they can pay to mobilize.
I'm not a lawyer, but I do believe CA has election considerations (and laws) based on how folks do in the general.
It sounds very much like the Democrats feared a Nader and the Republicans feared a Perot or Tea Party challenger. It solidifies the people who own the machines.
1) how that 5% was wasted in the next general is not really much of a debate
Yes, as I said, if there are things based on a showing in specifically the general election, then this change (coupled with a failure to fix those things) is disadvantageous to smaller parties, and is probably inappropriate. Absent that, I don't think it is (clearly) a problem. What remains is a simple question of fact, which a quick search is failing to resolve... I don't think the appropriate response is to make assumptions and rail against assumed injustice where there are plenty of demonstrable injustices. Do the research or stop whining.
How so? If you're referring to the open primary system, that doesn't mean there are no primary challengers. In a sense, it means everyone but the incumbent is a primary challenger... but more meaningfully the distinction of a primary challenger is that they belong to the same party as the incumbent, which the open primary system still admits. It might actually help: as I've pointed out before, Feinstein got well more than 2x (actually, almost 4x) any challenger in 2012 primary so democrats could have guaranteed themselves the general election if Feinstein voters had all picked a single other Democrat as an alternate and flipped a coin (... or if even half of them did so).
> How so? If you're referring to the open primary system, that doesn't mean there are no primary challengers. In a sense, it means everyone but the incumbent is a primary challenger
It means "primary challenge" (which refers to an intra-party run in a partisan primary with a segregated pool of cnadidates) is a meaningless distinction when running against someone, since any time you run for an office, it means running in the general, non-partisan pool of candidates in the "primary" election.
I think it's clear that what was meant was "You'd have to be a Democrat to have much access to many of the votes that have been going to Feinstein, and you'd need access to those to win". Again, same party as the incumbent being the salient feature. If you want to assert it no longer quite fits, I'm on board; I don't agree that it's fair to call it "a meaningless phrase".
That said, even among politicians there is a sense of borders. And that the Senator has found that they are interpreted differently by others isn't a huge surprise. I still hope to get her out of the Senate at her next election cycle.