There’s one primary left to go and neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton have the required 2382 delegates secured for the outright nomination as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency.

This did not stop the media outlets prior to the big Tuesday primaries in NJ, California, Montana, etc. from crowning Hillary the nominee presumptive, based on the party elite known as super delegates who are scheduled to vote at the Democratic Party Convention on July 25th.  The lion’s share of these super delegates are indicated as backers of Hillary and therefore based on their status, they are presume to be casting their official votes on that date.

Maybe the media should use the phrase “nominee assumptive”, because that is really what it feels like.

A lot has been written about the history of the Democratic Party super delegates, how they came to exist.  The short version is that the 1968 contested convention would have seen the person with the most primary votes, following Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, was Eugene McCarthy who was a very far left individual, or as the mainstream party would like to think of him, a very scary person.  So the party quickly kluged together some rules to set the current Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, as the party’s preferred nominee and despite that going horribly wrong, went on to ensure that this sort of democratic nonsense didn’t happen again.  So there are now a big wedge of party long-timers and office holders that make up one-third of the available delegate count.

And this is where I like to veer off since I have had too much time to watch the goings-on this election cycle (and waiting for the GOP to come up with their own super delegate process in light of the disaster that is Donald Trump).  The whole thing is really a farce because we really have gone back to the old smoke-filled rooms of party wheelers and dealers that decide who will be their nominal leader to run for the U.S. Presidency.

Because that is what this whole state primary crap has been about: it isn’t a Presidential Primary, it is a bastardized version of the UK’s parliamentary system where party insiders agree on who is the best leader among them strategically to get the population ginned up to vote for their parliamentary members.  Most people in the UK are automatically registered to vote, they don’t have to declare any affiliation whatsoever, UNLESS they want to be a part of the crowd who like to horse-trade and lay odds on who the best party leader might be to get them all into parliament.  The party leader then becomes the de facto Prime Minister (well, after a short visit with HRM at Buck House to be asked to form Her Majesty’s next government, while a corgi nibbles the PM-presumptive’s ankles).

Until about 80-odd years ago, this was how American Presidential elections were largely designed.  Then someone mumbled something about “maybe we should be more democratic and let people have a vote on this” and out popped the state primary system that kicked into high gear about 50 years later.  But the only thing that has really changed is the outrageous amount of money and time that this all now takes, a gravy train for the corporate media (who have clearly shown their preference for Hillary as a friendly politician, one who claims Wall Street investment bankers to be constituents equal to the struggling family of 4 who need to work several jobs just to keep head above water).  Sanders might have them see, oh horrors! the re-introduction of the Fairness Doctrine in reporting that was gutted by Reagan.

So, I think it is high time that we call these primaries for what they really are which are not Presidential at all but a selection of the party leader and if the great unwashed don’t get it right, well, let’s ensure that there are byzantine rules and a big clot of people we can trust who will reverse this silliness.

Hillary, under this system, was the nominee assumptive all along.  So it would have been far kinder to just say party members only can vote across the board on each side (as well as any formally designated other parties) and then have a general election against the pick of each.  Sanders could have run as his own party selection, and he has shown that with the right message and leadership, he could do it without a huge party treasury or other buyers and sellers of the people’s government.

Of course, this poses a problem for both parties–they’ve alienated so many over the past 40 years that most people refuse to be declared a party affiliate.  What to do?  Frankly, the actions of the Democratic Party in the past several months has probably only enhanced this effect, and the Republican Party is quite possibly already in hospice care.

Maybe we really are a democracy because it has long been said that democracy is a very messy process, and we certainly are in the biggest mess right now, hoping that what we did to get us here is what we try to use to get us out.

As Paul Hollywood of the Great British Bake Off might say when he sees a baking disaster ahead, “Good luck with that.”