“…like any political system, it can be gamed,” rightly notes Laska in a comment on “Getting Nominated in America,” listing that fact as among sources of growing public frustrations with the current system. The system is designed to create a winning outcome, he notes there too, and again I think rightly points out that “designed to win” isn’t the same as “designed to achieve certain goals.”

I’ve found the issue a big point of interest this election year, and my superficial studies of older primaries and conventions suggest that public frustration may arise less from the fact that the system  can be gamed than from unhappy situations that arise when it’s not gamed to go our way. Like: do we want a clean, fair fight and will accept loss with a good will under those circumstances? Or do we just want our candidate to win (leaving aside the question of what goals may thereby be achieved) and can more or less handle the gaming that goes on to make that happen?

Short of rank criminality, I mean. I’m not talking about outright election fraud, lawbreaking (although Dems probably tolerate some of that, too, when remembering JFK’s victory in 1960); this is more about the trickiness that seems like a lot of what politics fundamentally is, in situations where competition for public support is the mode, as in a democratic republic. The hardass pols of the past were just great at the game, loved it as such, didn’t think of it any other way. I find that creepily fascinating and weird,  and only sometimes related to achieving goals, but I also think none of those who ever did achieve good goals ever looked at the process any other way. I’m glad Lincoln won the 1860 election, for example, and I find it really doesn’t bother me–within the available contexts–to have read somewhere (I’m too lazy to look it up right now) how Lincoln’s people used a favorite-son tactic at the convention to deny Seward a first-ballot victory, getting Seward’s people seated far from their allies, printing fake tickets to pack the floor with hundreds of loud people to yell for Lincoln, offering positions to bosses in order to swing delegations, etc.

Or maybe it does bother me. But the way it bothers me opens up questions about society and human nature that run deeper than anything elections, democracy, parties, or reforming them can ever address. If we survive, there will be better ways to do things. Or at least it’s the right thing to believe that’s possible. For now, though, maybe gaming the system is the system we’ve believed in, and actually kind of liked, for a long time.