The year of terrible choices

By month’s end, our two great political parties will have officially nominated candidates disliked by 55 percent and 70 percent of the voters who will have to choose one of them in November. 

At this point, the candidate disliked by the lesser percentage, Hillary Clinton, is expected to win unless she is indicted, the economy collapses or the nation suffers an attack with casualties in the thousands. 

Or, she can simply campaign badly while Donald Trump, liked by 30 percent of us, offers entertainment and patriotic slogans and becomes the president of all the people. (I wrote that sentence before the Brexit vote made it possibly more plausible.)

A television performer and shady businessman with no known beliefs, but numerous prejudices, could become president and make America first or great again without telling us how. 

The blame for this unprecedented state of affairs goes first to the aforementioned Democratic and Republican Parties. 

The Democrats had the fix in to nominate Clinton after experiencing some buyer’s remorse for denying her the prize and giving it to the flawed Barack Obama in 2008. Bernie Sanders interrupted the stately coronation procession but only temporarily.

The Republicans lost control of their own party. First, they allowed nearly 20 candidates, not all of them wonderful, to run for the nomination and then left the winner to be chosen in a series of embarrassing exhibitions disguised as debates. 

The “debate” format was devised by the cable news networks to attract, rather than inform voters, which led to victory for the best showman, not the best candidate. Some of the candidates best qualified to be president — Sen. Lindsey Graham comes to mind — were relegated to the losers’ debates and never had much of a chance to confront the ridiculous Trump candidacy. 

And because of a primary system that excludes many voters too thoughtful to pledge allegiance to either party, we are left with Clinton and Trump.

Trump, chosen by about 44 percent of the voters who took part in the Republican primaries and caucuses while a majority favored the other 17 or so, boasts of having attracted 13 million voters; Clinton attracted about the same number. It really doesn’t matter because, as George Will recently noted, one of them will need about 52 million more votes to get elected.

These votes will have to come mainly from the nation’s largest voting bloc, the long neglected unaffiliated. The last time I looked, fewer than half of the states have what are known as open primaries. These allow all voters to choose a party primary in which to vote, presumably, for the person they’d like to see elected president eventually. 

Many, like Connecticut, allow independents to become party members up to the eve of the primary, but in order to hold on to their diminishing membership, a voter has to change from one party to another at least 90 days before the primary.

According to the most recent measurements by Gallup, Pew and other reputable outfits, the nation has only 23 percent of its voters registered as Republicans, around 30 percent with the Democrats and 42 percent independent of either of these two relics.

With the millennials, the 18- to 34-year-olds who don’t come close to sharing their elders’ party allegiance, the situation is dire for the two tired parties: 28 percent Democratic, 18 percent Republican and 48 percent unaffiliated, according to the Pew Research Center.

And that, boys and girls, is how we have come to this pretty pass, a long, hot summer of listening to and arguing over two duds before making one of them president for the next four, fearful years.

This system of selecting presidential candidates in a series of state votes that make Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada more important than California, Ohio or New York, isn’t very old. Changing it would do no damage to the Constitution or even the Second Amendment. 

Until about 50 years ago, candidates were chosen by party bosses and ratified by delegates to conventions. It produced candidates like Alton B. Parker and John W. Davis and presidents like James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding, but also candidates like Wendell Willkie and presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The primary system has produced candidates like George McGovern and Michael Dukakis and presidents named Bush (twice), Carter and Obama. And now that system is really showing its age and ineptitude with the current duo.

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.