So now I'm wondering how, in the future, political parties
will vet prospective candidates to prevent another Trump from climbing out of the sewer to become a nominee. The way it stands, anybody (with money) can throw their hat in the ring and solicit votes from whomever they can persuade. This year the GOP had seventeen prospective nominees. In past years the Dems have had a pretty fair number as well. Some are vanity candidates or people who know they won't be nominated but want to get publicity for some pet issues. Previously, the process itself has eliminated unsuitable candidates, but this year the most unsuitable candidate ever got the GOP nomination - for reasons that political scientists and sociologists will study for years. The other candidates, while ideologically awful, were at least credible in the personal and psychological sense - so why didn't the GOP recognize that Trump is a toxic narcissist who is utterly unsuitable for the presidency? Did they fail to take him seriously until it was too late?
So that takes me back to the question of how the parties (particularly the GOP, which seems particularly susceptible to autocratic candidates) can keep future Trumps from becoming candidates without doing damage to the democratic process. We don't want to go back to the old smoke-filled rooms where the party bosses chose the candidates with no input from the electorate. The Dems have the superdelegates, which were not especially popular and which some believed placed Sanders at an unfair disadvantage. Are those a good way to control the process? Or should we just hope that the current horror show, with the likelihood that Trump will take the GOP down with him, will serve as enough of an object lesson to prevent the ascendancy of another terrible candidate?
= new reply since forum marked as read
