Straight Talk vs Political Obfuscation on Top Two “Choke Point” Primaries
Even when talking to the most hackish of political freakshows, and even if it is buried inside of a whole pile of talking points and spin, you can usually get their opinion out of them. I get disagreement. I don’t think that just because centrists stand where the majority of the country does on the issues, that that makes us necessarily right, it’s just where I happen to stand on the issues most of the time.
What I don’t get, at all, is when that spin goes so far that when you ask them about an issue they literally refuse to talk about it. This has been the case with every single person I’ve been able to engage with one on one with Top Two primary rules.
With Top Two, only two candidates are allowed through a primary and onto the general election ballot. I call them Choke Point primaries, because that is precisely what they are - they create a choke point so general election voters have less choices.
I don’t like Top Two, for a whole slew of reasons you could write a short book about, but I can theoretically see how someone might disagree with me. I’d really love to know what those disagreements are… but every single time I talk to spokespersons for it, most notably Gwen Mandell, staff member of IndependentVoting.org, and Nancy Hanks, an active member of that organization who blogs at The Hankster, they refuse to engage into a debate about Top Two. A recent post on my blog illustrates the kind of garbage these people use to push Top Two.
Just like in California, they pretend that Top Two is the same thing as Open Primaries. Open Primaries are one of several changes brought along by Prop 14, some of which I couldn’t be more for. But other parts, like Top Two, are so amazingly bad I think they outweigh the rest.
I’m beginning to see their strategy… I had suspected this before, and had been warned of it from a few people, but I didn’t think they’d go this far with their strange avoidance on the issue. This level of message control just isn’t possible across several people without coordination. People are generally open with their opinions… especially bloggers.
What this shows is that they know they can’t sell Top Two without hiding it behind Open Primaries. If they didn’t think this, they’d respond to arguments on Top Two with the positive aspects of how only allowing two people through to the general is necessarily better than allowing more, like a normal political debate. But they don’t even spin the issue, they ignore it completely, and hide it behind the banner of something else that is popular and much less controversial.
In other words… on a level playing field, they know we win.
The battle isn’t in the marketplace of ideas, we’ve already won there, the fight is in popular conception. Our job, as people who see the danger, and see through these people’s lies, is to make sure that the media, and people on the ground in states where they’re pushing this garbage, know that Top Two has nothing to do with Open Primaries, its a Choke Point, that limits their choices in the general election – where most people pay attention and vote.
Its a classic bait and switch.
While they want to limit your choices, we want to give you more choices. The solution is real open primaries, as well as open general elections.
Tags: IndependentVoting.org, nancy hanks, open primaries, prop 14, top two
