What happened in Vegas ...

There seems to be plenty of blame to go around for the debacle at the Nevada Democratic convention last weekend. There might not have been a debacle had all the Sanders delegates chosen at county conventions bothered to show up -- on paper they outnumbered Clinton delegates by a few hundred but in the room Clinton had a few dozen more --  but that doesn't take the Clinton forces, including the party chairperson, off the hook for dubiously interpreting some voice votes in Clinton's favor, and that in turn didn't justify Sanders supporters making a spectacle of their frustrated rage -- not to mention playing into the Clintonites' hands by inevitably insulting the party chairperson in violent, misogynist terms. The real problem is Nevada's archaic system of caucuses and county conventions. Much of the country adopted direct primaries generations ago, the idea being to empower the rank and file and prevent party bosses from effectively dictating who the candidates would be. While I won't tell political parties how to select their candidates, as long as they don't tell me to pay for the selection process, I would think that in a democracy a mass party's candidate-selection process should be as direct and democratic as possible. And for what it's worth, when the party selects a national candidate I see no good reason for the selection not to take place simultaneously nationwide, leaving delegates out entirely. It's too late to make such recommendations now, and the damage to the Democrats has been done. Clintonites feel more certain that Sandersites are sore losers and woman-haters, while Sandersites claim fresh proof that the system is rigged against them. The result leaves Democrats worried that disgruntled Sandersites may stay home in November or, worse, vote for Trump to spite Clinton. The more honorable option would be to field a third-party candidate -- Sanders or somebody else -- so they can play a responsible role in the election process. But the real fear is that they'll play an irresponsible role, facilitating Trump's election in the perverse hope that the blowhard billionaire will screw up or crack down so badly that he'll provoke a real revolution. Some might say that a third party would have the same effect, but at least the voters for such a party can remind people after the disaster that there was a better option. Given what the two major parties are going to offer us, there has to be.