Quote Originally Posted by GGT View Post
I'm not convinced that the best way to "winnow" the field is by using early caucus states in the first place. Iowa and New Hampshire aren't very good representatives of the nation as a whole. Neither is Florida, or the Carolinas, or Ohio for that matter.

One good thing Trump has highlighted.....is how fucked up our election processes are, and that our two-party political system isn't working so well in the 21st century.
They don't need to be good representatives of the nation as a whole. No state is a good representative of the nation as a whole. Pennsylvania certainly isn't. But if you can't draw up a decent run in either of those two rather soft states, how are you supposed to do so elsewhere? Anyway, as I have repeatedly tried to explain to you in the past, none of this is actually a working of the US government or its election system. It's an activity by and for political parties, private (albeit quite large) organizations of people around loose collections of political ideas working together to try and collectively get each others views eventually made into public policy.

Our "two party system" isn't a formal system. It's an ad-hoc arrangement. A long-lasting one, but one that has no formal status. If people don't like it, they're free to stop participating and apply themselves to some other route.