You bring up a decent point.
<< “The candidate has to organize people who know what they’re doing.” >>
Americans are going to be asking why that is true, if it is even true, and should it be true today.
Delegates. What the heck use do they serve today, since we are hardly in a former age of Pony Express, without planes, trains and automobiles.
Civics classes use to be mandatory in the 7th grade. I can not remember the last time I ever heard the words “civic class” in our schools.
There is a reason why typical American voters are ignorant. It is entirely possible that a citizen candidate, an outsider, running for a party nomination today, would not even know of the insider manipulations of outcomes. He possibly would not know those manipulations are not only possible, but probable.
You win decisively, you earned lots of delegates and the popular vote is thrilling. A boob citizen candidate thinks that’s fair, that he won nicely and also has lots of delegates in most every state, like possibly even 2 to 1.
Then he finds out his polling in upcoming states is very favorable, in stratospheric numbers among the people, and certainly compared to his opponents who are losing to him, among the people.
Then he finds out that his delegates are broadly handed to his opponent, that the people’s vote only served to determine the allocation of those number of delegates.
The boob citizen candidate thought it was suppose to be one man, one vote, a democratic vote. So did the people.
Then he finds out the insiders do some gate keeping. The gate keeping is separate from the stated RULES. It’s often called the “process”.
The gate keeping is preventative. Measures can be freely taken that are not in the Rule Book and ably prevent the people’s choice candidate from ascending.
When the people are exposed to the actual road rules, which are quite different from the party rules, they begin to stir. They don’t like indirect democracy. They like direct democracy, by their own hand, by their own choice, and no surrogates reshaping their choice just because they wear a hat that says they are a “delegate”.
Wars are fought over subverting the will of the people. Always have been, and will be again.
Democracy matters in America. Being on the wrong side of democracy is a very bad place to be, since democracy is the underpinning of our REPUBLIC.
Democracy guards our REPUBLIC, and America is inclined to suit up and raise Hell to protect it.
Probably the RNC, if not also Cartel Cruz, should wake up and smell the coffee.