Aren’t you the one that equated a contested Convention to a run-off election ?
Run-off elections are between the leaders not the distant trailers, and it is the original voters who vote again in the narrowed field.
I would be perfectly comfortable with a contested convention if all delegates were selected by their candidate and the rules were defined before the Primaries had begun. Then a candidate could decide what party he wanted to run for without this last-minute possibility that the rug could be pulled out from under him after millions of voters have had their ONLY chance to vote, sore loser laws had boxed him in, and hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on a campaign.
It now looks, however, especially because the Rules votes do not require loyalty to their “supposed” candidate, that the Primary voters matter much less than the way party hacks decide on delegates.
I don't remember making that argument but I could be wrong. I suppose that in the sense that you would be looking for a consensus candidate from a large group when you have no majority winner it would be similar to a run-off election. Your point about initial voters not having a voice in the final determination is certainly valid.
I guess the counter argument would have to be that we don't have a pure democracy but a representative republic. Just as when we elect Congressmen and Senators and have no control over their actions after election, much the same is with delegates to the convention. For the most part, delegates I have known are not necessarily party hacks but are concerned citizens who, in contrast to myself, are willing to devote the time and effort to participate the the mundane work of keeping the local and state parties operating.
Really, I guess the only perfect system would be the one that yields the result I want. On second thought, that probably would not be good either since in my first sentence I acknowledged that I didn't remember what argument I might have made earlier. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I am not concerned with fairness to any particular candidate. This is not about any individual, it is about the country. I want someone who I can have confidence will follow the constitution and laws as they are, not how they would like them to be. How they deal with the nomination process is one indicator of how they would operate as president. Whatever else can be said, this election has gotten more people interested than any in my memory. We don't all know everything, but we are learning new thing almost daily.