Think primaries hurt the Democratic party?

[CTLawGuy]

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-newdems0805.artaug05,0,4759056.story

Numbers from CT:

Non-voters who registered as Dems since May: 10,344.
Independents who registered as Dems since May: 11,496.

There were about 600,000 Dems before the primary.

Taking that number, the primary increased the Dem ranks by 3%.


Yes, I know some of them may change back, but many will not. Many will remain involved Democrats.
This is how you grow our party.

[welshTerrier2]

1. they switched to vote against the WAR ...

i agree that primaries can often attract more voters and that they're a healthy excercise of democracy that give the voters a choice ...

but in CT, had the challenger held similar positions to Lieberman on the war, the number of newly registered Dems would not have changed very much ...

it's more than just the fact that there was a challenger; the main reason all this switching occurred is because voters now had a chance to vote against the war ...

the message isn't "hold more primaries"; the message is that Democrats need to take a REAL ANTI-WAR position ...