Westmonster predicts Bush ouster

Westmonster is finally prepared to go out on a limb and make the prediction: George Bush will be ousted as President of the United States before January 21, 2009. Westmonster's crystal ball isn't clear enough to say whether he'll be ousted as a result of the forthcoming U.S. election or an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Just in case it's the former, we'll be following the election across the Atlantic from Thursday's Iowa caucus all the way through the general election on 4th November, through the inevitable Supreme Court challenges, up to and including the declaration of martial law.

Westmonster isn't bored by process and hopes you aren't either… please read past the break for an outline of the absurd process by which Americans select their nominees for President.

For the uninitiated, the American system begins with a set of primary elections and/or caucuses in each state, whereby voters choose delegates to send to the major political parties' respective national conventions in the summer. These delegates are committed to vote for a given candidate during the first ballot at the convention, and typically one candidate locks up enough delegates during "primary season" to win the nomination.

Primaries are held in most states, and are direct elections of convention delegates in which registered members of a given party can generally only choose delegates for that party. Presidential preference caucuses are held in fewer states, and involve party activists holding Oprah-style meetings to nominate candidates.

Once the nominations of the main parties are sealed, the general election campaign begins. There's a fair chance this year that the nominations will be settled on February 5th, when 22 states (representing a majority of delegates) hold their primaries.

If no candidate wins a majority of delegates during the primaries, you wind up with what's called a "brokered convention" to decide the nominee, during which political operatives make backhanded deals in smoke-filled rooms. This hasn't happened in some time, but some are predicting the outside possibility of a brokered Republican convention.

Written by Andrew Levy on 2 Jan 2008 11:15 AM. Permalink