Can we come up with a nice shorthand name for the various contests that comprise the presidential nomination process? I think about this every four years and yet it has yet to be solved by the great minds of the political wonkosphere.
It came up again as I wrote the below post, about how party rules require the nominee to win at least 8 "primaries" to be the Republican candidate for president. Except it's not really "primaries" because some states have caucuses. To avoid that problem, people just start referring to "states." Except there are a bunch of non-states that have primaries of caucuses (e.g. D.C., Puerto Rico, "Americans Abroad" etc), so that's not really accurate either. The most accurate thing to say is "primaries of caucuses" (that's what I went with in the below post), but that is just clunky. There's got to be a generic term that encompasses both primaries and caucuses and can apply to states as well as U.S. territories (or non-territories that have primaries of caucuses like "Americans Abroad") that hold these contests to elect delegates to be a presidential nominee. Why can't someone come up with one?
It came up again as I wrote the below post, about how party rules require the nominee to win at least 8 "primaries" to be the Republican candidate for president. Except it's not really "primaries" because some states have caucuses. To avoid that problem, people just start referring to "states." Except there are a bunch of non-states that have primaries of caucuses (e.g. D.C., Puerto Rico, "Americans Abroad" etc), so that's not really accurate either. The most accurate thing to say is "primaries of caucuses" (that's what I went with in the below post), but that is just clunky. There's got to be a generic term that encompasses both primaries and caucuses and can apply to states as well as U.S. territories (or non-territories that have primaries of caucuses like "Americans Abroad") that hold these contests to elect delegates to be a presidential nominee. Why can't someone come up with one?
