sturg, your post on Sanders got me thinking (if it can be called that for someone in his early 60s) and I wanted to add this angle. The presidential selection process has become a set of dueling coronations over the past few decades and there aren't convention fights the way there were up until the mid-1980s. In an earlier era, all types of candidates would run as favorite sons and head to convention with a pocketful of delegates to trade for various platform planks or a future appointment with the eventual nominee. The way things run now, the convention seems to merely provide a rubber stamp and the favorite son angle is played out early in the campaign in the debates and the media.
I think Huckabee is the Republican equivalent of Sanders in that he talks about very few things, but he talks about them forcefully. He has about as much chance of becoming the Republican nominee as I have of crapping a tub full of caviar, but his statements require the other Republicans to react to what he is saying. Same thing with Clinton having to react to Sanders. In both instances, that contributes to the debate and in some sense will frame the ultimate message the candidates will use in the general election.
The presidential selection process used to be a micro-game to a great extent in the era of the bosses, favorites sons, and smoke-filled rooms, but the game is played out on a larger stage with larger tools in the era of the primary and mass media. There's a lot of reasons for that and a lot of books that have been written about it that provide far better explanations than I could ever provide.
