I think it was a missed chance for the Democrats to break away from (for lack of a better word) establishment politics, and really strike out for the grass (and net) roots. Suing to overturn the Top Two won't in the end do a lot to help us, and in the long run, win only prove to the rank and file voters that we really can't be trusted, because we don't trust them.

Anyway, I'm sure all of us good Dems in two years will be really surprised when the voters vote for statewide non-partisan races. At that point, it won't mean the end of the parties either, just hopefully and turn in the right direction.

As a person who follows party politics, I can understand where the parties are coming from. Having a bunch of people go and vote for a crazy candidate from the opposing party so that their candidate would have an easy time in the general election is kind of a cheap trick, and I can understand the parties wanting to be able to choose who runs on their ticket. I also think that since we can still vote for candidates from any party in the general election, having to choose one party for the primary is not a bad thing. I always thought the idea behind the primary was to have party members choose the candidate who best represented them, so this doesn't seem to unreasonable to me.

But, it also seems that a lot of people, people who believe in voting and participating in democracy but who do not have a strong alliance to one party or the other, really liked the ability to vote for whoever they wanted in the primary. They could do this in the old primary, and they were ticked off the first time we got the pick-a-party primary. I don't think the parties should have been surprised that their pick-a-party primary got outvoted in the intitiative process, and even now that the blanket primary has been ruled unconstitutional, I wouldn't be surprised if there is still a movement to get rid of the pick-a-party primary.