Readers Write (March 4): Precinct caucuses, superdelegates, Donald Trump, St. Cloud State athletics cuts

Sorry, frustrated caucusgoers, but I've had it with the complaining. Most people show up at their caucus, cast a ballot and leave. That's their right under party rules. The trouble is that after they leave, they all complain about the party rules. In my precinct, only about a quarter of the people who came stayed to attend to the business of the caucus — electing precinct officers and delegates. I applaud those people, especially those who volunteered their names as officers and delegates. We couldn't fill all of the delegate slots because not enough people were interested. Don't like the rules? Stay for the caucus. Submit a resolution to hold a party primary instead of the caucus. Become a precinct chair or a delegate, go to the party convention and get the rule changed. Party rules are made by the people who are willing to show up at meetings and conventions. We are all volunteers. If you don't like how it's being done and think you could do it better, then stand up and say "I'll do that job."

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At my caucus, I presented a resolution to move from a caucus system to a primary. It was shot down handily.

In my opinion, many folks are unable to participate fully in Minnesota's political process. The aged, the disabled, folks who work a second shift and the working poor who can't afford child care have no voice in the process as it stands. At the Eighth Ward, Seventh Precinct caucus in Minneapolis, the DFL Party that claims to work for the disenfranchised turned its back on them.

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I helped run a caucus site Tuesday evening. Complaints about chaos are entirely justified. We have two hours, with volunteer staff. Many volunteers don't work on the presidential poll, because we're holding community meetings, discussing issues, organizing a party.

I work elections, too. They run all day with paid staff, including support people bringing extra ballots and equipment if needed. Collecting and counting votes is the whole job.

Still, it's nice to see people arguing for once that government could do something better. I'd love to revive the Minnesota presidential primary. Just one warning to legislators: 2009 and 2010 saw a slew of bills for that, and all but one (which was withdrawn) would have prohibited thousands of election judges from attending their party caucuses.

If you want it to work, require the primary and the caucuses to be on different days, not the same day! Where do you think you're recruiting election judges, anyway?

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As an overworked volunteer struggling to keep caucus chaos in check, I strongly support the Star Tribune Editorial Board's (and state Rep. Pat Garofalo's) call for a presidential primary (editorial, March 3). However, in two regards the Editorial Board has too easily dismissed the caucuses' role as "party-building exercises."

First, even the fraction of voters who stay for the caucus are more than we'd get for any other party meeting. Second, even those who don't stay at least sign in, and many write down their cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses. All of that data is entered into party databases by volunteers like me.

In response to a March 3 letter writer, it is true that the majority of Minnesota superdelegates (most of whom earn their high-rated status through being elected to either political office or a party office role) are supporting Hillary Clinton even though Bernie Sanders won Minnesota's caucuses on Tuesday. However, the superdelegate system came to be in part because of 1972, when a very left-wing candidate in George McGovern was the Democratic nominee and was decimated in the general election. And just imagine how many mainstream Republicans are wishing they had superdelegates to rein in the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz?

I should also point out that none of Sanders' fellow senators has endorsed him, while 40 Democratic senators/superdelegates (including fellow Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy) are endorsing Hillary Clinton. And in order to switch the superdelegates to his side, Sanders and his supporters have to stop criticizing Clinton and prove to superdelegates that he can win in a general election.

I am not a fan of Donald Trump. I think he's a fascist bully. But it's frustrating to watch the Republican Party elites try to beat him by personally attacking him instead of attacking the core issue that Trump's voters really care about. Trump is the symptom, not the illness.

On Thursday, Mitt Romney called Trump a bunch of names, including a "phony." That just indirectly insults Trump's voters — Romney implies that they don't know how to see a phony. The more those elites attack Trump, the more they entrench Trump's voters. Duh.

Those voters are Republicans, Democrats, educated and uneducated, and a mix of colors and genders who all are very angry at being disenfranchised from seeing the fruits of their own labors in the U.S. today. They're frustrated that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. They're frustrated that the greedy don't get prosecuted. They're frustrated that corporations and lobbyists have far more political power than they do.

If more people felt more economically empowered, they'd very likely stop seeing immigrants, women and Muslims as the source of all that's wrong with America.

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Stephen Young ("Trump advances the ol' American Dream," March 3) celebrates Donald Trump's nationalist populism. Although Young says that in this regard Trump follows in Ronald Reagan's footsteps, Trump is much more akin to George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. Also mentioned is Richard Nixon, but at least Nixon, unlike Trump, saved his slanderous, misogynist, bigoted remarks for private conversations. The notion that Trump is a positive figure for what is best about the U.S. is absurd.

It's ironic that the sports cut at St. Cloud State University ("St. Cloud St. cuts 6 sports programs," March 3) typically attract the best students — tennis, Nordic skiing, track and cross-country. And it's sad that "student/athlete" quality (GPA, graduation rates, etc.) was not among the factors considered when making cuts. It's a reflection of perverse values on college campuses nowadays.