Your first couple points don’t make much of an impact for me. Cost shouldn’t be a concern here; primaries are expensive, but vastly worth it.

Your third point about disengaging local party activists is interesting (I wouldn’t have thought of it) but the potential rewards of engaging the citizenry at large is too important to put the interests of a small group ahead of a large one. Party activists here in the US work as hard (or harder) during the primaries as during the general election. It’s more doors to knock and more people to get involved in the campaign; it only grows the political machine of modern US campaigns.

Primaries in the US are a response to a complicated set of factors, more than just Tammany Hall, and have only opened up gradually over the last century, state by state. At this point, we’re sticking with them and people are never going to give up their right to choose their candidates.

The basic win of having a primary is for your MP to be vulnerable to political pressure from either side. It gives both the left and right a voice and leverage in guiding a politician’s behavior, and that’s a valuable tool in any democracy, US or otherwise.

Thanks for engaging with the campaign – it’s much appreciated. I’ve pulled out some of the questions you’ve raised for a blog Q&A we’re doing on the Open Up! site later this week, but if you’d like to engage more directly, just leave a comment in this post:

http://blog.openupnow.org/2009/10/20/questions-ask-vernon/