1. It was an entirely different time period, with much less democracy
2. The delegate counts were closer
3. Lincoln had to employ outright fraud, by printing up counterfeit tickets and loading the convention hall with his own supporters, which displaced many of Sewards
4. Several other tacical tricks were employed which simply don't apply today
5. Lastly, Ted Cruz is no Abraham Lincoln. His character, as exhibited in this process, does not rise to that level of integrity.
A good list; and to those I would add that at the time,
6. there was no instantaneous global communications providing realtime feedback, individual cell communications or network and cable public communications from news outlets and powerful influencers that could affect decision outcomes, and
7. delegates had to travel by horse for days to reach the convention, and once there, have a process for getting it done no matter what, without access to outside influencers, not even a telephone. Today's delegates are at most, hours away physically and always in touch electronically.
The effects of ubiquitous, instant, 24/7 communications have not only made the process more transparent, but also are exerting great pressure to lengthen the campaign season and move the decision point far earlier than a convention as the agreed-upon finish line. The process is both influenced and micromanaged electronically on a moment-to-moment basis among mlllions of participants, mediated by a network of internet portals, the broadcast and cable systems, swarmed by civilian and paid communicators, honest and dishonest, open ad anonymous. There are the positive effects of greater information, involvement and transparency, but also many negative effects. Among them are:
• Widespread instantaeous communications is making the present patchwork of varied electoral methods (primaries, caucuses, bound vs unbound delegates, winner-take-all vs proportional tallies, and 3-hour time zone differentials) quite disfunctional, because feedback about what happens in one state affects what happens in other states with later primaries or later time zones. Back in the horse-and-buggy days when fewer people were even literate or had newspapers, it was much more practicable to have delegates control the convention voting. Today, it seems "unfair" to the electronically-connected electorate to have a majority vote for a candidate in a primary yet allow the bound delegates to change their vote on a second ballot.• The Founders did not want a popular democracy in which manias, fads, pockets of ignorance or organizational bullying could skew elections. Today we might add "gamesmanship" and manipulation of delegates to sidestep the will of grassroots voters — or we might not. Gamesmanship exists when as-yet unregulated technological innovation creates new conditions that blur ethical boundaries.
• The Founders also limited voting to free white male property owners. For the best of intentions, this "conservative" foundational ideal of limiting the vote to mediating stakeholders with the most investment has been rendered passé with fluctuating waves of entry by functionally indigent voters, such as financially dependent women at the dawn of Women's Suffrage, recently emancipated minorities with the dissolution of Jim Crow, and now, nearly half the nation on food stamps or too poor to pay taxes, many of these lacking the motivation to overcome poverty of earlier generations. As a result, today the "one man, one vote" principle of the grassroots juxtaposes the vote of an employer who owns land and buildings and provides many jobs against the vote of a welfare-dependent, rarely employed, drug-abusing father of several illegimate children from several baby mamas on welfare — nor does either description automatically indicate such voters' race any more. Its intentions were noble; but is this progressive enfranchisement really "fair" if it is bankrupting us financially and morally?
Clearly, the system needs to be examined in light of the impacts of instant communications. "Fair" is impossible; all a revision will be able to accomplish is a compromise between the fundamental principles of conservatism (self-government, personal responsibility, rule of law, civic and personal virtue, traditions of honor) and the "unprinciples" of progressivism (radical marxist individuality and equality, socialism, victimology, class hatred, cronyism, statist control).
Some nations, I've heard, put limits on such practices as exit polling and do not allow media to "call" the elections in one time zone until all time zones have closed the polls. Even these simple measures are now confounded by the availability of absentee ballots and early voting, the leaks of information over social media that confound expectations of secrecy among election board employees, the endless possibilities for fraud from computerized voting machines — and that's not even counting our Democrat-led states now enfranchising illegals and felons.
As John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Thanks for the ping.
Yes but as you say, the Founders didn’t anticipate instant feedback, which is why senators are anachronistic. They get feedback but can ignore it for 4-5 years and hope voters forget. Plus their previous purpose was to protect the states.