My *Moment of Zen*

Last session we talked about the US election system (and I finally have a slight idea how it functions, thanks to whytuesday.org)But there was one thing that irritated me. It was during our discussion about the question whether caucuses are vital to the democratic system or not that somebody compared caucuses to the nomination of candidates for chancellor in Germany. I had the feeling that I must have missed something. As far as I knew it is the party that nominates the candidate - the German voter does not have any direct influence at all on whom they pick. But as I wasn´t sure anymore and as I thought that as a student of political science I should be sure about that, I googled it - and wikipedia proved me to be right. (yes, I know that wikipedia is not always the most reliable source)
In that case the US caucuses and the procedure of chosing the party´s candidate for chancellor are not comparable at all. Therefore I am still convinced that it would be helpful for the parties if we had something like caucuses in Germany as well. The SPD or CDU/CSU could each name three candidates who would have to run the caucuses. Using this method they could check beforehand which candidate is the most likely to be accepted by the German citizens - and later nominate this candidate on their party convention - no more problems because a candidate turns out to be unpopular.