Conor here: The following piece from a professor of government at Hamilton College is an argument for taking away the privilege of voters getting to decide the Democrat candidate for president. Why not? The Democrat inner party already put its thumbs heavily on the scales in at least the past few primaries. If they’re doing it anyways, why not just make a formal return to the good ol’ days of party elite getting together and deciding on a candidate? Running the whole dog and pony show of primaries must be a major annoyance for them anyways, and I suspect many Democrat die-hards would have no problem with the “experts” selecting the candidate that best serves the interests of the people donor class. As the author of this piece writes, it would be “a way to avert trouble” – trouble caused by the know-nothing voters.
The author here also mentions when party leaders took the nomination away from Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver in 1952 because he “might alienate key Democratic constituencies. The party bosses also knew that Kefauver had problems with alcohol and extramarital affairs.” Maybe some readers more familiar with that episode can comment, but I was under the impression that a large part of the problem with Kefauver was his efforts to look into organized crime and its connections to The Blob and politicians, and they hated him for it.
By Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Professor of Government at Hamilton College. Originally published at The Conversation.
Now that Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee, it will ultimately be up to Democratic National Convention delegates to formally select a new nominee for their party. This will mark the first time in over 50 years that a major party nominee was selected outside of the democratic process of primaries and caucuses.
Many Democrats had already begun discussing how to replace Biden. They worried that having the convention delegates, the majority of whom were pledged at first to Biden, select the nominee would appear undemocratic and illegitimate.
The Republican Speaker of the House has claimed that having the convention replace Biden would be “wrong” and “unlawful.” Others have conjured up the image of the return of the “smoke-filled room.” This term was coined in 1920 when Republican party leaders gathered in secret in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel and agreed to nominate Warren G. Harding, a previously obscure and undistinguished U.S. senator from Ohio, for the presidency. He won that year, becoming a terrible president.
The tradition of picking a nominee through primaries and caucuses – and not through what is called the “convention system” – is relatively recent. In 1968, after President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for reelection, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was able to secure the Democratic nomination despite not entering any primaries or caucuses. Humphrey won because he had the backing of party leaders like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, and these party leaders controlled the vast majority of the delegates.
Many Democrats saw this process as fundamentally undemocratic, so the party instituted a series of reforms that opened up the process by requiring delegates to be selected in primaries or caucuses that gave ordinary party members the opportunity to make that choice. The Republican Party quickly followed suit, and since 1972 both parties have nominated candidates in this way.
Some Democrats are worried that a new nominee, selected by the convention, will, like Humphrey, lack legitimacy since she or he will have secured the nomination without direct input from Democratic voters around the country.
In response, they’ve suggested what’s being called a “blitz primary” in which Democratic voters will decide on a nominee after a series of televised candidate town halls hosted by politicians and celebrities like Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift.
From the perspective of a scholar who studies political parties and elections, this proposal seems like wishful thinking since there’s no mechanism for setting up a workable election process in such a short period of time. The usual process of primaries and caucuses takes months, if not years, of preparation.
Some Good Picks in the Past
While many associate the convention system with less than impressive nominees, like Harding, the record isn’t that bad.
At the very first convention, held by the National Republicans – ancestors of today’s Republican Party – party leaders and insiders nominated Henry Clay for president. Although Clay lost to Andrew Jackson the following year, he is considered one of the greatest politicians of the 19th century.
The convention system in both parties went on to nominate Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, all of whom were elected president. Of course, conventions also nominated lesser figures like Horatio Seymour, Alton Parker and John W. Davis.
But who’s to say that the current system has done any better to produce electable candidates?
Yes, there’s Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, but there have also been less successful candidates like George McGovern, and weaker presidents like Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.
Furthermore, had the old system been in place this year, there’s a chance that the Democrats might have avoided their current predicament.
A Way to Avert Trouble
To the extent that Democratic Party leaders were aware of Biden’s decline, they might have been able to ease him out in favor of a better candidate – if they had been in control of the nominating process. In fact, party leaders in previous decades often knew more about the candidates than the public at large and could exercise veto power over anyone they thought had serious vulnerabilities.
For example, in 1952, U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee came into the Democratic National Convention the clear favorite in party-member polls. He also won the most primaries and had the most delegates.
Party leaders, however, had serious reservations about Kefauver since they considered him too much of a maverick who might alienate key Democratic constituencies. The party bosses also knew that Kefauver had problems with alcohol and extramarital affairs.
As a result, party leaders coalesced around Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, who was not even a candidate before the convention started. Stevenson ran a losing but respectable race against the immensely popular and probably unbeatable Dwight D. Eisenhower. In addition, Stevenson’s eloquence and intelligence inspired a generation of Democratic Party activists. Not bad for a last-minute convention choice.
With Biden’s withdrawal, it remains to be seen if the new Democratic nominee will be a strong candidate or, if elected, a good president. But there’s no reason to think that this year’s unusual path to the nomination will have any effect on those outcomes.
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I have my doubts about the primary system. On the other hand, if this professor gets his way, why bother even to have elections? Why not just let the two parties alternate, with a new President picked by the cabal every eight years?
Wasn’t that the way it had been working since 1993? Clinton – Bush II – Obama & then Donnie T #$%&ed up the pattern (or perhaps was #$%&ed out of his 2nd term, as his supporters feel) – so now we’re onto 4 years Dems, then 4 years Repubs.
It reminds me how to handle toddlers – Do you want the Red pants or the Blue pants? (Never ask if they want to wear pants at all). I feel that’s how the PTB treats the “voters” (like todddlers). The other great way to handle toddlers (Look! what’s that over THERE?) is also used constantly by the PTB.
As I get older I realize Tom Clancy was right; he is quoted as saying: “What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.”
Why should we care who the figurehead is? – here’s a concept I learned from the Naked Capitalism commentariat: The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does
Damn I love this place – Thanks Yves, Lambert, Conor, & the commentariat!
the piece was pure comedic relief, good choices like reagan and obama, what planet did he come from!
elites are now so far removed from reality, that a openly fascist president was considered a good choice. and that fascist was not reagan, he had jello for brains.
Citizens United along with the meteoric rise of the monopoly Corporation coupled with the Right Wing SCOTUS has changed everything. We cannot compare past Primary stories with what has been going on in recent decades. Harris will go down like a block of concrete in the Hudson and most of the money bags supporting the Dems know this. It would not be surprising if they have already packed their bags and left a few weeks back, Biden or no Biden. She is the worst candidate to counter Trump purely because of her identity. Not only is she Black but she is of immigrant descent and floats on a cloud of DEI. We must ready ourselves to receive earfuls of Kamala’s past indiscretions (Willie Brown). She could not even maintain good relations with her own staff during the 2020 Primary and now suddenly she is Presidential material? I suspect that there is a strong reason why AOC and Bernie preferred Biden over Harris. We are going to find out shortly. It is going to be abortion and IdPol all the way to November and a resounding “shellacking” and 8 years of GOP rule starting in 2025. I very sincerely hope that they do not shred SS and Medicare. It will definitely be sad to say goodbye to Lina Khan and whatever little efforts Biden launched with Antitrust. Get ready for mega M&As again. As far as the Tech Bros of Silicon Valley go, it will be fun to watch Google duke it out with Musk and Thiel.
Citizens United changed “business as usual” for the worse by basically giving the foxes the keys (hell, even the deed) to the henhouse which in turn gave rise to the Congressional ’whale’ known as AIPAC. With the state of Israel committing apparent suicide by genocidal Zionists it’s going to take a lot of popcorn to watch and ‘go figger’ this one- Jill Stein still gets my vote- you don’t suppose the Democrats would try to draft her? (Roll another one, just like the other one…..)
about the only thing left holding this teetering burned out hulk left, is s.s. and medicare. take them away, its over. just think, in eight short years, bill clinton created this mess, and in less than eight short years, it imploded, and has never came back, and every year it gets worse.
if bush jr. had not dropped helicopter money in 2001, the jig would have been up then.
no one in the democrat party has apologized for what clinton did, nor try to reverse any of it.
but a few republicans have come out and said reaganism was wrong.
To the extent that the consent of the governed is just ignored anyways, maybe this is not so bad of an idea.
The argument being that no matter who the voters choose, even a firebrand populist will be blackmailed during the period between the election and inauguration, or sat down with the blob and threatened with harm to their family members if they don’t have a “come to Jesus” moment. This may be why Obama backed off on prosecuting the big banks after the GFC.
The counter argument is that the post 1968 Dem party reforms led to a more open and transparent process, at least. If American politics have devolved to the point where a military junta runs things behind the scenes at least we should know about it. Defenestration of anti-war candidates should happen in public so we all know “who really runs the show.”
Lenin had his idea on what to do. It accomplished a great number of things, some good, some very bad.
Once again, having grown up in a multi-party state, here it’s pretty much given that a party selects it’s candidate – usually a process involving consultations, negotiations, compromises and often a final vote by a party assembly of sorts.
While it reflects the overall approach to politics in a multi-party system (winner very rarely takes all), it also keeps the internal strife at a minimum, lowers the requirements for willing to enter as putative candidates (no funding needed) and also gives the party members an opportunity to more or less openly discuss about the party goals, aims and what’s the “official party line”.
While personal charisma and general popularity of the candidate are certainly factors in the selection process, most parties see the candidate also as a representative of the party’s self image. As in the selected candidate is a message of what the party thinks it stands for.
It all seems good, but nationwide, parties take the coloration of their donors, and the Democrats are champions of that imaging. Remember, the Democrats were the party of slavery and southern apartheid until the Depression called for populist appeal (Roosevelt), yet Blacks were shunted to the back of the bus during his presidency. Women had little more say than twenty years before, and forget other minorities of note. All this reinforces the argument that class, not “identity”, rules this nation, and current politics wishes to substitute caste.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Warren G. Harding. Immediately upon the Armistice, he released Eugene Debs from prison. After the disaster that was Woodrow Wilson, the United States desperately needed “a return to normalcy”. Many Republicans were genuine progressives in those days. His death after only two years in office was a tragedy. See Adam Hochschild’s “Midnight in America” for a readable history of the nightmare that was Wilson.
Seconded!
That seems a good place to stop reading comments. Learned something, but just prior didn’t grok DEI and M&As…almost same re GFC.
Apart from this sort of complaint of mine, learned something from Paul Art too.
Hochschild goes into a great many details of the nightmare that was Wilson, but not into an analysis of socialist thinking. Still, I agree his work is admirable.
My degree is in electrical engineering and that may be why I view presidents in a harm caused and good done.
Harding was not a “terrible president” from the harm standpoint.
I view Wilson’s pushing the USA into WWI which ended up having a second act in WWII and Wilson’s imprisoning of Eugene Deb because of a mildly critical speech
In my view, Wilson and “the buck stop’s here” Truman seem to be held in esteem by historians, while Truman helped morph the War Department into the Cold War Defense department, helped create the large USA intelligence community, dropped the bombs, encouraged France to re-take their Indochina colony (Vietnam) and, over George Marshall’s advice, recognized Israel.
Perhaps many USA historians are really employed in the “manufacturing consent” industry.
The USA and the world needs more minimal harm Presidents as represented by Warren G. Harding.
I would not be surprised if the Democratic Party decides to get rid of primaries from 2028 and onward, just so the leadership can keep their options open and ensure their hold on the direction of the party. This can also serve as a bulwark against the increasing dissent of the electorate just in case more potential upstarts start getting funny ideas about challenging the neoliberal status quo of the DNC during the primaries. By not having primaries at all anymore, the DNC can nip something like a repeat of 2016 and 2020 as it did with Sanders in the bud.
Granted, if the Democratic Party no longer held primaries, they would basically be giving the Republican Party a huge advantage due to how unpopular such a change by the DNC would be for many people. However, the DNC probably thinks that it can count on enough upper middle-class, urban, liberals to counteract the number of people that they would spurn by such a move. Plus, the DNC has shown time and again that it is perfectly willing to commit political suicide as long as it can enrich itself from its wealthy donors along the way as well as fundraise from empty, virtue-signalling gestures such as the “#Resistance” if they lose electorally.
The DNC is more like a national private country club that caters to the wealthy than a political party.
Well, anyway…
It’s ballot acces people need to be worried about more for the future rather than duopoly access or illusions of influence on the duopoly.
Those primaries are a very useful way to channel money back to the national organization and for lobbyists to back their favored government spokesperson. Some primaries become national battles and get tons of cash funneled to the state party. Giving up that gravy train ain’t gonna happen.
I have always told my friends, “The Democrats play at Wannamoisett CC and the Republicans play at Agawam Hunt CC. Where do you want to caddy?”
I imagine the Democrats feel pretty safe as long as the US continues to use First Past The Post voting for presidential elections.
https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
Thanks for taking the long view, Conor Gallagher.
First, I want to commment on Biden’s resigned letter, which I read yesterday and reexamined today.
It is a whiffy bye-bye that was written in haste by committee. The style is clunky — with an awkward mix of sentences, fragments, use of “And,” and strategically folksy contractions. Plus: the required dose of “gratitude,” in a society that now values servility.
In short, rhetoric from a culture of marketing managers.
Given how the Dems suborned the primaries more than once to stick the dagger into Bernie, we see the flaws of primaries.
Given the mediocrity of the resigned letter, one wonders about party elites and rooms filled with smoked salmon. The Dems think that Hillary Clinton is a profound thinker and “Toria” Nuland is a great geostrategist. No wonder that the embodiment of mediocrity, Buttigieg, is angling for attention.
In the end, a democratic mindset means trusting the people. (That use of a cap N on nation in the letter is deeply antidemocratic and and downright icky.)
And I certainly hope that Estes Kefauver was sleeping around, that darn manwhore.
Had to google Estes Kefauver. Admittedly a cursory and very brief review, but he seems like someone I would vote for.
“In the end, a democratic mindset means trusting the people.”
Getting people or movements to focus on ballot access in elections rather than thinking they have influence on the duopoly is important.
The convention and delegate processes drive home that point.
Kefauver was a showboat and an early case of government celebrity created by televised hearings. Some of his most sorry committee hearings were puritanical attacks on television (causes juvenile delinquency), switchblade knives and of all things, pin up girl magazines. He went after comic books as well.
The man was a menace to American popular culture. And I’m not so sure that his Mafia hearings did much. It would take another 30 years before they really got took down.
This is a very one sided portrait of Kefauver, and inaccurate I’d argue. He may have “showboated” on these issues – he was a politician after all – but the investigations were significant in a time when Hoover’s FBI turned a blind eye. But it was his investigations and legislative recommendations regarding monopoly and anti-trust for which he is best known. This included early condemnation of drug companies and excess profits. It is this work that caused him the most trouble from elites. He was flawed, of course. As a Tennessee Senator his positions on civil rights were less than sterling, for example. And regarding his private life, who knows. But in historical context he was probably better than most.
The upper case D in “our Democracy” suggests a proper noun, i.e. they conflate “our Democratic Party” with “our nation’s democracy”. Well, we don’t need that suggestion. They say that the alternative to governance by the Democratic Party is the end of our democracy.
Whilst a lot of people are probably inclined to “have democracy do its thing” in deciding the candidate to fight in the general election, we should not forget that humans “game the poll or survey” routinely. We had two major websites specifically set up to help us do it!
I’ll quote the late great Terry Pratchett in “Going Postal”: There were very few steerable omniscopes. They took a long time to make and cost a great deal. And the wizards were not at all keen on making any more. Omniscopes were for them to look at the universe, not for the universe to look back at them.
I spent 20 years running surveys and clinical studies. Right up until my final one I got some new surprise about how people were gaming them via cunning answers. Thankfully I’d had good training which enabled me to spot when respondents were trying to “get the cash/vouchers for participating by answering strategically” because I made the questions “incentive compatible” (deliberately designed to encourage you to answer honestly) and/or have tricks in them that quickly netted out the jokers. By the time I quit we even measured (to the millisecond) response times – which have been shown to correlate highly with the benefit the respondent actually gets from the answer chosen.
We saw the most skewed election result in UK history a few weeks ago. Tactical voting on a humungous scale. Yet those holier-than-thou proponents of proportional representation almost never acknowledge that Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem practically guarantees that at best they can promise fairer (not “fair”) votes. And that’s before we get to the fact people very quickly learn how to manipulate any and all voting systems. Maybe the smoke-filled back-room ain’t so bad after all. Not saying they’re right….but we need to discuss the issues out in the open.
Hear, hear about the “holier-than-thou proponents of proportional representation.”
A proponent of proportional representation here. Don’t feel myself as holier-than-thou, though, but thanks for patronizing.
Never said PR is perfect or without it’s problems, just that it gets rid of two-party systems (which many seem to detest) almost by default and it mostly gets rid of tactical voting. That’s all. We still manage to elect downright morons to important offices.
AfD and BSW squeezing German government from both sides is only possible in a proportional representation system. That’s 25% of the electorate who won’t need to vote tactically or stay home, they can vote for the agenda they actually support.
I certainly hope I don’t sound rude to supporters of PR who frequent this site. Almost by definition they understand the problems. I loathe politicians like Ed Davey (alumnus of my school) who I’m fairly sure would have been excoriated by our Headmaster late 1980s for his cynical antics.
I have one request. Stop saying “fair votes” – it’s an oxymoron. The public know it. Just say you can deliver fairer system. We might then forgive you for your utterly disgraceful behaviour in allowing Cameron to impose austerity. Nobody but nobody round here in the British East Midlands will forgive or forget. The votes show this. Lib Dems don’t even bother to canvass round here. Racist Reform supporters do better then you.
Am not patronizing & don’t believe hk is either. I merely quote one of the most robust Theorems ever found.
If you like proportional representation then I salute you but DO NOT claim “fair votes”. No system of democracy is absolutely fair. You decide what objectives are most important then the “type of voting system” is obvious to best achieve these. Don’t be arrogant like the UK Liberal Democrats with statements of “absolute” fairness. That’s a demonstrable lie. Arrow showed it. We all must make compromises.
The primary — a product of goody-goody Progressive Era reforms well over a century ago — has depended for its argument on a rhetorical faith in the magical legitimacy of popular voting combined with a determined ignorance of resulting political strategies and mechanisms.
The historical convention process rested on a foundation of local, socially organized politics — dominated in famous cases by patronage-based “machines” like Daley’s in Chicago or the Byrd Organization in Virginia or Tammany Hall in New York but also more generally by local boosters, chambers of commerce, state legislative caucuses and cronies. It was infamously corruptible but also nurtured broad cadres of politically active people. Partisan newspapers and social clubs played active roles and politicians often came from the ranks of newspaper publishers and editors as well as lawyers. The thing is “all politics is local” was not just a saying.
American national politics in the 21st century is infamously corrupt in a different way. Its foundation is the money to fund the propaganda to manipulate the electorate, increasingly supplemented by the secretive manipulation by new and old forms of censorship.
We, the People, do not have many forums left to reflect, deliberate or organize. And, we simply are not allowed to know “for certain” critical, capital facts. The information vacuum is distorting the body politic’s delicate collective psyche, already buffeted by dopamine-stimulating outrage and divisive moralizing. In the case of Biden, I do not know who set him up with the unusually early debate with Trump. Maybe that is an open secret and I was not clued in. I was told on Thursday that Biden would step down from candidacy on Sunday — maybe that bit of info originated in a lucky guess rather than a leak of inside info, but it makes the sequence of events feel to me like a plan.
The emergent organization of PR manipulation and propaganda, no longer mitigated by institutions committed to facts and integrity, as the dominant mode of politics, is what gives leverage to concentrations of money and power to oligarchy. Unfortunately, it has not brought with it any semblance of competence or responsibility in actual governance.
It is that failure of governing competence among the narrators that has brought us to this pass. Voting someone off the island in a televised spectacle does not seem promising.
Tammany and the other political machines were organized around exchange — your vote for a concrete material benefit, and the possibility to advance within the organization if you showed talent and loyalty. Tweed’s “graft for the common man” was something he explicitly distinguished from our present style of corruption, which he considered unjust. (And I personally benefited from the old system — my grandparents met at a Tammany do!)
The author of the article is a professor of government, but not a professor of history. Where in his account is the introduction of the Democrat superdelegate system, which was openly adopted to prevent “another McGovern’ and another 1968, and was important in denying Sanders the nomination in 2020? The declaration in court by the DNC’s lawyers — familiar to all NC readers — that the Party was free to go back to the days of smoke-filled rooms to select their candidate, was the reason the judge dismissed the lawsuit by Sanders partisans over Party by-laws violations. The guy is a master apologist.
The manner in which presidential candidates were chosen prior to 1968, as well as the US election system, are key parts of what is called ¨Our Democracy¨. It is a bastard type of an actual democrracy, just as in China we see ¨Socialism with Chinese characteristics¨. In the US, the presidential elections are made to be stolen. I do not know about the last two, but feel pretty sure about many others – Kennedy in 1960 (the Chicago count), Shrub in both 2000 and 2004, and most students of American history can go much further back. All this is facilitated by the way we conduct elections, the infamous electoral college. Presidential elections are conducted at the State level. The political bosses in each state can influence, rig, cheat, miscount or loose ballot boxes as they deem necessary and convenient. This is our form of democracy; if we can believe that the bosses in each state represent to some extent the popular sentiment it is a sort of representative democracy. Once upon a time it sort of worked. There was less central control; it was not so well coordinated. Major political differences were often between geographic regions rather than, as now, betweeen classes and economic interests that transcend State boundaries.
Long story short, Our Democracy was designed in such a way that the bosses – the oligarchs – controlled the elections. Prior to 1968 they also controlled the nominating process. Now that the makeup is wearing off most people see that they still do pick the candidates. They still control the elections, and short of major changes they will continue to do so. The more things change the more they stay the same.
In 2016, Sanders appeared to be headed for the nomination via the primaries. He was shut down, pushed aside by the insiders, the party bigwigs, because Hillary. In 2020, Sanders appeared to be headed for the nomination via the primaries. Obama and Clyburn cut him off at the knees and handed the nomination to Biden. In 2024, the primaries “decided” a foregone conclusion and handed renomination to Biden. He did not have to show himself. The vast majority were unaware of his fragility and the insiders, the party bigwigs wanted it that way. Please do not tell me that the primaries are the “voice of the people.” The primaries are the voice of the uniparty deciding which carefully chosen front persons gets to stand for election.
Look at who ran for president from 1944-1968. Look at 1972- 2024. Put the candidates side by side and tell me that those chosen by the primary system are the equal much less the superior of the other group.
One way or another the politicians in their various factions within and between the parties fight it out, manipulate the process to their greatest advantage. That is what is going to happen in the next few weeks. Am I happy with the likely choices? No I am not, but that is usually the case. A pretty face, big smile, and a line of b-ll sh-t does not a president make, but that seems to be what we get.
A pretty face, big smile, and a line of b-ll sh-t does not a president make, but that seems to be what we get.
All this is mode possible by repeating the lies in teevee commercials where there is only emphasis on the flaws of the opposing candidate but never anything about what the candidate himself would do. Big money plays a major part in these commercials. It’s time to get rid of money=speech and corporations=people BS. Limiting the amount of money that can be spent on elections would be a start. Getting rid of political parties would be next. Random selection of candidates is worth a try too!
Thanks for that, essentially what I meant yesterday when I wrote Kamala is photogenic, for which I was roundly pounded. Oh well… I won’t do that again…
I disagree with the statement that “This will mark the first time in over 50 years that a major party nominee was selected outside of the democratic process of primaries and caucuses.” Yeah, there were technically primaries and caucuses for 2008 and 2016, but they hardly counted as a democratic process. The DNC even argued in court they held the right to nominate whomever they wanted when jilted Sanders donors sued them. Even if we play along and pretend that isn’t happening, there are the superdelegates, which hardly seem democratic (small d) to me. I don’t think they really switched to a more democratic process. They just tried to make the behind the scenes stuff less obvious.
They did not try too hard, actually, they did reveal that the process is the same, out of all places in the court:
hxxps://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/
Both, the DNC and RNC are private entities and as such, election laws do not apply to them. Their charters are the “dog and pony” show…
DNC and RNC are private entities, but since the fraudulent presidential election of 1888 (Harrison v Cleveland), the “recognized parties” have been incorporated into the fabric of election law. It varies by state. In some states, party positions are subject to state controlled election processes.
Campaign finance law also recognizes “national party committees” and their state affiliates.
In the 1800s, parties were organized at the state level. “National” parties were largely fusion parties with varying state issues. So the convention process was a way of coming up with a candidate, and set of national issues. that could garner an electoral vote majority. The question was finding an “available candidate”, i.e., one that wouldn’t immediately alienate a state constituency. Thus you had Whigs being successful only with army generals with little political baggage (though Scott proved unable to deliver a message acceptable to both north and south).
Of course in those days presidential candidates didn’t personally campaign — that was left to state leaders.
It also seems that after the emergence of the Populist party in the late 19th Century and TR’s 1912 campaign, the parties increasingly sought and succeeded in establishing their position as a duopoly and prevented other parties from emerging or splitting off post-convention.
What was the subterfuge in 2008? I was in the country then and even a voter but not as knowledgeable and I don’t know what you might be referring to.
In 2008 Hills was leading in the primary when the estab pulled the rug and decided O would be the nominee. Hills was told then she’d be the nominee in 2016 and to wait her turn. In 2016 a few Dem challangers including B began a run for the primary but were told/convinced to step down. It was her turn. B dutifully stepped down, along with others. Bernie was allowed to run to make it look like a real primary. 2020 was to be B’s turn. But he was by 2020 already starting to fail, so they had a primary, which Bernie was leading until phone calls were made. And that was that, as they say.
Adding, the infamous Dean Scream was due to him using (maybe unbeknownst to him at the time) a noise cancelling mic that only picked up and broadcast his voice and silenced the background noise. Sportscasters sitting court side will use those. So Dean is screaming to his crowd hoping to be heard in a rally of screaming supporters, and it sounds like he’s screaming in a silent room, sounds like he’s nuts. All the MSM broadcast the “scream” over and over with great delight. (Doze guys is very effective in undermining da peeps dey don’t want to win.) / ;)
Thanks flora. Yeah, I hate to sound sympathetic to Herself, but the fact of the matter is, Her got a screwjob in 2008. That was when i figured out the primaries are just a formality and when it happened to Sanders in 2016, I wasn’t the least bit surprised and actually expected it.
Just to add: In 2004 RNC cancelled many primaries and caucuses to make sure Bush wasn’t challenged. I wouldn’t have known except I followed a t-shirt salesman from California and his quixotic one man campaign to unseat Bush.
After getting double digits in some Midwestern state, the Bush campaign actually spent money on (non-cancelled) primaries, so at least there was that.
In the end he didn’t get any delegates, which was a pity as he had a pretty good platform as a peace republican.
The Blob and the Mob are still in charge.
“It’s the voters fault” is bs It’s the parties fault. Polls showed that we didn’t want either Trump or Biden. The Dems railroaded their man in. At least the Republicans had a choice of sorts. We need open primaries, ranked choice and get rid of the winner take all count
Maybe you meant to say “proper proportional representation”?
Because that is what Australia has done and you’d have a hard time arguing that it has fundamentally disrupted the two-party duopoly. Plus Lambert invited me to link to an article where I show that preserving “non-multimember constituencies” via alternative vote, most-least voting, etc, can make things “more proportional” but certainly isn’t guaranteed to do so, or gain support in the population.
Don’t get me wrong – I am not out to shoot down people who want AV/MLV etc as a way to make things “less unfair” – and some of them may see it as a mere stepping stone to a more proportional system once people lose their ridiculous love affair with first-past-the-post. But let’s call a spade a spade – the current systems in the USA and UK are blatantly and fundamentally broken. We have to decide if we want incremental or fundamental change.
Better example is Ireland, with multimember districts. Electoral politics in Ireland, hisyorically, has been, eh, interesting precisely because of the attempts to game the sysyem and the complexity of the ranking system with a lot of candidates is such that it’s basically impossible to properly retrace how the votes became seats.
Indeed. Ireland seems to avoid a lot of the worst antics but when you delve into the minutiae of voting you still see plenty of tactical voting.
Let’s just face facts. People interact with the voting system and there’s nothing we can do to stop this. Except govern honestly. Unicorns ahead ;)
Maybe it won’t change anything, but I would of felt better about that I had some influence over the state of Texas. Same goes for Republicans who can’t get anybody on their side into California.
I don’t think any Democrats were under any illusions as to Biden’s capacity. It’s just that he was successfully able to deter any serious candidates like Gavin Newsom from running against him, by fear of reprisals. Take away that power, and primaries would be more open.
Another aspect to consider is the ability of shadowy interests to kill the candidacy of an insurgent challenger to the status quo, e.g. Gary Hart and the tawdry Donna Rice manufactured pseudo-scandal, or Howard Dean.
The Dems had 4 years to bring up new contenders for the 2024 primary. B promised he’s be a one-term transitional pres. As Walter Kirn said in his twt, the Dem voters have been left out of this entire process. No 2024 primary to speak of, now the bigwigs decide in a back room. Almost like they intended this outcome considering they never mentioned a successor or new candidates for 2024 when everyone could see in 2020 B was acting a bit erratic. Glad to know the party I supported for decades makes clear it doesn’t care about my vote. And no, they won’t respect me in the morning. / heh
In Mexico, presidents serve one 6-year term and done. I think we should consider that here. Maybe the president would get something done in that single term instead of just running (and fundraising) for the whole first four years with no guarantee of another term to “create their legacy.” Assuming the person elected is actually capable of doing anything, or crafting a legacy…
I like the idea, we also need to get rid of the Electoral College, and maybe the Senate, too. And one dollar, one vote. and…
I used to think so too, Carla. But not anymore. Can you imagine if we had to put up with 2 more years of Trump’s term or Biden’s? Yea, they can get two terms, but at least we get to go to the polls, between them…for whatever that’s worth.