Yes, we have work to do in getting state party orgs to cede control of the national primaries to the national party. If Dems want to maximize their chances of winning the White House, this is exactly what loyal state party apparatchiks should do. The legislatures’ controls are not absolute and all-encompassing.
This will be difficult, almost impossible. It is worth the effort.
Honest question: why? How do you think the Democrats are being disadvantaged in presidential elections because of the current party structure? Republicans have the same structure. Democrats have won three of the last four presidential elections. It’s the system that produced Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton as Democratic nominees. Were they bad candidates? What are you trying to fix here?
That’s actually a good question. My first thought was we need to “fix” it but, yeah, for the most part a good candidate (to me) came through the process.
Democrats winning with a crappy primary system is not a good defense of the crappy system when the Republicans are using the same crappy primary system. I’m urging Dems to devise a system that I think is instead more optimal, by engaging as many voters as possible in an easy-to-understand process. And to distinguish themselves from the GOP by presenting themselves as proponents of modern and accessible primary systems.
Democrats have the numbers on their side. Because of an archaic electoral system, they need to have big numbers on their side. I think they’ve by and large selected good candidates but maybe they wouldn’t have lost the other two elections with a different primary process that optimized voter participation.
Thinking strategically, in my proposed five-layer, 50-state primary system, I might even give voters in closely contested states weighted consideration; maybe making their votes count twice as much or half again as much as voters in uncontested states. There are eight states that count disproportionately. We should recognize that.
About ten times a day I read someone’s proposal for solving a problem. Every single one requires a giant shift in public opinion, would go against entrenched interests, never considers any possible misapplications, is easily changeable at the turn of dial, and could never be put into place without a miracle. All these issues are always flung aside with the wave of a hand. The plan would work as it was intended to work and never a fraction of a degree otherwise, even though the holes in the argument prove conclusively that the originator doesn’t actually know enough about the subject to deserve to have an opinion that others listen to. None of them ever do more than dump them online or in a magazine, leaving to others the tremendous effort needed to put them into place.
Just a hint why you’re not getting the go ahead even from people who agree with you that there is a problem.
I think the whole primary system is a mess from the beginning, and changing what states go first is at best a bandaid on a gaping chest wound, and is more likely to cause more problems than it solves.
If we want to get good candidates that the voters can get behind, we should instead have runoffs, where every state votes at the same time. Have one in February/March where the field is narrowed from the clown car of candidates to 6 or so. Then another in May that narrows it to two. Then one more shortly before the convention to choose the ultimate nominee.
The main problem I see with this is a fairly large one, in that elections are not free to execute, and this would require considerably more resources to implement. The second biggest problem would be that it would be changing the status quo, and that is never an easy task.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. While there are certainly problems with the existing primary process, this feel like a solution in search of a problem. And I don’t think it will necessarily lead to better outcomes. For one example, the sort of nationalized primary process you propose would almost certainly have resulted in Hilary Clinton being the Democratic nominee in 2008. Her tremendous advantages in name recognition, cash-on-hand and endorsements would been nearly impossible for Obama to overcome.
Almost all systemic changes begin as “radical” and “unworkable” ideas. Over the last 40 years I’ve become pretty accustomed to the resistance and I’m pretty comfortable with it. I’m ok with putting alternative ideas out there and talking about them because people can be convinced that the status quo isn’t good enough. It’s happened throughout US history as the people more concerned with the possible downsides of change gradually lose out to the people who are more hopeful of the positive effects of change. We radicals are a necessary part of progress and I don’t get discouraged.
I’m going after the Second Amendment next, in case you missed it from another thread somewhere. That’ll be easy, lol.
When was the last time delegates that were unrecognized and that mattered in the final result were readmitted to the convention?
However, even being threatened with not having delegates seated won’t stop some states, which would work on the following principle: “If we stay where we are, chances are our delegates’ votes won’t matter, so we are risking nothing if we move our primary to January, and now we matter because whoever wins our primary will have momentum going into, for example, Super Tuesday - then, once the primaries are over, we will show that our delegates will not affect the result, so the party, in a show of national unity, will admit us to the convention.” Also, the Democrats (apparently) changed the rule starting with 2020; a state only loses half of its delegates (and all of its superdelegates) for going early, although any candidate that campaigns in an early state before that primary loses any delegates earned from that primary.
The five-layer, 50-state primary system, btw, was first proposed by GOP party officials/strategists back in 2000. It was ultimately rejected for fear that it would it would put Republican presidential candidates at the strategical disadvantage in certain election conditions. I think that decision worked out as so many Republican decisions do: worse for the country but better for their party (at least better 20 years later).
I don’t know that that would have been that bad a thing. She would have done much better in 2008 than she did in 2016. Especially if Obama ran as her VP.
It’s hard to replay history, but I don’t think that Clinton would have done any worse than Obama, and would have probably done a bit better in regards to not being as naive about trying to be bipartisan.
Isn’t that their motto?
Maybe. It’s tough to contradict a hypothetical. Any Democrat running in 2008 was going to have the deck stacked in his or her favor given the state of the economy. She would have had all the same vulnerabilities as she did in 2016, but it might not have mattered.
But my point is that @Red_Wiggler is proposing a massive overhaul of how we organize our parties and conduct our primary elections because (in my reading) he seems to think that the current system is not working well for Democrats. But Obama was a terrific candidate for Democrats who came out of the same process, and I’m just not seeing how a more “federalized” structure would produce better candidates or otherwise advantage Democrats.
Heh. I just noticed this from Dec. 2019. How’s the discussion going? [Looking under the seat cushions] Any activists down there?
The entrenched entitlement that has long placed Iowa at the start of the Democrats’ presidential nominating process is finally being challenged.
Iowa is not demographically representative, it’s increasingly out of reach for the Democrats, and it struggled even to provide a count for the 2020 caucuses.
It’s heartening that President Biden and the Democratic National Committee are finally addressing this issue and pressing for reform.
South Carolina was already the fourth state in the Democratic primary calendar; I don’t know that you can get “much earlier” than that.
If they really want more people to be involved in choosing the nominee, they should change the order every four years. Give every state and region a chance to be early in the process, not the same states every time.
Not sure how many states would be eager to shuffle their primary seasons around like that (possibly by decoupling their presidential primaries from their others, but that might be a big ask).
In my state, the various party primaries are held on the same day. I don’t think that states would like to pay for holding a Democratic primary on one date, and a Republican primary on another.
Which leads to the question of why the states are paying for the primary elections in the first place.
I know the answer, of course. I thought that Missouri at least piggy backed the primary with another vote, but at least for 2022 it wasn’t (at least not statewide). The date is marked as ‘available for public elections’ in 2023, so I guess a county/city/school district/?? could hold an election at the same time if they desired.
Considering all the extra attention that early states get, and the way New Hampshire (for example) fights to hold onto its early place in the schedule, I think any other state would be thrilled to get that opportunity.