I have a new piece today in the New York Times that focuses on what the selection of Kamala Harris tells us about Joe Biden. Over the course of his long political career, I argue, Biden has always been a man of his party. He thus was unsurprisingly sensitive to pressure (or encouragement, if you prefer) from within Democratic circles to choose a woman, especially a black woman, and especially Harris. And the undeniable similarities and parallels between the figures of Harris, now very much Biden's political heir apparent, and Barack Obama merely underscore the extent to which the Democratic Party is still forged in Obama's image.
There wasn't enough room for me to touch on it in the piece, but it's become clear that Biden's organizational ties to the institutional Democratic Party are also very strong—probably stronger than those of any Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson. For example, while Obama mostly disdained and neglected the Democratic National Committee, preferring to build his own personal voter outreach structure (ultimately called Organizing for America), the Biden campaign seems to be closely integrated with the DNC and much more invested in its success. And the retrospective accounts of his vice presidential search process that are starting to pop up in the press all describe a very extensive and elaborate intelligence-gathering operation designed to synthesize input from a wide array of party actors and stakeholders.
Here are a few other final thoughts as another round of veepstakes draws to a close:
1. It's not entirely clear from the reports I've seen whether Harris was the front-runner from the beginning. But it does seem obvious that a decision was made fairly early in the process to prioritize black women and—critically—to leave other party members and the press with the same impression. Once you've signaled that you're so interested in a black running mate that you're considering multiple non-traditional picks like Susan Rice, Karen Bass, or Val Demings, you'd be running quite a risk of disappointment by settling on, say, Gretchen Whitmer instead.
2. This strategic framing by the Biden campaign is one of the reasons why the Harris pick has been described as "safe" and "obvious." She's certainly the safe choice in comparison to Rice, Bass, or Demings. But a campaign that had floated a different mix of finalists might not have produced the same response.
3. One of the important issues that this search process has demonstrated is the underrepresentation of women, especially women who aren't white, in the traditional vice presidential (and presidential) feeder offices. Harris is one of only two black women who have ever been elected to the Senate in American history (Carol Moseley-Braun, who served one term from Illinois in the 1990s, is the other), and no black woman has ever served as a state governor. In our current political moment, the demand for national elected leaders who are not white men—at least on the Democratic side—is exceeding the ready supply. If Biden had ruled out Harris, for whatever reason, he would have been faced with a real dilemma, forcing him to relax either his preference for a black running mate or the normal perceptions of the appropriate credentials for presidential office.
4. The press has made a lot of hay out of the Trump campaign's incoherent set of attacks on Harris as it simultaneously attempts to paint her, like Biden, as both a radical anti-police anarchist and an overly punitive agent of the carceral state. But my guess is that the bulk of Republican messaging, in paid advertisements and surrogate talking points, will emphasize the former claim, with the latter saved for a few targeted social media communications intended to decrease turnout on the left. As with much else in politics, follow the money: tweets are free, but TV ads are expensive.
5. The vice presidential selection is always good for a few days of media frenzy in an otherwise slow summer week for news, but it's worth remembering that running mates normally fade into the background as the fall campaign heats up (with one historical exception that is, above all, a cautionary tale). And the next VP debate to have an important effect on the presidential race will be the first one ever.
Showing posts with label Democratic National Committee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democratic National Committee. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Monday, June 17, 2019
Once Again, the Debates Are Going to Cause the DNC Plenty of Grief
The Democratic National Committee faced a lot of criticism for the way it organized presidential nomination debates in 2016. Originally, the party only planned six debates (there ended up being nine), and the first event wasn't held until mid-October 2015—in contrast to the Republicans, who held a total of twelve debates beginning in early August. One of the Democratic debates was held on the Saturday before Christmas, and another occurred over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in January 2016. The Bernie Sanders campaign suspected that the DNC had intentionally scheduled the debates in order to minimize their likely viewership—and, not coincidentally, to deprive Sanders of a large audience for his challenge to the better-known front-runner Hillary Clinton. Complaints about the debates thus became part of the larger case that Sanders supporters built against the DNC for "rigging" the nomination process in Clinton's favor.
Desperate to preserve its popular legitimacy and prove its dedication to equality and inclusion, the DNC changed its ways in advance of the 2020 election. There would be twelve debates in all, and the first event would be held much earlier—in the last week of June 2019. And, importantly, the standards for inclusion in the June and July debates would be very forgiving, in order to forestall accusations that the party was being exclusionary or manipulative: candidates would need only to reach 1 percent in three polls of Democratic voters or to attract 65,000 financial donors. If there were too many candidates to fit in a single debate, the party wouldn't consign secondary candidates to a separate, lower-status "undercard" or "kiddie table" debate, as the Republicans did in 2016. Instead, each candidate would be assigned to one of two consecutive nights via a random draw, stratified in order to ensure that the top contenders in the polls didn't all happen to wind up on the same stage.
But as so often happens in life, maneuvering to address one set of problems can create a new, different set of problems—with no guarantee that the original set will indeed be solved. The scheduling of very early debates with modest eligibility requirements turned out to be something of an attractive nuisance, helping to draw into the race a record-breaking flotilla of candidates enticed by the prospect of national television exposure. With ten candidates participating in each of two 2-hour debates, it's likely that each individual candidate won't get much of a chance to make his or her case to the voters even as a lot of camera time will collectively be consumed by contenders with little or no chance of winning the nomination.
Acknowledging these inconvenient consequences of its own policies, the DNC has indicated that the inclusion criteria will become more stringent beginning with the third debate in September, requiring candidates to reach 2 percent in at least four polls and to receive financial support from at least 130,000 donors. But if a higher threshold succeeds in solving the problem of a debate stage too crowded with also-rans, it will simultaneously exacerbate the older problem of a party perceived to be favoring some candidates over others. Montana governor Steve Bullock is already complaining that his exclusion from next week's debates means that the party isn't hearing "different voices," and it's very possible that the DNC-is-silencing-me caucus could expand by the fall to include multiple sitting senators whose campaigns have yet to catch on with the public.
Maybe nobody will care much that candidates with little popular support aren't invited to future debates. But internal party warfare tends to attract substantial media attention, and frequent complaints from journalists that there are too many Democrats running for president hardly guarantee that they will come to the party's defense when it acts to further limit the number of debate participants. Voters could easily form a vague impression that something about the process was unfair without necessarily supporting, or even recognizing, any of the excluded candidates.
Media figures also love to hype debates in advance, even though they often turn out to be bored in practice by the rehearsed rhetoric and awkward one-liners that usually dominate the proceedings. Anything that dampens anticipatory excitement, then, tends to provoke a fair amount of journalistic grousing. The DNC attempted to ensure that the top candidates were evenly divided between the two debate events next week—but because it defined "top" as polling at only 2 percent or higher, it wound up assigning four of the five leading candidates to a single debate group. Even worse for media critics, the one candidate left out (Elizabeth Warren) is the trendiest at the moment, depriving pundits of the juicy prospect of potential Warren vs. Biden or Warren vs. Sanders in-person showdowns. Journalists responded to the announcement of the debate lineups last Friday with considerable disappointment on social media, despite the DNC's hopes of using the process to demonstrate its scrupulous devotion to fairness and equality.
The centrality of debates in presidential nomination politics is a fairly recent development; the 2012 Republican race is arguably the first nomination contest in which debates played a major role in influencing the dynamics. With their interests increasingly at stake in these events, parties have understandably responded by asserting more control over their production. But the Democratic Party in particular is also extremely sensitive to accusations that any new rules imposed on the process infringe on the sacred right of "the people" to choose a nominee without the stain of elite interference. The DNC is attempting to thread its way through the narrow straits separating excessive chaos from excessive order, but it seems unlikely to do so without attracting simultaneous criticism that it is being both too strict and too indulgent. When it comes to presidential nominations, it's impossible to satisfy everybody—and easy to satisfy nobody.
Desperate to preserve its popular legitimacy and prove its dedication to equality and inclusion, the DNC changed its ways in advance of the 2020 election. There would be twelve debates in all, and the first event would be held much earlier—in the last week of June 2019. And, importantly, the standards for inclusion in the June and July debates would be very forgiving, in order to forestall accusations that the party was being exclusionary or manipulative: candidates would need only to reach 1 percent in three polls of Democratic voters or to attract 65,000 financial donors. If there were too many candidates to fit in a single debate, the party wouldn't consign secondary candidates to a separate, lower-status "undercard" or "kiddie table" debate, as the Republicans did in 2016. Instead, each candidate would be assigned to one of two consecutive nights via a random draw, stratified in order to ensure that the top contenders in the polls didn't all happen to wind up on the same stage.
But as so often happens in life, maneuvering to address one set of problems can create a new, different set of problems—with no guarantee that the original set will indeed be solved. The scheduling of very early debates with modest eligibility requirements turned out to be something of an attractive nuisance, helping to draw into the race a record-breaking flotilla of candidates enticed by the prospect of national television exposure. With ten candidates participating in each of two 2-hour debates, it's likely that each individual candidate won't get much of a chance to make his or her case to the voters even as a lot of camera time will collectively be consumed by contenders with little or no chance of winning the nomination.
Acknowledging these inconvenient consequences of its own policies, the DNC has indicated that the inclusion criteria will become more stringent beginning with the third debate in September, requiring candidates to reach 2 percent in at least four polls and to receive financial support from at least 130,000 donors. But if a higher threshold succeeds in solving the problem of a debate stage too crowded with also-rans, it will simultaneously exacerbate the older problem of a party perceived to be favoring some candidates over others. Montana governor Steve Bullock is already complaining that his exclusion from next week's debates means that the party isn't hearing "different voices," and it's very possible that the DNC-is-silencing-me caucus could expand by the fall to include multiple sitting senators whose campaigns have yet to catch on with the public.
Maybe nobody will care much that candidates with little popular support aren't invited to future debates. But internal party warfare tends to attract substantial media attention, and frequent complaints from journalists that there are too many Democrats running for president hardly guarantee that they will come to the party's defense when it acts to further limit the number of debate participants. Voters could easily form a vague impression that something about the process was unfair without necessarily supporting, or even recognizing, any of the excluded candidates.
Media figures also love to hype debates in advance, even though they often turn out to be bored in practice by the rehearsed rhetoric and awkward one-liners that usually dominate the proceedings. Anything that dampens anticipatory excitement, then, tends to provoke a fair amount of journalistic grousing. The DNC attempted to ensure that the top candidates were evenly divided between the two debate events next week—but because it defined "top" as polling at only 2 percent or higher, it wound up assigning four of the five leading candidates to a single debate group. Even worse for media critics, the one candidate left out (Elizabeth Warren) is the trendiest at the moment, depriving pundits of the juicy prospect of potential Warren vs. Biden or Warren vs. Sanders in-person showdowns. Journalists responded to the announcement of the debate lineups last Friday with considerable disappointment on social media, despite the DNC's hopes of using the process to demonstrate its scrupulous devotion to fairness and equality.
The centrality of debates in presidential nomination politics is a fairly recent development; the 2012 Republican race is arguably the first nomination contest in which debates played a major role in influencing the dynamics. With their interests increasingly at stake in these events, parties have understandably responded by asserting more control over their production. But the Democratic Party in particular is also extremely sensitive to accusations that any new rules imposed on the process infringe on the sacred right of "the people" to choose a nominee without the stain of elite interference. The DNC is attempting to thread its way through the narrow straits separating excessive chaos from excessive order, but it seems unlikely to do so without attracting simultaneous criticism that it is being both too strict and too indulgent. When it comes to presidential nominations, it's impossible to satisfy everybody—and easy to satisfy nobody.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Presidential Caucuses Are Fading, But Iowa and Nevada Still Matter
Both national parties, but especially the Democrats, are prone to tinkering with the mechanics of the presidential nomination process in the period between elections, in a constant scramble to respond to various problems and complaints that reliably emerge during every competitive nomination contest. The Democratic National Committee's most urgent priority after the 2016 election was to remedy the perceived legitimacy crisis within the party that arose from the presence of unpledged superdelegates, which had caused a fair amount of public controversy during the Clinton-Sanders race that year. After considering a range of proposed reform measures, the DNC ultimately decided to keep superdelegates but deprive them of the power to cast decisive votes on the first presidential nomination ballot at the national convention.
But the party also approved another change to nomination procedures that has received much less attention so far. For the first time, the DNC passed an official resolution encouraging the use of presidential primaries rather than caucuses to select pledged delegates, and required states continuing to hold caucuses to allow a means by which voters could cast absentee ballots or otherwise participate remotely. With relatively little attention, this reform seems to have immediately produced a notable effect on the 2020 nomination process.
The case against caucuses contains several distinct arguments. Critics are fond of pointing out that the participation level in caucuses is much lower than that of primaries. Even the well-publicized Iowa caucus produced a turnout rate of just 16 percent in 2016, compared to a 52 percent rate in the New Hampshire primary the following week. In other, less-hyped states, the caucus turnout rate fell into single digits—8.1 percent in Minnesota, 5.5 percent in Kansas, 4.6 percent in Hawaii. Caucuses are also especially difficult for specific subpopulations to attend: service-industry workers; parents of young children; people with disabilities or limited transportation options. (Concerns about such inherent biases in the caucus system is what ostensibly motivated the DNC to mandate the availability of absentee ballots in future state caucuses.)
Notwithstanding the comparatively depressed participation rates, unexpected surges in turnout have sometimes strained the organizational capacity of the state parties that manage the caucuses, producing full parking lots, long lines, and procedural confusion once inside. Some Mainers waited for over four hours to participate in their state's 2016 caucus, while some Minnesotans had to vote using Post-It notes in 2008 because their caucus sites ran out of ballots.
A final strike against caucuses, at least from the perspective of traditional party leaders, is their tendency to benefit insurgent candidacies with high supporter enthusiasm over the party regulars favored by more casual primary voters. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the first two caucuses of the year by narrow margins (0.2 percent in Iowa and 5.3 percent in Nevada), but Sanders proceeded to sweep the remaining 12 state caucuses on the calendar, losing only the 4 caucuses held in U.S. territories that lack representation in the electoral college.
Presidential primaries are already the norm in the most populated parts of the country. In 2016, Democrats employed caucuses in 3 mid-size states (Colorado, Minnesota, and Washington); 11 small states (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming); and 4 territories (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, and the Virgin Islands). A total of 561 delegates were selected in caucuses, representing 14 percent of all Democratic pledged delegates.
But as the 2020 nomination process comes into focus, it's clear that there will be notable movement away from the use of caucuses. According to political scientist Josh Putnam's invaluable FHQ website, which closely tracks such changes, all three of the most populous states that held caucuses in 2016 plus three more small states (Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah) have opted for government-run primary elections in 2020, with a seventh state (Maine) still considering whether to join them. The number of Democratic pledged delegates selected outside of state-operated primaries seems certain to decrease to less than half of its 2016 level, perhaps dropping to just 5 or 6 percent of all pledged delegates nationwide.
On top of that, a few of the remaining states that are not shifting to standard primary elections are still abandoning traditional caucuses in favor of a "firehouse" primary administered by the state party. According to Putnam, the state parties in Kansas, North Dakota, Alaska, and Hawaii are all planning such a change. These elections may wind up behaving like a cross between a primary and a caucus, with fewer balloting sites and shorter voting hours than a regular primary would have. But there seems to be a clear response at the state level to the DNC's post-2016 policy shift, with the pure caucus model of delegate selection suddenly falling out of favor in multiple places at once.
Does this mean that state caucuses are poised to be virtually irrelevant to future presidential nominations? From a purely mathematical perspective, it certainly becomes even less likely that the shrinking share of delegates chosen in caucuses turns out to represent the margin between national victory and defeat for a prospective nominee. On balance, that's mildly good news for "establishment"-style candidates (like, say, Joe Biden) and mildly bad news for "outsider" types (like, say, Bernie Sanders).
But the first and third states on the nomination calendar will persist in selecting delegates via traditional caucuses, and these states' temporal primacy gives them substantial influence over the outcome that is far out of proportion to the modest size of their convention delegations. As Putnam notes, both Iowa and Nevada have good reason not to abandon their caucuses for primaries, or even to lean too far in the direction of a caucus-primary hybrid: if they do, their jealous sibling New Hampshire would undoubtedly respond by claiming the right to push even further to the front of the line in order to defend its self-proclaimed perpetual right to hold the first primary in the nation. Unless the national parties act to disallow caucuses altogether, then, the distinctive demands that they place on candidates and voters will remain a key component of the highly complex and thoroughly unique manner in which American presidential nominees are chosen.
But the party also approved another change to nomination procedures that has received much less attention so far. For the first time, the DNC passed an official resolution encouraging the use of presidential primaries rather than caucuses to select pledged delegates, and required states continuing to hold caucuses to allow a means by which voters could cast absentee ballots or otherwise participate remotely. With relatively little attention, this reform seems to have immediately produced a notable effect on the 2020 nomination process.
The case against caucuses contains several distinct arguments. Critics are fond of pointing out that the participation level in caucuses is much lower than that of primaries. Even the well-publicized Iowa caucus produced a turnout rate of just 16 percent in 2016, compared to a 52 percent rate in the New Hampshire primary the following week. In other, less-hyped states, the caucus turnout rate fell into single digits—8.1 percent in Minnesota, 5.5 percent in Kansas, 4.6 percent in Hawaii. Caucuses are also especially difficult for specific subpopulations to attend: service-industry workers; parents of young children; people with disabilities or limited transportation options. (Concerns about such inherent biases in the caucus system is what ostensibly motivated the DNC to mandate the availability of absentee ballots in future state caucuses.)
Notwithstanding the comparatively depressed participation rates, unexpected surges in turnout have sometimes strained the organizational capacity of the state parties that manage the caucuses, producing full parking lots, long lines, and procedural confusion once inside. Some Mainers waited for over four hours to participate in their state's 2016 caucus, while some Minnesotans had to vote using Post-It notes in 2008 because their caucus sites ran out of ballots.
A final strike against caucuses, at least from the perspective of traditional party leaders, is their tendency to benefit insurgent candidacies with high supporter enthusiasm over the party regulars favored by more casual primary voters. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the first two caucuses of the year by narrow margins (0.2 percent in Iowa and 5.3 percent in Nevada), but Sanders proceeded to sweep the remaining 12 state caucuses on the calendar, losing only the 4 caucuses held in U.S. territories that lack representation in the electoral college.
Presidential primaries are already the norm in the most populated parts of the country. In 2016, Democrats employed caucuses in 3 mid-size states (Colorado, Minnesota, and Washington); 11 small states (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming); and 4 territories (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, and the Virgin Islands). A total of 561 delegates were selected in caucuses, representing 14 percent of all Democratic pledged delegates.
But as the 2020 nomination process comes into focus, it's clear that there will be notable movement away from the use of caucuses. According to political scientist Josh Putnam's invaluable FHQ website, which closely tracks such changes, all three of the most populous states that held caucuses in 2016 plus three more small states (Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah) have opted for government-run primary elections in 2020, with a seventh state (Maine) still considering whether to join them. The number of Democratic pledged delegates selected outside of state-operated primaries seems certain to decrease to less than half of its 2016 level, perhaps dropping to just 5 or 6 percent of all pledged delegates nationwide.
On top of that, a few of the remaining states that are not shifting to standard primary elections are still abandoning traditional caucuses in favor of a "firehouse" primary administered by the state party. According to Putnam, the state parties in Kansas, North Dakota, Alaska, and Hawaii are all planning such a change. These elections may wind up behaving like a cross between a primary and a caucus, with fewer balloting sites and shorter voting hours than a regular primary would have. But there seems to be a clear response at the state level to the DNC's post-2016 policy shift, with the pure caucus model of delegate selection suddenly falling out of favor in multiple places at once.
Does this mean that state caucuses are poised to be virtually irrelevant to future presidential nominations? From a purely mathematical perspective, it certainly becomes even less likely that the shrinking share of delegates chosen in caucuses turns out to represent the margin between national victory and defeat for a prospective nominee. On balance, that's mildly good news for "establishment"-style candidates (like, say, Joe Biden) and mildly bad news for "outsider" types (like, say, Bernie Sanders).
But the first and third states on the nomination calendar will persist in selecting delegates via traditional caucuses, and these states' temporal primacy gives them substantial influence over the outcome that is far out of proportion to the modest size of their convention delegations. As Putnam notes, both Iowa and Nevada have good reason not to abandon their caucuses for primaries, or even to lean too far in the direction of a caucus-primary hybrid: if they do, their jealous sibling New Hampshire would undoubtedly respond by claiming the right to push even further to the front of the line in order to defend its self-proclaimed perpetual right to hold the first primary in the nation. Unless the national parties act to disallow caucuses altogether, then, the distinctive demands that they place on candidates and voters will remain a key component of the highly complex and thoroughly unique manner in which American presidential nominees are chosen.
Thursday, March 07, 2019
In Fox Debate Flap, the Press Defends Its Power to Pick Presidents
It is widely accepted in most democracies that party leaders have a right to control the process of nominating candidates for elective office. Here in the United States, however, this proposition is not merely controversial but downright unpopular.
Even the hint that superdelegates might exercise their voting rights under party rules to support a candidate other than the narrow leader in the pledged delegate count provoked accusations in both the 2008 and 2016 Democratic presidential nomination contests that insiders had "rigged" the system in order to silence the voice of the people. These complaints forced a chastened Democratic National Committee to enact limits to superdelegate power in order to protect its popular legitimacy. Republican politicians in 2016 similarly looked on helplessly as voters delivered the nomination to a candidate whom many believed at the time to be a generationally disastrous standard-bearer for their party. Despite this broadly-shared judgment, attempts to force an alternative outcome at the national convention had little energy and soon fizzled out entirely.
But it's too simplistic to view struggles over control of nominations as only pitting party bosses against regular citizens. As critics like Nelson W. Polsby observed decades ago, the post-1968 reforms that created the modern presidential nominating process actually transferred crucial influence from one set of elites—state party organizations—to another set—the news media. Because voters in party primaries habitually act with limited information and weak preferences, especially when the field expands to three or more contenders, they can be decisively swayed by the volume and tone of press attention devoted to each candidate.
The post-reform era is littered with presidential candidacies made and unmade by media coverage. Ed Muskie outpolled George McGovern in both Iowa and New Hampshire in 1972, yet the press treated McGovern like the winner in both cases, setting him on a path to the Democratic nomination. Jimmy Carter received a similar publicity boost after finishing behind an uncommitted slate of Iowa delegates in 1976. Reporters and commentators accepted Bill Clinton's self-proclaimed persona as the "comeback kid" at the expense of Paul Tsongas, the actual winner of the 1992 New Hampshire primary. In the 2000s, media favorites John McCain and Barack Obama benefited from sympathetic coverage while the unlucky Howard Dean became a media dartboard for the sin of screaming too loudly in a concession speech. Donald Trump attracted far more press attention than any other candidate in 2016, to the frustration of rivals who found it much harder to get their messages out to the public.
Journalists sometimes resist acknowledging their sizable influence over nominations, and may not always be fully conscious of the central role they can play in determining the outcome. But when party leaders attempt to assert power at the potential expense of the media, members of the press quickly rise to defend the prerogatives of themselves and their peers.
The Democratic National Committee announced this week that Fox News Channel would not be authorized to hold a debate among the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, in the wake of reports confirming the de facto alliance between Fox News and the Trump White House. Rather than respect political leaders' judgment about how their own party's nomination process should operate, prominent journalists immediately blasted the DNC, vouching for their Fox News colleagues in the face of a perceived affront to their professional rectitude. Some even accepted the DNC's premise that Fox would treat Democratic candidates with more hostility than the other news outlets hosting debates in 2020, suggesting that the gauntlet of a Fox-organized debate was not a trap to be avoided but rather a test of character that the party was failing.
"If you can't answer questions—especially if they're not the questions you want asked—maybe you don't have good answers," snorted Jonathan Allen of NBC. "And if you aren't prepared for tough questions/subjects in a primary debate, how will you handle the general?" chided Zeke Miller of the Associated Press. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times preferred the ha-ha-you-suckered-yourself style of riposte: "it sends a message of being afraid of something. Which is what Trump feeds off in opponents."
Beneath this outburst of (self-)righteous indignation is a set of powerful assumptions: that the press—not voters or party leaders—properly holds the job of asking "tough questions" (and judging the worthiness of the answers) during the nomination process, and that televised debates are the most important venue for performing this critical task. Parties "expect the forums to produce infomercials that glorify their candidates, not journalistic grillings," taunted Jack Shafer of Politico, who went on to argue that any candidate who didn't want to participate in a debate sponsored by a disfavored cable network should "be disqualified from running" for the presidency—in case any doubt remained about where Shafer thinks the power to choose the nation's political leadership should rightfully reside.
One quirky attribute of American media culture is the consensus veneration of debates as a uniquely sacred exercise in civic enlightenment. The origin of this precept is somewhat mysterious; perhaps it's a romanticized legacy of Messrs. Lincoln and Douglas, or maybe it just reflects a collective belief that campaign events organized by the media are definitionally superior to those produced by the candidates and parties. In any case, a frank and unsentimental re-evaluation of its experiential soundness is decades overdue. It's not hard to recall important debates, or moments in debates, in both primaries and general elections. But nearly all of them involve candidate mannerisms, zingers, or gaffes (gaffe after gaffe after gaffe), not important substantive discussions or revelations. Is this really the best way to choose a president?
The Republican National Committee recently pondered this question as well. Republican leaders concluded that there were too many debates during the 2012 nomination season, which (in their view) gave an undeserved platform to secondary candidates while pushing their eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, into taking positions that were ultimately damaging to the party's general election chances (Romney's endorsement of "self-deportation" as an immigration policy, blamed in retrospect for costing him Latino support, was made during a Republican primary debate). In response, the RNC, like the DNC, acted after 2012 to limit the number of debates and take greater control of the sponsors and moderators.
The parties naturally perceive a strategic advantage in a nomination procedure that bolsters the chances of producing a nominee who can unify the party, be a formidable general election candidate, and possess the skills to govern successfully. But surely the American public would also be well-served by a choice of presidential candidates who possess such qualities. And it's not clear that the incentives governing the media's coverage of elections necessarily favor an equally desirable set of characteristics, despite the self-important proclamations of some self-appointed gatekeepers.
With the mixed track record of the media-dominated nomination process over half a century of history, perhaps both national committees deserve some deference to tinker strategically with aspects of the current system without facing attacks from journalists acting as if their personal honor has been outrageously besmirched by rank partisan interlopers. For some, it may not be easy to conceive of a situation where the interest of the public is not aligned by definition with that of the press, or is instead more closely matched with that of the perennially-maligned party organizations. But as Nina Simone used to sing, "it be's that way sometime."
Even the hint that superdelegates might exercise their voting rights under party rules to support a candidate other than the narrow leader in the pledged delegate count provoked accusations in both the 2008 and 2016 Democratic presidential nomination contests that insiders had "rigged" the system in order to silence the voice of the people. These complaints forced a chastened Democratic National Committee to enact limits to superdelegate power in order to protect its popular legitimacy. Republican politicians in 2016 similarly looked on helplessly as voters delivered the nomination to a candidate whom many believed at the time to be a generationally disastrous standard-bearer for their party. Despite this broadly-shared judgment, attempts to force an alternative outcome at the national convention had little energy and soon fizzled out entirely.
But it's too simplistic to view struggles over control of nominations as only pitting party bosses against regular citizens. As critics like Nelson W. Polsby observed decades ago, the post-1968 reforms that created the modern presidential nominating process actually transferred crucial influence from one set of elites—state party organizations—to another set—the news media. Because voters in party primaries habitually act with limited information and weak preferences, especially when the field expands to three or more contenders, they can be decisively swayed by the volume and tone of press attention devoted to each candidate.
The post-reform era is littered with presidential candidacies made and unmade by media coverage. Ed Muskie outpolled George McGovern in both Iowa and New Hampshire in 1972, yet the press treated McGovern like the winner in both cases, setting him on a path to the Democratic nomination. Jimmy Carter received a similar publicity boost after finishing behind an uncommitted slate of Iowa delegates in 1976. Reporters and commentators accepted Bill Clinton's self-proclaimed persona as the "comeback kid" at the expense of Paul Tsongas, the actual winner of the 1992 New Hampshire primary. In the 2000s, media favorites John McCain and Barack Obama benefited from sympathetic coverage while the unlucky Howard Dean became a media dartboard for the sin of screaming too loudly in a concession speech. Donald Trump attracted far more press attention than any other candidate in 2016, to the frustration of rivals who found it much harder to get their messages out to the public.
Journalists sometimes resist acknowledging their sizable influence over nominations, and may not always be fully conscious of the central role they can play in determining the outcome. But when party leaders attempt to assert power at the potential expense of the media, members of the press quickly rise to defend the prerogatives of themselves and their peers.
The Democratic National Committee announced this week that Fox News Channel would not be authorized to hold a debate among the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, in the wake of reports confirming the de facto alliance between Fox News and the Trump White House. Rather than respect political leaders' judgment about how their own party's nomination process should operate, prominent journalists immediately blasted the DNC, vouching for their Fox News colleagues in the face of a perceived affront to their professional rectitude. Some even accepted the DNC's premise that Fox would treat Democratic candidates with more hostility than the other news outlets hosting debates in 2020, suggesting that the gauntlet of a Fox-organized debate was not a trap to be avoided but rather a test of character that the party was failing.
"If you can't answer questions—especially if they're not the questions you want asked—maybe you don't have good answers," snorted Jonathan Allen of NBC. "And if you aren't prepared for tough questions/subjects in a primary debate, how will you handle the general?" chided Zeke Miller of the Associated Press. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times preferred the ha-ha-you-suckered-yourself style of riposte: "it sends a message of being afraid of something. Which is what Trump feeds off in opponents."
Beneath this outburst of (self-)righteous indignation is a set of powerful assumptions: that the press—not voters or party leaders—properly holds the job of asking "tough questions" (and judging the worthiness of the answers) during the nomination process, and that televised debates are the most important venue for performing this critical task. Parties "expect the forums to produce infomercials that glorify their candidates, not journalistic grillings," taunted Jack Shafer of Politico, who went on to argue that any candidate who didn't want to participate in a debate sponsored by a disfavored cable network should "be disqualified from running" for the presidency—in case any doubt remained about where Shafer thinks the power to choose the nation's political leadership should rightfully reside.
One quirky attribute of American media culture is the consensus veneration of debates as a uniquely sacred exercise in civic enlightenment. The origin of this precept is somewhat mysterious; perhaps it's a romanticized legacy of Messrs. Lincoln and Douglas, or maybe it just reflects a collective belief that campaign events organized by the media are definitionally superior to those produced by the candidates and parties. In any case, a frank and unsentimental re-evaluation of its experiential soundness is decades overdue. It's not hard to recall important debates, or moments in debates, in both primaries and general elections. But nearly all of them involve candidate mannerisms, zingers, or gaffes (gaffe after gaffe after gaffe), not important substantive discussions or revelations. Is this really the best way to choose a president?
The Republican National Committee recently pondered this question as well. Republican leaders concluded that there were too many debates during the 2012 nomination season, which (in their view) gave an undeserved platform to secondary candidates while pushing their eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, into taking positions that were ultimately damaging to the party's general election chances (Romney's endorsement of "self-deportation" as an immigration policy, blamed in retrospect for costing him Latino support, was made during a Republican primary debate). In response, the RNC, like the DNC, acted after 2012 to limit the number of debates and take greater control of the sponsors and moderators.
The parties naturally perceive a strategic advantage in a nomination procedure that bolsters the chances of producing a nominee who can unify the party, be a formidable general election candidate, and possess the skills to govern successfully. But surely the American public would also be well-served by a choice of presidential candidates who possess such qualities. And it's not clear that the incentives governing the media's coverage of elections necessarily favor an equally desirable set of characteristics, despite the self-important proclamations of some self-appointed gatekeepers.
With the mixed track record of the media-dominated nomination process over half a century of history, perhaps both national committees deserve some deference to tinker strategically with aspects of the current system without facing attacks from journalists acting as if their personal honor has been outrageously besmirched by rank partisan interlopers. For some, it may not be easy to conceive of a situation where the interest of the public is not aligned by definition with that of the press, or is instead more closely matched with that of the perennially-maligned party organizations. But as Nina Simone used to sing, "it be's that way sometime."
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
The Democratic Endgame Begins (Or, How Trump Undercuts Sanders's Leverage)
Tuesday night's Democratic primary in the District of Columbia brought the 2016 presidential delegate selection season to an official end, four and a half months after it began with the Iowa caucuses. While Hillary Clinton has accumulated enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination, her opponent Bernie Sanders remains—for now—an active presidential candidate. At some date in the near future, Sanders will no longer be a candidate and will instead be a supporter of the Clinton campaign. The precise sequence by which Sanders moves from A to B is presumably the main topic of discussion at a private meeting between Clinton and Sanders that occurred in Washington Tuesday evening.
It is clear that Sanders intends to use his current status as an active rival candidate to extract concessions from Clinton and, by extension, the Democratic National Committee. Clinton supporters frustrated at Sanders's behavior might object that their own candidate, in a similar position eight years ago, dropped out of the race at the end of the primaries and immediately endorsed the victorious Barack Obama without apparent conditions. Yet Clinton did receive something quite valuable in exchange for her unequivocal support of Obama in June 2008: credentials as a loyal Democrat and team player that not only gave her the opportunity to hold a high-level position in the Obama administration, but also allowed her to position herself as Obama's (tacitly-sanctioned) successor in the presidential office once he reached the constitutionally-prescribed two-term limit.
Sanders has a different set of interests. His age prevents him from being a realistic candidate in 2024 or even 2020, and his independence makes him a poor fit for a position in somebody else's presidential administration. Instead, he has three other objectives in mind: (1) winning demonstrable influence over the Democratic platform in order to be able to boast to his supporters that they succeeded in pulling the party to the ideological left; (2) forcing reforms to the presidential nomination process, both as another achievement to claim for his campaign and as a procedural benefit to future insurgent candidacies; and (3) visiting revenge upon DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whom Sanders blames for exhibiting a perceived favoritism toward the Clinton campaign during the nomination process.
This is an ambitious wish list for a losing presidential candidate to expect from the winner, and it seems unlikely that Sanders will be in a position to insist upon all of his demands. Indeed, his leverage over Clinton is quickly beginning to weaken—in part because of the identity of the presumptive Republican nominee.
The looming nomination of Donald Trump undercuts Sanders's bargaining position in three ways. First, Trump's routine dominance of the daily political news directs attention away from the Democratic race, making it more difficult for Sanders to win the publicity he needs to press his case. Second, Trump is something of a custom-built Democrat repellant, which will encourage even Clinton-wary Democratic voters to rally quickly around her as the only person standing between their archnemesis and the White House even if Sanders himself remains a holdout. Third, Clinton and her advisors likely view Trump as eminently beatable whether or not they receive Sanders's blessing, which makes them more likely to call Sanders's bluff than if they were facing a race against Marco Rubio or John Kasich.
Given Sanders's rapidly eroding strategic position, here's my best guess for how the Clinton-Sanders contest gets resolved:
(1) Sanders will soon suspend his campaign and make a public gesture of support for Clinton—though he might save a wholehearted endorsement until the convention itself.
(2) With Clinton's support, Sanders will win approval of platform language echoing his anti-Wall Street campaign message.
(3) The Democratic convention will approve a resolution calling for an internal party commission to study potential "democratizing" reforms to the presidential nomination process prior to the 2020 elections. It is less likely that the resolution will commit to specific reform provisions sought by Sanders such as requiring open primaries or abolishing superdelegates.
(4) Wasserman Schultz will stay at the DNC through November.
It is clear that Sanders intends to use his current status as an active rival candidate to extract concessions from Clinton and, by extension, the Democratic National Committee. Clinton supporters frustrated at Sanders's behavior might object that their own candidate, in a similar position eight years ago, dropped out of the race at the end of the primaries and immediately endorsed the victorious Barack Obama without apparent conditions. Yet Clinton did receive something quite valuable in exchange for her unequivocal support of Obama in June 2008: credentials as a loyal Democrat and team player that not only gave her the opportunity to hold a high-level position in the Obama administration, but also allowed her to position herself as Obama's (tacitly-sanctioned) successor in the presidential office once he reached the constitutionally-prescribed two-term limit.
Sanders has a different set of interests. His age prevents him from being a realistic candidate in 2024 or even 2020, and his independence makes him a poor fit for a position in somebody else's presidential administration. Instead, he has three other objectives in mind: (1) winning demonstrable influence over the Democratic platform in order to be able to boast to his supporters that they succeeded in pulling the party to the ideological left; (2) forcing reforms to the presidential nomination process, both as another achievement to claim for his campaign and as a procedural benefit to future insurgent candidacies; and (3) visiting revenge upon DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whom Sanders blames for exhibiting a perceived favoritism toward the Clinton campaign during the nomination process.
This is an ambitious wish list for a losing presidential candidate to expect from the winner, and it seems unlikely that Sanders will be in a position to insist upon all of his demands. Indeed, his leverage over Clinton is quickly beginning to weaken—in part because of the identity of the presumptive Republican nominee.
The looming nomination of Donald Trump undercuts Sanders's bargaining position in three ways. First, Trump's routine dominance of the daily political news directs attention away from the Democratic race, making it more difficult for Sanders to win the publicity he needs to press his case. Second, Trump is something of a custom-built Democrat repellant, which will encourage even Clinton-wary Democratic voters to rally quickly around her as the only person standing between their archnemesis and the White House even if Sanders himself remains a holdout. Third, Clinton and her advisors likely view Trump as eminently beatable whether or not they receive Sanders's blessing, which makes them more likely to call Sanders's bluff than if they were facing a race against Marco Rubio or John Kasich.
Given Sanders's rapidly eroding strategic position, here's my best guess for how the Clinton-Sanders contest gets resolved:
(1) Sanders will soon suspend his campaign and make a public gesture of support for Clinton—though he might save a wholehearted endorsement until the convention itself.
(2) With Clinton's support, Sanders will win approval of platform language echoing his anti-Wall Street campaign message.
(3) The Democratic convention will approve a resolution calling for an internal party commission to study potential "democratizing" reforms to the presidential nomination process prior to the 2020 elections. It is less likely that the resolution will commit to specific reform provisions sought by Sanders such as requiring open primaries or abolishing superdelegates.
(4) Wasserman Schultz will stay at the DNC through November.
Friday, April 22, 2016
Don't Like the Presidential Nomination Process? Save Some Blame For the States!
When presidential nomination contests are not wrapped up quickly in the first few weeks of voting, the slower pace of the primary calendar thereafter produces fertile ground for widespread gripes about the nomination process itself. The daily thrills and plot twists of February and March give way to the more tedious week-to-week slog of April and May, leaving more time and energy for broader evaluations of the nomination system. Supporters of candidates who are still actively campaigning but face diminishing odds of success can easily direct their frustration toward the rules and norms that seem to be responsible for preventing their desired outcome, even as backers of the front-runner express annoyance that their own favorite is still forced to withstand fire from also-rans within the party.
This year, the various procedural quirks of the process have received more than the usual amount of scrutiny—perhaps because both parties' races are still nominally unresolved as of late April (for the first time since 1980), because the insurgent Trump and Sanders candidacies are particularly sensitive to any apparent evidence that the deck has been stacked against them by the dreaded party "establishment," and/or because the internet has a way of amplifying dissatisfaction of every sort.
Everyone, it seems, has a list of grievances. The Trump campaign is suspicious that delegates are being unjustly denied them by state party conventions in Colorado and elsewhere. Anti-Trump Republicans lament delegate allocation rules that have disproportionately favored Trump and prevented non-Trump sentiment from coalescing behind a single rival candidate. Bernie Sanders supporters decry the existence of closed primary rules in some states; Hillary Clinton supporters decry the existence of caucuses in others. Behind many of these complaints is the assumption that one or both national parties wish things to be as they now are, presumably for some nefarious reason or reasons, and not only allow but encourage various infringements on democratic principles in order to serve other, less high-minded purposes.
Other political scientists have defended the parties and their role in structuring the nomination process. I wish to make a slightly different point, which is that the national party committees, though nominally in control of presidential nominations, face significant practical constraints in imposing their will upon the state parties and state governments that actually operate elections. Many of the specific aspects of the process that provoke popular disdain—the disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire, the inconsistency in delegate allocation formulas and voter eligibility requirements from state to state, the inept organization of many state caucuses—are, in truth, merely tolerated by the national parties. It is the states that insist upon them, and the states that therefore bear most of the responsibility for these departures from "pure" democratic equality.
Of course, the national parties could in theory attempt to impose stringent requirements on the states to smooth out these various inconsistencies, but practical complications are likely to ensue. If a national party were to mandate that all delegates be selected via primary elections, for example, but some states refused to authorize the public funds to hold them, what then? Would those states go wholly unrepresented at the national conventions—and, if so, would this be a more "democratic" outcome than the current system, which allows voters to attend party caucuses instead? Could the national parties insist on closed primaries nationwide, even though about half of American states do not have official party registration? Could they likewise require open primaries, even though some presidential primaries are held concurrently with primaries for down-ballot offices that might be influenced by the participation of voters from outside the party?
The imposition of strict national rules on the states and state parties is further impeded by the fact that the national parties, like the national government, are federal systems. National committees are comprised of representatives from the state parties, who select the national party chair and vote on internal party rules. A promise to crack down on the freedom of the states to run their primaries and caucuses as they prefer is unlikely to be a popular sentiment within any internal party committee or a winning platform for any candidate for national party chair. If anything, the state parties would prefer even more autonomy. Howard Dean ran successfully for chairman of the Democratic National Committee after the 2004 election by promising to direct more party money and resources to the state Democratic organizations, which turned out to be a very popular position among the ranks of the state party chairs who held seats on the national committee.
It is easy to look at the current complex and disjointed nomination system and call for large-scale reforms. Indeed, some reforms would be undoubtedly well-advised. But let's remember that others have come before us, with similar plans for changes to the process in the name of equality and fairness—and that their ambitions were foiled by the enduring ability of the states to defend their own turf against the attempted interference of the national parties. If you're looking to cast blame for what you don't like about the current nomination system, don't forget that the states deserve their fair share.
This year, the various procedural quirks of the process have received more than the usual amount of scrutiny—perhaps because both parties' races are still nominally unresolved as of late April (for the first time since 1980), because the insurgent Trump and Sanders candidacies are particularly sensitive to any apparent evidence that the deck has been stacked against them by the dreaded party "establishment," and/or because the internet has a way of amplifying dissatisfaction of every sort.
Everyone, it seems, has a list of grievances. The Trump campaign is suspicious that delegates are being unjustly denied them by state party conventions in Colorado and elsewhere. Anti-Trump Republicans lament delegate allocation rules that have disproportionately favored Trump and prevented non-Trump sentiment from coalescing behind a single rival candidate. Bernie Sanders supporters decry the existence of closed primary rules in some states; Hillary Clinton supporters decry the existence of caucuses in others. Behind many of these complaints is the assumption that one or both national parties wish things to be as they now are, presumably for some nefarious reason or reasons, and not only allow but encourage various infringements on democratic principles in order to serve other, less high-minded purposes.
Other political scientists have defended the parties and their role in structuring the nomination process. I wish to make a slightly different point, which is that the national party committees, though nominally in control of presidential nominations, face significant practical constraints in imposing their will upon the state parties and state governments that actually operate elections. Many of the specific aspects of the process that provoke popular disdain—the disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire, the inconsistency in delegate allocation formulas and voter eligibility requirements from state to state, the inept organization of many state caucuses—are, in truth, merely tolerated by the national parties. It is the states that insist upon them, and the states that therefore bear most of the responsibility for these departures from "pure" democratic equality.
Of course, the national parties could in theory attempt to impose stringent requirements on the states to smooth out these various inconsistencies, but practical complications are likely to ensue. If a national party were to mandate that all delegates be selected via primary elections, for example, but some states refused to authorize the public funds to hold them, what then? Would those states go wholly unrepresented at the national conventions—and, if so, would this be a more "democratic" outcome than the current system, which allows voters to attend party caucuses instead? Could the national parties insist on closed primaries nationwide, even though about half of American states do not have official party registration? Could they likewise require open primaries, even though some presidential primaries are held concurrently with primaries for down-ballot offices that might be influenced by the participation of voters from outside the party?
The imposition of strict national rules on the states and state parties is further impeded by the fact that the national parties, like the national government, are federal systems. National committees are comprised of representatives from the state parties, who select the national party chair and vote on internal party rules. A promise to crack down on the freedom of the states to run their primaries and caucuses as they prefer is unlikely to be a popular sentiment within any internal party committee or a winning platform for any candidate for national party chair. If anything, the state parties would prefer even more autonomy. Howard Dean ran successfully for chairman of the Democratic National Committee after the 2004 election by promising to direct more party money and resources to the state Democratic organizations, which turned out to be a very popular position among the ranks of the state party chairs who held seats on the national committee.
It is easy to look at the current complex and disjointed nomination system and call for large-scale reforms. Indeed, some reforms would be undoubtedly well-advised. But let's remember that others have come before us, with similar plans for changes to the process in the name of equality and fairness—and that their ambitions were foiled by the enduring ability of the states to defend their own turf against the attempted interference of the national parties. If you're looking to cast blame for what you don't like about the current nomination system, don't forget that the states deserve their fair share.
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