Before Kamala Harris' coronation is complete, I want to ask a question: What is wrong with the Democratic Party choosing a candidate without consulting the voters?
Most defenses of the primary election process fall into three broad categories: the lazy, the idealistic, and the practical.
The lazy responses boil down to the idea that primaries are the way we’ve always chosen party nominees. I’ve been surprised by how many people responded to the idea of the Democratic convention choosing Biden’s replacement by saying “We’ve never done this before.” The truth is that brokered conventions were the way we always did it until 1972, when the Democratic Party chose Biden as its nominee. primary system Until then, political scientists considered democracy to be something that happens. between political parties, not within them.
The idealistic defence of primaries is basically that we are a democracy and therefore the parties must be democratic. If taken seriously, that would mean that we are not a democracy. until the 1970sIt would also mean that almost all the countries we call democracies are not, because the vast majority do not resort to primaries as we do to select party candidates.
When I argue that parties should be less democratic, people often look at me as if I had hooves. “You don’t like democracy?” they ask me. “Isn’t democracy good?” My answer to these questions is an emphatic “Yes, but.”
For starters, many institutions that are essential to democracy are not internally democratic. A free press is indispensable to democracy, but no newspaper, network or magazine subjects editorial decisions to a vote of the entire staff. The point of having editors is to impose sound judgment on an often chaotic process.
If you think about it, no major American institution other than legislatures is as internally democratic as our major parties are now, and even Congress has checks on its internal democracy. No one thinks hospitals, the Catholic Church, or the Marine Corps should have their leaders or important decisions voted on. “Colonel, we asked for a show of hands, and we have decided not to occupy that hill.”
One of the main drivers of current political polarization is that parties have been caught by the most extreme and intransigent voters, and responsible leaders have very few mechanisms to contain them. The result is that primaries produce candidates for the general election who are less representative and more indebted to extremists.
The third practical defense of primaries is rooted in their history as a uniquely American invention. Primaries were first implemented in the Progressive Era as a way to counter the corrupt dysfunction of party machines, but they were conceived as one tool among many. Until 1972, the year Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate, no one thought that primaries should be the only means of choosing candidates.
Primaries have their advantages. They can help test general election candidates by giving the media and political rivals a chance to expose their weaknesses before it’s too late. One reason many in the Democratic Party are concerned about Harris being nominated is that she hasn’t won a truly competitive election in recent years. Others say she’s the best choice in part because she was tested (with mixed results) in the 2020 Democratic primary campaign.
But I have yet to meet any informed Democratic insider who thinks Harris is the best candidate to run against Donald Trump. She may be the best possible candidate given the schedule, campaign finance rules and political considerations, but that's a different argument. Since Biden and Harris are the most unpopular president and vice president In the history of modern polling, party leaders might have chosen to deny both of them the nominations if they could have.
Indeed, for all the claims that Biden’s political defenestration was the work of party elites ignoring voters, the truth is that voters had been telling pollsters for years that they didn’t think Biden should run again. In some sense, the party will better respond to the will of voters by ignoring Biden’s primary victories.
Beyond the minimum legal, constitutional, patriotic and moral limitations that all parties are supposed to respect, they actually have only one job: to win general elections.
Since Democrats rightly believe that the Republican candidate does not care about such restrictions, their only concern should be defeating him. If democracy for the entire country is at stake, nominating a winning candidate should be the party's primary goal.
