At some point in the not-too-distant future, I may write a piece about the nominating process, including my thoughts on things like caucuses and superdelegates. I just want to make a kind of general point right now, however.
There’s nothing remotely democratic about how the two parties pick their nominees, and it’s basically a complete misconception to think that these processes are even close enough to democratic to be violating the spirit of democratic elections.
To give one obvious example from the Republican side, states that hold their contests prior to March 15th must award their delegates proportionately to candidates that meet a non-uniform minimum threshold. So, in one state a candidate may need 15% to get a single delegate and in another state they may need twenty percent. Then, on March 15th and thereafter, states have the option to award their delegates on a plurality-win-all basis. So, Rubio could win all of Florida’s 99 delegates by getting a single vote more than Trump, but Trump would have had to share a lot of South Carolina delegates with Rubio if Rubio had met the minimum threshold there in a proportional election.
This is just one of several examples I could provide of how the votes in one state are in no way equal to the votes in other states. Another important example that I’ll mention is how the delegates are divided up among the states. It’s not evenly, by population, as the Electoral College imperfectly attempts to do. States that voted blue last time get more delegates in the Democratic contest and states that voted red last time get more delegates in the Republican contest.
We can add in that the nomination is usually decided before most states even get a chance to vote, and certainly many of the candidates drop out quickly because they couldn’t win over voters in early unrepresentative states, which means, e.g., that Christie voters in 48 states never got a chance to cast a meaningful vote for him.
The correct way to think about these nominating processes is as a quest. The candidates embark on a long journey with arbitrary rules and random obstacles. Their only advantage is that they are given a map well ahead of time and this gives them the chance to strategize and anticipate the most obvious obstacles that they’ll find in their paths.
They can therefore come up with plans, although the very arbitrariness of the schedule and rules will disadvantage some candidates…some fatally. Rudy Giuliani can say that his plan doesn’t involve winning before Florida, but that doesn’t mean that his strategy has any hope of success. If the first primary had been held in New York, maybe Giuliani could have gotten some traction and some money to run a long campaign. Whatever his personal flaws and weaknesses, with the way the game was played, Rudy never had a fair shot.
So, it’s basically an odyssey where some heroes have an easy path and others must slay one dragon after another. Superdelegates are one dragon. Caucuses are another dragon. For candidates whose base of support is in the North, the SEC Super Tuesday primaries are even another dragon.
The reason the process works at all is because it’s a rigorous test. If you can run the obstacle course and reach the end first, you’ve shown skills in organizing, staffing, fundraising, debating, schmoozing party big-wigs, retail politicking, speechmaking, and working with media. You’ve demonstrated superhuman personal stamina. You’ve taken multiple punches and either shown an iron chin or gotten up off the mat.
It’s not a democratic process and it isn’t supposed to be. It’s a trial by fire that hopefully prepares you to hold the most powerful office in the world and also demonstrates to voters that you’ve got what it takes.
We could scrap this whole system root and branch and just have one national primary day when the whole country votes. That would tell us who had the most support on that one day, but it wouldn’t tell us who is tough enough to stand in the Oval Office.
Our system has all kinds of flaws and it can certainly be improved. But it also has merits.
You won’t understand the flaws or appreciate the merits if you think the process is supposed to be democratic in the same way as our general elections are, however.
