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Plurality Winners Have No Automatic Claim to the Nomination
Discussion
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I disagree, Martin. If one candidate is just slightly in front, I might agree. But if someone (let’s say Sanders) is way out front, the party is gonna be a fucking mess if it prevents him from securing the nomination. I say this as one who shares your concerns about Bernie. I’m not quite as fearful because I have zero confidence I can pick the best road forward. It’s possible he’s the transformational candidate who ushers in a new coalition. It’s possible he’s McGovern 2.0 which results in the weakest incumbent president in modern history getting a second term, with… Read more »
Be careful to detail where you actually disagree with me and where you don’t. I acknowledged there would be cost to denying a plurality winner the nomination. And I only said it would be advisable to do so if that candidate was actually opposed by the majority of the delegates (who are our best proxy for the voters who elected them).
The problem with that argument is that, as proxies go, the delegates are only as good as their credibility and their credibility is not that high among the general population. So you get articles like Bloomberg Quietly Plotting Brokered Convention Strategy. Try this and see how it works out for you.
Bloomberg can try whatever he wants. If Bernie comes into the convention with 40-45% of the vote and about that much in delegates, he will be the nominee. Period.
But if it’s actually splintered, he might still be the nominee, but there will be prices to be paid for it. But he might not. I don’t think this will happen because I don’t see the splits occurring like that. The field is going to winnow and he’s one of the few who is viable everywhere.
A lot of the delegates will be people who will themselves be facing the voters. So who has the best coattails will be a major consideration to many, to the extent that can be judged.
Thanks for your comment, but I’m not sure you disagree completely with Martin’s post. As a practical matter, if Sanders comes into the convention “way out in front” (with, let’s say, 45% of the delegates on the first ballot), he’ll almost certainly be nominated by acclamation on or immediately after the 2nd round of voting. The specific scenario Martin put forward was if Sanders comes into the convention narrowly “out in front” with 30% of the delegates and most of the remaining delegates split fairly evenly among 3 other contenders (for the sake of argument let’s say Buttigieg, Warren, &… Read more »
yes, that’s the rule. and I’m ok with the candidates not making any kind of pledges about what they’d do.
but if Sanders goes in with a 10 point lead and the convention turns into the anybody-but-Bernie show… that would be doubleplusungood.
Well, I’m not particularly a fan of Bernie’s, and if a contested convention ended up with someone else, I would probably be personally pleased. But…I think your attempt to logically justify such a move is…shall we say…strained. There are two problems that I sew with your argument. The first is that we really don’t know what people’s ranked choice would be. If the candidates clearly fell into groups (progressive, moderate) then maybe you could make the argument that all delegates for the same group are interchangeable, and that the largest group should win. This would be akin to, in your… Read more »
Thanks for your comment, and for your detailed explanation. The last major party convention to go past a first ballot was (I think) in 1952, so very few living Americans have any memory of it…let alone of a truly open and brokered convention like the 1924 Democratic convention which lasted 2 weeks and required 103 ballots to elect a nominee. That said, ranked choice voting (or a run-off election) is the closest analogue to an open convention that most Americans have. There’s no winner until someone gets a majority; and the leader after the first round of voting doesn’t necessarily… Read more »
A Democrat who isn’t even supported by a majority of their own party is not necessarily going to be a better position than other candidates
How about a non-Democrat who can’t get a majority of voters of the party that he’s too good to belong to?