- Isn't the system we use
to nominate Presidential candidates broken?
It's safe to say that the 2020 Iowa Caucus
was the very definition of a hot mess.
It was certainly the most contentious Iowa Caucus
since the 2016 Iowa Caucus.
Every Primary Election cycle,
we revisit the same conversations about reform.
Should Caucuses be scrapped?
Should Primaries be reordered?
Should Primaries even exist?
(bright music)
What's so special about Iowa and New Hampshire,
that they always get to go first?
Bare in mind, these largely white, rural states
are simply not representative
of the Democratic party or of America.
So what?
Well, these voters have outsized power in the process.
They determine which candidates deserve a closer look.
They say sayonara to losers and they narrow the field.
Votes casted by Iowans and New Hampshirites
may have five times more impact than all others.
Why is this bizarre system in place?
Well, it wasn't always.
At the turn of the 20th Century,
states started implementing State Primaries
to gage the opinions of voters,
but they were largely symbolic
because party leaders still have the final say.
Then came chaos at the 1968 Democratic convention
when Hubert Humphrey secured the nomination
without a single Primary vote.
After he lost to Nixon, Democratic voters were indignant,
and so the party reluctantly yielded
some elective power to the people.
They instated binding Primaries and Caucuses nationwide,
and the Republicans soon followed suit.
Iowa's Caucus process was so much more complex than others
that they'd need more time to process the vote,
so they moved it to January.
Ever since, Iowa has had first in the nation privilege.
It's written in their state laws
that Iowa and New Hampshire must come first.
The DNC protects their positions.
If the DNC can do that,
surely it can command more significant changes?
Illinois is often touted as an ideal starter
with it's diversity and urban rural divide,
but it's a big state,
and that means it's harder for campaigns
to reach voters organically.
That's pretty much the same argument
against a National Primary.
It's virtually impossible to make Grassroots inroads
across 50 states.
It's difficult enough campaigning for Super Tuesday,
the closest thing we have to National Primary.
It would likely favor big personalities
and rich candidates with budgets for ads
and stadium-sized rallies.
Other plans include rotating the small states
and letting all the small states go first,
but small states tend to be less diverse,
and so, we're back to square one.
What about increasing turnout
to get a fuller, more accurate sample
of the will of the people?
Mandatory voting is, well, mandatory
in other democracies like Australian, Belgium.
While this would increase voter turnout to the maximum,
you may have uninformed or indifferent voters participating.
A better route may be to make Election Day's holidays
to allow those who are restricted or pressured by work
to freely cast their ballots like everyone else.
What about rank choice voting?
Which would ensure winners
have the approval of the majority.
Maine will be using it for the general election,
so we know it can be done.
The main issue is that all these scenarios
would need a buy-in for lots of players,
not only the two national parties would make the rules,
but also the states, which implement the rules.
- Primaries are voted on
and funded by the state legislatures,
so in trying to shape them into some rational shape,
you have to deal with 50 state legislatures.
- That's Elaine Kamarck.
She's a member of the DNC rules committee.
She says Democratic party insiders
are not so concerned with the changes we've discussed.
They're increasingly favoring Primary reform
that's much more sweeping
and controversial
and which is slowly gaining steam inside the machine.
- Ultimately, we do want the voters to make the choice,
but we also want the input from the people
who govern with a President of the United States.
- The proposal is this.
Party leaders, governors and other stakeholders
would vet candidates before they ran
and issue them a vote of confidence or no confidence
before voters head to the Primary polls.
It would serve as a reality check
to make Primaries serious again.
- We have come in the 21st Century
into an era of celebrities getting into Primaries,
either people who are celebrities
or people who want to be celebrities.
In 2012, in the Republican side,
we saw a pizza entrepreneur.
- Running for President,
we also had a reality television star, he had a simple idea,
make Mexico pay for a wall on the southern border.
This time, we have people like Marianne Williamson,
a spiritual guru.
You have a nice young man named Andrew Yang
who puts out this idea
that he's gonna give everybody $1000 a month.
Neither of those two people
belonged on a Presidential stage.
- Don't let the Yang gang hear that.
Those candidates would probably still be able to run,
but they'd have red flags against their names
for voters to consider.
It's a kin to peer reviews in other industries.
- If you're gonna have a surgery on your brain,
you want not a neurosurgeon whose the most popular
and who says the cutest things,
you want a neurosurgeon, who other neurosurgeons have said,
oh yeah, this guy is qualified to crack your skull open.
- Even more critical,
it would gate keep against dangerous Demagogues.
In 1924, Henry Ford of Ford Motors
started campaigning for President.
He ran his mouth a lot.
He said unsavory things, many of them antisemitic,
and had links to the KKK.
He was incredibly popular with the public,
but because the Primaries
had such little binding power then,
he knew he had no path forward and bowed out.
If any of that sounds at all familiar,
scholars have compared Ford's core ideas
to making America Great Again.
Many Americans may find party intervention deeply troubling.
Would Barack Obama, a relative upstart,
have gotten the blessing of party leaders
and would he have found his footing without it?
Would party insiders have given Bernie Sanders
the stamp of approval this cycle?
Wouldn't the status quo always win out?
So, maybe it's the very essence of American Democracy
for contenders to duke it out state by state
while hoping for somewhat as to reform
at least to increase voter turnout.
Most would agree that that starts with ditching Caucuses,
and that's already underway.
With 10 Caucus states from 2016 switching
to Primaries this time around.
But, until then, maybe this uncomfortable metaphor
for the Primaries from the DNC Chair actually, kind of,
should give us some faith in the process we have.
- We've got a remarkably defense of candidates,
and I encourage you to continue to get to know them,
kick the tires, speed date,
date multiple people at the same time,
fall in love, fall in love with multiple people,
but in the end of the day, we will have one nominee.
- We'll leave you to digest that awkward image
until we see you next time.