- How does a Democrat
become a presidential nominee?
By people voting in primaries and caucuses, right?
Well, turns out it's pretty complex.
It includes party insiders,
a lot of money, the media, and regular voters.
- The presidential nominating process is complicated.
- Grueling.
- Important.
- I think it's exciting.
- We're going to walk you
through this process, which happens every four years,
and explore why some people think
the path to the White House should be different.
("Life Mechanics" by Michael Price and Anthony P. Weeden)
If you watch the news, you've probably heard of this:
- Primaries.
- We began with the New Hampshire primary.
- Primary election.
- Primary day.
- But what even is a primary?
It's a series of votes held state by state,
where people elect delegates
to represent their chosen nominee,
and these elected delegates
then go to the party's national convention,
where they vote for their candidate.
This is like the Coachella for politicos.
You know, where you get to see things like
Clint Eastwood shouting at an empty chair.
And it's there that the presidential nominee
is officially announced.
But first, (rewinding effect)
primaries.
There are closed primaries
where only registered party members can vote
in a secret ballot.
Open primaries, which have a secret ballot system
but are open to anyone.
And then, there are caucuses,
where people usually vote publicly.
Let's break this down.
Caucusgoers get to debate
and openly declare support for a candidate.
They do that gathering in groups to be counted.
So, no voting booths.
Candidates need 15% support to stay in the race.
If they don't get enough support, they are nonviable.
And caucusgoers get a chance
to persuade others to join their group or switch to another.
In the 2020 Democratic primary season,
these six states will hold a caucus.
That includes Iowa, which goes first.
The results there are usually a good indicator
of who might win the nomination.
Because, since 1972,
seven out of the 10 Democrats who won the Iowa caucus
went on to become the Democratic nominee
in the general election.
Take little known Governor Jimmy Carter,
who won Iowa on his way to the presidency in 1976.
- He paid attention to Iowa,
which was going first,
and convinced the media that it actually mattered.
And he won Iowa.
He was the top candidate,
and that gave him momentum to New Hampshire
and to later states in the primary process.
He ultimately won the nomination
and won the presidency.
It started the whole idea that Iowa mattered.
- Or take this guy,
who was mostly trailing in the polls behind Clinton.
When he got to Iowa,
- On this January night,
at this defining moment in history,
you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.
- The push generated by a victory in Iowa
is what makes candidates
spend a lot of money and time campaigning there,
but that's also where some of the faults
in the process really start to show.
Iowa and New Hampshire are the first two states
to nominate their candidate.
They're pretty rural,
and very, very white.
They're not representative
of what the rest of the country looks like,
and that's lead to criticism that putting them first
gives those states an outsized influence.
- There's a lot of concern that perhaps starting
in a place like Iowa,
or honestly New Hampshire, which comes next,
limits the chances of more diverse candidates.
Before dropping out of the 2020 race,
the former housing secretary and mayor of San Antonio,
Julian Castro, brought this up.
- We do need to change the order of the states
because I don't believe
that we're the same country we were in 1972.
- In January 2020,
there wasn't a single candidate of color left
on the Democratic presidential debate stage.
And while Iowa is considered by critics as a crucial state,
only a sliver of Iowans are even caucusgoers.
In the 2016 caucus, just over 171,000 people turned up.
That's less than 16% of the state's population.
It turned out to be a close race between Hillary Clinton,
the former Secretary of State,
and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
- I would say that the caucus is undemocratic
because it does not bring people into the party.
- This is Caroline Schoonover.
She's the co-chair of
Central Iowa Democratic Socialists of America.
Her chapter didn't back a candidate for 2020.
Instead, Caroline's been campaigning
on local issues in Iowa, such as fighting rent hikes.
She's been going to Iowa caucuses with her parents
since she was a kid,
so she has a pretty good insight into how things work.
- It is not an event that is very exciting
for people to want to be a part of,
to give up three hours of your evening
to be a part of a huge debate.
- Because the caucus occurs
at a set time and place, it can freeze people out.
- The caucus system requires a lot of time.
You have to go there.
You have to sign in.
There's no privacy in the vote.
You then have to wait to see
if your candidate crosses that 15% threshold.
- That could explain
why turnout across caucuses is pretty low.
It averaged under 10% in 2016.
Compare that to the average turnout
for states with primaries,
which was just under 32.4% in 2016.
In theory, the process brings large-scale democracy
to the living room.
But in practice, things can get a little messy.
- [Caucusgoer] Tails.
- If you think
scheduling caucuses and primaries is complicated,
money takes it to another level.
Candidates are tangled up in needing to raise money
to even begin a campaign,
a lot of money.
That money is used to pay staff,
hold events,
and advertise.
Most candidates rely
on a mix of small donations and larger donors,
who can play a big role in determining their policies.
This has been challenged by the fundraising model
of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
It's raised more than any of the other candidates
in the last three months of 2019
by relying on almost 2,000,000 donations
fueled by grass roots donors.
But many campaigns end
before the first votes are cast in Iowa
because they're not able to raise enough money
to keep going.
Meanwhile, billionaires like Tom Steyer or Mike Bloomberg
have been financing their campaigns with their own money.
- I'm not crying.
I just have America in my eye.
- Then, there's the role of the media.
If you think about it,
a lot of American politics plays out
on cable news and social media.
- The news media occupies such an interesting place
in our democracies, right?
Keeping watch over candidates that are, you know,
essentially applying for a job.
But at the same time,
most news media do have to pay attention to the bottom line.
They have to pay attention to their advertising budgets.
- So cable news is not entirely a neutral player
in this dynamic.
News media also frames the way the issues are discussed
on the debate stage.
- How do you answer top economists,
who say taxes of this magnitude would stifle growth?
- [Moderator] You told her that you did not believe
that a woman could win the election.
Why did you say that?
- We can see it with our own eyes,
the ways that conflict, for example,
drives the coverage
just as it drives news coverage in general.
That is irresistable catnip for national media.
- Remember, a lot of people
are getting their news from social media and elsewhere now,
and so presidential election campaigns
are essentially mass media campaigns.
And it's not just money and media
that can shape a race separately
from what regular voters want.
- Superdelegates.
- [Presenter] Superdelegates.
- Superdelegates.
- [Presenter] Superdelegates.
- You've probably heard of superdelegates.
These are party leaders and elected officials
who are given automatic spots
at the Democratic National Convention.
They've been controversial.
In the 2016 primary,
many of these superdelegates
pledged their votes to Hillary Clinton
before a single primary was even held.
Since then, there have been reforms
to strip back their nominating power.
But in the event of a deadlock,
superdelegates do get to vote on the second round of voting.
Does it have to be this way?
(country music)
Candidates turn up and eat corn dogs in Iowa
because getting face to face time with voters
is seen as a huge benefit in the current system.
People can campaign in those early states
in a one-on-one way.
They can actually get to know the voters.
The voters can actually get to know them.
That is only possible in very small states,
like Iowa, like New Hampshire, like South Carolina.
Once you move out of those small states,
you're in a total media, television campaign.
- The caucuses are grassroots democracy
in a way that we don't see in primaries.
You don't get that in California, honestly.
You don't get that in New York, sadly.
You get it in these small places early in the process.
- Those defending the system might point out that
South Carolina holds the fourth nominating contest
in the country.
It means a state
where roughly 60% of Democratic primary voters
are African-American has an early say in the process.
In 2020, both California and Texas
decided to move up their 2020 primaries to Super Tuesday,
on March 3rd.
That's significant.
These are the most populous and diverse states
and have the most delegates.
Yet, if the U.S. started this process from scratch,
it probably wouldn't look the way it does now.
- There are a variety of alternatives,
proposed regional primaries,
changing the first states having a national primary.
None of those have ever really happened.
- Post 2016, there were some reforms,
including curbing the power of superdelegates.
A number of states also switched from caucuses to primaries.
- If we got rid of the caucus,
and we started over with a completely new system
here in Iowa,
I think that a transition to a primary
would be in Iowan's best interest.
It would transition us to a one-person one-vote system.
It would be much more accessible.
It would allow for voting before election day,
absentee voting,
which is only vaguely possible in the caucus system.
- There are a lot of strange quirks
in American elections.
And updating the rules usually falls
on the people least likely to want to do so,
the party establishment itself.
But with some states having a bigger role than others,
and self-funded billionaires
skipping over parts of the process entirely,
critics are asking whether it's time
the Democratic primaries started to look a little more,
well, democratic.