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Is Kamala Harris an undemocratic choice?                                                                                    

Posted at: Aug/08/2024 : Posted by: Mel

Related Category: Politics & Gov, Watching America,

Recently President Joe Biden stepped down from the Democratic Party's ticket and pledged his support for VP Kamala Harris in his place. After 7 months of state-run primary elections, this seems like a slap in the face of democracy and all those primary voters. This could also be the latest evidence of party leadership distrusting party voters. Or…this could be a throwback to how our electoral system works.

Our system of primary elections has been a feature of presidential politics for more than 50 years. Outwardly, elevating Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket without a competitive nominating process seems to be a slap in the face of all those millions of primary voters. As unthinkable as this appears to voters who have grown up with a democratic primary system, this is not an unheard-of nominating process. Nevertheless, many voters may feel they have been cut out of the process in favor of an elite circle of party leaders.

Primaries have an inconsistent history in the U.S., as I learned in my research on political parties. When party leaders see it as being in their interest to give voters more influence in the primary process, they have done so. When they believed that less democratic methods could lead to a better chance of victory in the general election, they have done that, too.

If you are unaware, when you vote in a presidential primary, you aren’t technically voting for the candidate, but for delegates pledged to vote for that candidate at the party’s national convention. Even when a candidate gets enough of these delegates to win, their candidacy becomes official only when the delegates vote at the convention. This process of sending delegates to a convention has its origin in early American history where time and distance separated communities forcing representative democracy. As seen in the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962), the fictional town of Shinbone elected a delegate to send to the Territorial Convention.

This year the Democratic Party leaders discouraged anyone from running against their incumbent candidate Joe Biden. With the primary season over, President Biden was staged to enter the Democratic convention with the majority of delegates pledged to support him. In late July 2024, President Biden bowed to internal pressures and backed out of the race. At the same time, Biden also threw his endorsement behind Vice President Kamala Harris.

This year, something unusual is happening, because almost all of the delegates were by proxy supposed to follow the primaries and therefore committed to voting for Joe Biden, are instead voting for Harris – even though she was not on any primary ballot. While this appears very “undemocratic” in our modern era, it is not necessarily wrong.

When the parties adopted the nominating convention as a means of selecting presidential candidates in the early 19th century – the first Democratic National Convention was held in 1832 – delegates to national conventions were selected at local and state meetings, and then those delegates chose the party’s nominee.

Sometimes, the convention picked candidates with a lot of popular support, as when Republicans selected war hero Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. Sometimes, they picked someone most voters had never heard of, as when Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce in 1852. And sometimes they chose a “favorite son” who was chiefly popular in an influential state, such as Michigan’s Lewis Cass, who won the Democratic Party nomination; but lost the general election of 1848 to Zachary Taylor. Not unusual for its day, many newspaper articles expressed the sentiment that the voters were being used as bargaining chips by the delegates between influential party leaders.

Primaries were based on the idea that voters should have more say in the choice of nominees. Some states and cities experimented with direct primary elections for lower-level offices in the late 19th century, but they were first applied to presidential nominating conventions in 1912. For a brief moment during the Progressive Era – approximately 1901-1920 – a growing number of national convention delegates were selected through primaries, while the remaining continued to be selected through traditional party caucuses and conventions.

In 1912, 42% of GOP national convention delegates were selected in primaries, as were 33% of Democratic delegates. In 1916, the numbers grew to 59% for the Republicans and 54% for the Democrats – a sign of the growing popularity of this democratic reform. That moment was short-lived, as 1920 was the beginning of a steady decline in publicly elected delegates. In that year, the GOP percentage of direct primary-elected delegates declined to 58%, and the Democrats’ percentage declined to 45%. By 1932, the numbers had declined to 38% and 40%, respectively, and the party elites had more influence in both parties for the next 36 years.

After that, it was “democracy lite” for the presidential nominating system. Parties entered what political scientists call the “mixed system,” which lasted from the 1930s to the 1960s. Some convention delegates were selected in the meetings that had been the norm in the 19th century, even while a few were selected in primaries. Outsider candidates in this model could not secure their party's nomination without prearranged delegate support.

The friction between these two approaches reached a peak in the embarrassing Democratic National Convention of 1968. Delegates elected in primaries and pledged to vote for Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy were outvoted by delegates who supported Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who party elites believed was more electable despite having the least public support. Humphrey went on to lose the election to Richard Nixon.

To avoid a repeat of that debacle, Democrats appointed a commission to rewrite rules for delegate selection in time for the 1972 convention. The McGovern-Fraser Commission recommended that more delegates be selected by primaries than by caucuses or conventions, making the nominating process more open to voters. In short, they aimed to end the mixed system and ensure that most convention delegates were selected in primary elections. As they implemented the new rules, giving the choice of the presidential nominee to voters, they rewrote Americans’ understanding of party democracy as popular, open, and diverse.

These democratic expectations have been slowly undermined in the years since. Party leaders have often had doubts about the voters’ ability to pick candidates likely to win in the general election. These doubts, for instance, were behind the Democrats’ creation of super-delegates in 1984. This gave convention votes to Democratic governors, members of Congress, and members of the Democratic National Committee – among others – specifically to act as a check on Democratic voters who were not to be trusted.

While there were never enough super-delegates to outvote the regular delegates pledged to vote for specific candidates, the expectation was that they could provide enough votes to elect a candidate preferred by political elites and super donors over a candidate popular only among the general voters. Over time, party elites – officeholders, activists, and donors have figured out ways to assert power in the nominating process. These influential elites throw endorsements, funding, and attention to a chosen few. In a media-intensive culture, access to funding can make or break any candidacy.

Unlike the Democratic Party, at the 2012 Republican National Convention, their rules were amended to obligate unpledged members (“super-delegates”) to vote according to the results of the primaries of their home states.

With Biden officially backing out of the race and endorsing Kamala Harris it would be easy to argue that democracy is in decline. In truth, it just means that the Democratic Party’s nomination process is less democratic than it was in 2020 when Democrats held a vigorous primary contest. For the Republicans in 2024, there was a truly spirited primary campaign that honored the full spirit of democracy.

If Democrats are committed to a democratic nominating process, they could learn from the experience of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. They could acknowledge the democratic deficit in the 2024 process and revisit the rules by which their primaries and delegates are governed.

But for the first time since 1968, the Democratic nominee will win the nomination without winning a single primary vote. This may not be as much of a democratic backslide, but it would be a culmination of the elite-oriented trends that have shaped the nominating process since 1984, in which party elites have played an increasingly large role in shaping the presidential nomination, even if they no longer hide out in some secret smoke-filled room.

But if Democrats truly want to make this election about democracy, they might start by looking at the recent trends in their own house.

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