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Right now, our party is anti-primary. It dislikes any sort of criticism or challenge to entrenched Democratic leaders. It views primaries as wastes of money that ultimately hurt the nominee. The reason the party feels that way? because entrenched leaders do not want to be held accountable to the party base (defined as those who vote or would vote regularly in a democratic primary election). Their dream is to take our votes for granted and move to the center.
The result, you end up with unresponsive leaders who move farther and farther to the right each time, trying to pick up more and more centrist votes, because they know they can say "the base will vote for us for fear of the Republicans winning." And you end up with a party caucus that eventually ceases to resemble the Democrats that you elected.
When the leaders start to do that, major portions of the base become disillusioned and stop donating time and money to the party, or worse, they become seduced by third parties when they find it impossible to hold their leaders to account. Then you get Ralph Nader types.
If this party is to become a majority party again, it must become responsive to the needs of people with very different viewpoints. The Democratic party cannot afford an unmotivated base flocking to third parties.
The solution is that the party must embrace primaries. It must say, "the nominee(even when the seat is held by an incumbent) is yours to choose, and we will not intefere with or encourage or discourage any candidate or their supporters or donors. We will give you an unfettered opportunity to fight to get your candidate nominated. Once that person is chosen we will fight wholeheartedly on behalf of that person. In exchange for our support of the primary, the base agrees to support the nominee no matter who it is. Your chance to make the case against the nominee would be during the primary, and after it, the party needs to be united."
What are the benefits of this agreement, between leaders and base?
1. It will give Democrats a sense that their opinions matter.
By welcoming primaries, it will give Democrats disillusioned with their leaders a chance to effect change. It will at the very least send a message to that person that a large segment of the base is unhappy with him or her.
2. It will encourage leaders to be more responsive to Democrats.
If primaries are made easier, leaders will be more worried about what WE as Democratic rank and file think about what they are doing, and thus will have incentives to be good leaders we are happy with.
3. It will put the responsibility for unrepresentative leaders on those who don't agree with them.
By giving people manifestly unhappy with an official the unfettered chance to challenge that official, then the failure to beat that person is squarely on the shoulders of the challengers. They'd have no one to blame but themselves, and thus no excuse to blame the system or the party in Washington.
4. It will stem defections to third parties.
To give primary losers no one to blame but themselves, is to take away a major excuse to vote for a third party, that the party doesn't listen to you, that it's impossible to make any change through the Democratic party.
5. It gives losers a moral duty to support the winner.
The base receives a valuable change to control who wins the nominee, without ANY interference from on high. That is a major sacrifice of control from party HQ. In exchange for this, the party asks for unity for the Democratic nominee. People will recognize that moral duty which arises from their newfound access to power and acheiving unity will be easier.
6. It will force party officials to say what they stand for.
Without a primary, a nominee can put forth his or her standard centrist say-nothing spiel designed to "maximize swing votes". But a primary forces the candidate as a person to say what he or she will do in office. This gives the entire electorate a look into what the candidate is really about. Despite what the DLC thinks, actually standing for things will excite centrist voters.
7. It will draw attention to the party among the electorate and population in general.
Primaries are interesting. That's why there was so much coverage of the Democratic primary in 2004, and coverage of the 2006 senate primary in CT. They are a great chance to show non-Democrats what we are about, and how diverse our viewpoints are.
8. It will draw non-voters, who think they don't matter, into our party.
If we present ourselves as a true "party of the people" where people's views and voices matter, then people who have been in the "electoral graveyard" or people who have never been in politics will be inspired to get invovled and our party will grow.
9. Candidates who survive primaries are stronger and not weaker.
This is against the convention wisdom, but I believe it to be true. One, a primary winner has proven he can gain support of people and win an election. Their field organization has done GOTV and can make adjustments for the general. They already have a partial list of supporters. This "practice" of GOTV is good for the general election. Two, a primary winner has had his or her major flaws exposed already. In a primary, flaws and skeletons get brought out. If any of them are deadly, then it is more likely that the candidate with those deadly flaws will not be nominated. That is better than nomninating the person and having the flaw come out the week before the election. Also, the flaws exposed on the nominee will be old news as the election gets closer, lowering the effectiveness of those flaws in Republican attacks. Third, the Republicans will be handcuffed until the end of the primary. Anyone they attack before the primary will be less likely to win, thus neutralizing their goal of going against the weakest candidate. They also don't know who they are going against and can't plan accordingly. Because Kerry was effectively the winner early in 2004, the Republican could sit back and bash him. but if the nominee were uncertain until the convention, then the Republicans would have had to sit on that money and possibly lose it.
10. With a large network of small-dollar donors, money is no object.
if 100,000 people donate 100 dollars, then you have $10 million dollars. Not bad, depending where you are. If a primary keeps the donating base involved and engaged in the party, then there will be plenty of money for both a primary and a general election. Howard Dean raised record amounts of money on small dollar donations. In the primary, the candidates have to raise money themselves. If they can't fire up their base enough to give $25 each, then they probably won't win anyway. The point is, the primary, under our new fundraising system is not as costly as it once was.
I want to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading and happy Easter.
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