A revolution in the way Democrats elect a president (2023)

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From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the "Diary".

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For the past 50 years, the way the Democratic Party selects its presidential nominee has been shaped heavily by the state where the process begins — Iowa. Why are Democrats on the verge of abandoning this tradition today, in the coming days? My colleague Adam Nagourney explains.

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It's Thursday February 2nd.

Adam, tell us about this meeting that's about to start in Philadelphia.

So the Democratic National Committee, which is essentially the governing body of the Democratic Party, is about to gather in Philadelphia for its annual meeting. And these meetings tend to be kind of boring, if I do say so myself...

- but this time something really controversial and, I would say, historically important is on the agenda. And that's what the Democratic National Committee will debate and vote on in a proposal from President Biden to fundamentally overhaul the 2024 presidential nominees calendar.

And while this might make your eyes glaze over, it's quite significant and important. Because that means Iowa, the first state in this process since 1972, will be pushed out of that position.

Wow.

Yes, in American politics there is nothing more enduring than Iowa coming first. It's exactly what you do. For someone like me who has been doing these things for a long time, that's really impressive. It's a true moment of transition.

And it reflects the reality that has become increasingly true over the years that Iowa simply no longer represents the Democratic Party. It just doesn't make sense anymore for the Democratic Party to start the whole nomination process that eventually determines a candidate for President in a place like Iowa.

Now, Adam, how did we get this system - this first Iowa system - that many in the party now think is nonsensical and needs a major overhaul? What's the story behind it?

You know, like many things in politics, this was a solution to an earlier problem.

To understand why we are where we are today, you have to go back to 1968.

So that was the year that the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago.

And the land was shaken with unrest.

There was anger about the Vietnam War.

And many Democratic voters wanted the party to nominate a candidate who would end the war in Vietnam.

But back then, voters didn't have much say. It was party bosses who gathered backstage to elect the candidate. So all those jokes about smoky backrooms where deals are done and decisions made - well, that was kind of true. It really happened, and that's how the party with Hubert Humphrey ended.

And Hubert Humphrey was not a candidate close to the end of the war.

Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon, and the backlash from the Democratic establishment was fierce. People were very upset that the party had elected someone who did not share the views of many voters, and the party responded by setting up a commission to rewrite the nomination process. And that led to a series of state-to-state races in which voters, not party bosses, had a say in the nomination.

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And why was Iowa picked first?

It was never a decision that we, the Democratic Party, should start in Iowa. It wasn't like the committee looked at the whole country and said, ha, Iowa is the most representative state for the Democratic Party, so let's do that first. No, it was just a matter of logistics. And that's because Iowa has a very lengthy and, dare I say it, complicated process for choosing its presidential nominee.

Mm-hmm.

Most states have an elementary school. On a given day, the voter goes to the polling booth, votes for whoever they want, and goes home. And that. But not Iowa. Iowa has something called the caucus.

Okay, and just remind us how this works - a caucus.

On Monday nights, voters who want to weigh their party's candidate have to go to venues, churches, schools, sometimes even people's living rooms. And you go in there and you're in groups of people supporting the various candidates, right? And you defend why you vote for who you vote for.

And every candidate has to reach a certain support threshold. And if he or she doesn't, the candidate is eliminated and voters shuffle around the room and, after some debate and discussion, end up with one of the other candidates. So it's a long process.

To the right.

To make the calendar — to fit the calendar — Iowa had to start early. And starting early meant being the first to make sure everything was done on time. It just happened. And when it did, it was hard not to.

I have understood. So this is really a matter of logistics and in some ways Iowa's inefficiency.

It's right. And the first time it happens is in 1972. But the first time that it really matters is in 1976, because that's when something really remarkable happened in the Democratic Party.

17 candidates had applied for the Democratic presidential candidacy. And one of them was a little-known former Georgia peanut farmer, the governor...

- called Jimmy Carter. And Carter realized that if he did well in Iowa, the first state in this relatively new nomination process, he could show the party and the world that he is a truly viable candidate.

And he also recognized that Iowa was a place where you could win by just producing.

Just go door to door, meet people -

He understood that by doing this you would build the kind of personal connection and loyalty that you would need to get your constituents to show up in the caucus system we talked about and engage in this back-and-forth to contribute.

Lo and behold, Carter beat all other candidates with a level of support that shocked many Democrats at how well he did. And people would look back and never forget the lesson of Iowa in 1976. It just goes to show that someone not well known can use the state's nomination system to become a national figure in politics.

To the right. Suddenly, Iowa, this kind of random naming contest for the top of the state shows that it can be a crucial kingmaker, because of course former peanut farmer Jimmy Carter is going not just to run for the Democrats, but to win the presidency himself.

It's right.

And so Iowa showed once again how it can help catapult a candidate to the top of the Democratic nomination process.

In this case, it was a relatively new Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.

It's important to remember, with regard to Obama this year, that certainly at the end of 2007, heading into 2008, very few people thought he could win the nomination.

He was very inexperienced.

Let me get you some water, folks. [COUGH]

To be honest, he wasn't a particularly good candidate, at least initially, as I can attest to by watching him in those early days.

He was a bit distant. He was a bit professorial. All those slaps on him that used to piss him off were kinda real.

But he took a side from Jimmy Carter.

And he spent months attending all these little events in Iowa, in living rooms and churches.

He used this time to learn what was important and to learn to say what he believed.

To the right.

And then -

- There was a very, very famous political dinner that's on the Iowa calendar. And he went over there and just blew off the roof of the place.

And that totally and dramatically changed the dynamic of the race.

And he kept winning.

It was a training school for candidates, right? This is an important thing to remember with small states like Iowa. That made him a better candidate.

To the right. As far as I can remember, Adam, there wasn't much doubt in that time that Iowa's place as number one in the country was secured. But more and more questions are emerging about whether putting Iowa first is a good idea.

And I'm saying that because I'm coming to your place in Iowa as a political reporter for The Times for the next presidential election in 2012, and I remember these issues becoming a priority.

Yes. It was impressive because Iowa, this predominantly white state, had just voted for a black man to be the Democratic presidential nominee. But it was difficult to avoid the fact that this state was not representative of the Democratic Party. What sense did it make for a state like this to be such an important part of the democratic nomination process?

The other thing that happened was that Iowa withdrew from the Democratic Party in the general election. There was a time when it was at least a violet state, a state to win. But increasingly it became a republican state.

To the right.

The Democrats were still preparing to go there. Every once in a while there's a Democratic candidate who says I won't run there, and then they lose.

So it became something you just did because you did it, right? And then comes 2020.

And we're seeing an implosion in the Iowa caucus system.

Right, there was this total breakdown. I was there. I observe. State election officials tried to modernize the process by using an app to report the results, but they didn't test it in advance and it just didn't work.

And then things just totally failed that night.

That's right. And the state became a laughing stock, didn't it?

How long did it take three weeks to finally decide on a winner? The person who ended up winning the Iowa caucuses was actually another lesser-known candidate — an Indiana mayor named Pete Buttigieg. No one really believed he stood a chance of actually winning the Democratic nomination, and this time they were right.

To the right. In 2020, Iowa was last for a kingmaker after all counts were completed. As you said, the person who won the nomination was Joe Biden, who from what I recall finished fourth in Iowa. So the conclusion of almost every Democrat, except perhaps those who won the Iowa primary, is that Iowa is not only incompetent when it comes to counting the votes, but also completely out of sync with the rest of the party.

That's right Michael. And I think the other part of that was that they realized that with a few exceptions - Barack Obama was one of them - it had been out of sync for a long time. I mean, despite all the hype reporters put into it when they talk about how important it is, the fact of the matter was that it wasn't a barometer of where the party was.

Every once in a while it lived up to its hype, but mostly not. And then, in 2020, it was just this accumulation of all these reasons, that's enough. And so it comes to this moment in Philadelphia, where the Democratic National Committee is about to close its doors to the Iowa meetings.

We'll be coming back.

So, Adam, what exactly is the Democratic Party's proposal to replace Iowa as the nation's first nominating contest?

Well, first of all, this is President Biden's idea and his recommendation to the Democratic Committee. So the plan currently under consideration is for South Carolina to be the first state in the country to vote for Democratic presidential nominees.

And what is the reason for choosing South Carolina among all the possible options in the country?

Well, the main reason is that it's just more representative of the Democratic Party and more representative, I would say, of the country. It has a much larger black population, and that makes a lot of sense for a party like the Democratic Party, where black voters make up a large portion of its base.

The second reason is that South Carolina has an elementary school. It's not a workbench, which means the results are more efficient and clearer. They don't have the problem — or likely won't have the problem — like we had in Iowa, where it takes weeks to figure out who actually won. And I think all of that was very attractive to President Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

To the right. It all makes sense. But it's worth noting, Adam, that President Biden may have another reason for picking South Carolina, which really revitalized his 2020 bid, which fared pretty poorly in places like Iowa during the nomination process. In fact, many people would argue that without South Carolina, Joe Biden could never have become the candidate or president.

That's right. I think part of that is that he's rewarding South Carolina for what happened in 2020. But part of that is something he's always believed -- that the Democratic Party was much more diverse and that a state like South Carolina represented it more. .

So it's a combination of political pragmatism, rewarding a state that has served him well, but just being able to see how the party and the country are changing, and he thinks that does a lot not just for him but for the party the nomination to start in a state as different as South Carolina makes more sense.

Mm-hmm. Then, of course, I remember what happened in 1968 when the party tried to solve a problem. This attempt to solve one problem inevitably created a new problem, namely Iowa, that predominantly white state that had great trouble counting votes. Do Democrats worry that this new attempt to solve one problem could create more new problems?

Yes, I think you are referring here to the law of unintended consequences, which means that everything a party does has consequences that you and I can never imagine. I'll tell you what I think is fair thinking here.

There were problems with Iowa. There is no doubt about it. But there was something that made the unexpected happen, and the obvious example is Jimmy Carter catapulting himself onto the national stage, or Barack Obama becoming the Barack Obama we know.

And that doesn't happen with every candidate, of course, but the opportunity was always there, and I think that's what made Democrats go there. And I think we could lose that in a state like South Carolina.

Why? Why are we likely to lose this in South Carolina?

Well, a couple of reasons. One is that South Carolina is a larger state in terms of population. Over two million people live in South Carolina. The idea of ​​an intimate campaign to get to know the voters, to address the issues that we saw in Iowa, just can't happen in South Carolina.

And this is another point I want to make here about Iowa -- it's a caucus. It's not primary. And it requires a certain level of commitment from voters, because they have to show up at two o'clock on Monday night at a certain time, stand up and say why they're standing for themselves supportive. - or at least stand up and say who they support.

It requires a certain level of connection and commitment. And many candidates will tell you that this will only happen if you meet the voter in person, not once, but several times, right? And that's a big part of Iowa culture.

And that won't be the case in South Carolina. Even if you want to do that, it's too big. And that's the downside of South Carolina.

Fascinating. And what exactly do we think losing all this could mean in practice for candidates seeking the nomination? I mean, if they don't get that level of intimacy with voters in a place like Iowa, what does that mean in practice?

I mean, it could mean that the world is changing and that people like me who have covered politics in the past should just get over it. But -

— a candidate in Iowa can spend months building traction, walking in unfamiliar, and just methodically working their way through the state so that they end up being recognizable, right? And they're a strong contender, at least in terms of the people who know who they are.

That won't be the case in South Carolina. I think there will be a real prize for candidates who have a reputation that is already well known. And that means candidates who have money, who can make a name for themselves, who can run their ads on TV and let people know who they are. That's the price of being in South Carolina.

So the risk here is that this schedule change could limit the type of candidate who has a high chance of winning the Democratic nomination. They say that if that candidate doesn't have a lot of notoriety and a lot of money, now, in this new system, his chances are just slimmer.

That's right. Politics is very arbitrary. You never know what's gonna happen. I wouldn't rule it out entirely. But it will be much more difficult for an unknown candidate to come from the back of the field and suddenly win a primary. Because if you are not known, you must have money to be known by the voters. And that is an obstacle. This is a real stumbling block.

To the right. But of course, the kind of candidate who clearly benefits from this shift is a candidate like Joe Biden, right? I mean he's an incumbent president seeking re-election - we think - and he has all these advantages of that timeline - great notoriety - nobody has more notoriety than the incumbent president - and for the same reason a huge war chest - a Many Democrats gave him big bucks, which is why some people will no doubt see this new schedule as some sort of protection program for Biden's tenure.

Yes, in a way. But I think you want to do justice to Biden. I'm not sure if that's what drives him here. I mean, I think he genuinely believes the system is unfair and he doesn't represent the Democratic Party.

But I think he did talk about reassessing it every four years. Considering how hard it was for this to happen - is this the first time in, what, 50 years? I wouldn't expect that to happen. Let's just say it. Once done, it's done, at least for a few cycles. That's for sure.

Mm-hmm. It seems, Adam, that there's a certain irony about where this is all going. Because the party has been conducting this internal debate about who chooses their candidate for decades. And in 1968 the decision was to take that power away from the party bosses, as you described to us, and hand it over to the Democratic Party voters.

But then it turned out that the voters they gave a lot of power in places like Iowa were mostly white and rural, which in turn leads to this latest reform, which is about who picks the candidate. And the answer this time is to open the door to a more diverse group of voters who are more reflective of the party.

But if we do that, based on everything you just told us, we might end up with a system that gives this more diverse group of voters - and this is the irony - fewer choices, right? Potentially fewer applicants, or at least fewer types of applicants, right?

Yes. I mean I think it's just right. And I think that's the compromise that the Democratic Party is willing to make at this point -- that they find the idea of ​​Iowa as the beginning of the nomination process so problematic that they are willing to make such concessions in order to get a nomination process that in a state like South Carolina. And we'll see what works. It might work, it might not. But it's a bargain they're willing to make.

And if it doesn't work, change them and we'll bring you back.

That's right. I'll be there again next time.

Well Adam, thank you very much.

Thank you Michael I appreciate your time today. That was a treat. [PLAY MUSIC]

We'll be coming back.

Here's what you need to know today.

On Wednesday in Memphis, family members and Vice President Kamala Harris praised Tire Nichols, 29, who died after being brutally beaten by police.

In emotional comments, Nichols' mother and stepfather recalled the trauma of learning their son had died at the hands of police and later viewed video that contradicted what officers said happened at the scene .

it was really, really hard. I was surrounded by lies, deceit, trying to cover it up. But as the saying goes: what is done in the dark always comes to light.

And daylight is justice for Tyre.

Tonight's episode was produced by Alex Stern, Stella Tan and Nina Feldman. It was edited by Rachel Quester, features original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Diane Wong and Chris Wood, and was edited by Chris Wood.

Our theme song is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk from Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you in the morning.