One of my favorite wonky topics is the presidential nominating process, and as it happens, the way it’s shaping up for Democratic in 2024 is unusual, as I explained at New York:
Donald Trump’s 2024 announcement signaled that we are now officially in the run-up to the next presidential election. But there’s a big missing piece of basic election infrastructure, at least for Democrats: The order of states holding presidential primaries is very much up in the air.
Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which sets guidelines for the nomination process and administers sticks and carrots to get states to comply, announced it would authorize five “early states” allowed to have nominating contests prior to March 1, 2024. The four states that were allowed across this golden rope line from 2008 through 2020 — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina — would have to reapply for privileged status along with everyone else. As many as 20 state Democratic parties expressed interest in vying for these five spots. But because some of the changed calendar positions would require action by the state government, which typically control and finance primaries, the DNC delayed a final selection until after the midterms sorted out who ruled where.
Now Michigan Democrats, who flipped both legislative chambers and hung on to the governorship this month, are galvanizing the 2024 calendar discussion with a clear bid for an early spot, as NBC News reports:
“Michigan Democrats — led by Rep. Debbie Dingell — feel well positioned to join the coveted ranks of the early states, after they made huge gains in the Nov. 8 election. With Iowa facing possible eviction from the early states, many expect Democrats to elevate a Midwest state.
“Democrats now have full control of the Statehouse in Lansing, which would allow them to easily change state laws to support a new date for the 2024 primary.”
The DNC’s previously announced criteria for early states, as reported by CBS News, were diversity (racial, ethnic, geographic, and economic diversity as well as union representation), general-election competitiveness, and feasibility (whether states can move their contest into the early window, if they can run a “fair, transparent and inclusive nominating process,” and the logistical requirements and cost of campaigning in that state). It was an unstated but understood criterion as well that the five early states would represent different regions. So Michigan may be competing for an early-state slot with Minnesota, where Democrats also nailed down a trifecta in the midterms.
Iowa’s traditional first-in-the-nation caucus has looked doomed all along. The state is famously nondiverse and is now solidly Republican in general elections. The “feasibility” of an Iowa event was also called into question by the 2020 fiasco, in which no Iowa caucus results were announced until the next day.
New Hampshire will be harder to dislodge, despite its nondiverse population, because of a state law that authorizes the secretary of state to move the primary date around in order to maintain the position of first primary. But Nevada Democrats are making a sustained effort to leap ahead of New Hampshire by switching to a primary and aggressively advertising their superior diversity and obvious competitiveness. It’s unclear, however, whether Republican Joe Lombardo’s gubernatorial win in Nevada will disrupt efforts to authorize a new state primary.
That points to one of two variables complicating the early-state selection process: By and large, Republicans are happy with the existing order of states. There is no pressure within the GOP to dump Iowa or displace New Hampshire or do anything else unusual. So in states where Republican cooperation is necessary to move things around or make the requisite resources available, Democrats have to convince their partisan enemies to care about it as well. And if the proposed new primary date in any given state violates the RNC’s existing calendar rules, that state’s Republicans could be penalized and lose delegates to their own convention. The prospect of a serious battle for the GOP presidential nomination adds another series of calculations.
It’s a Rubik’s Cube, and that’s largely why the existing calendar for both parties has stayed in place for so long aside from the fact that, in Iowa and New Hampshire, both parties have long cooperated to defend their calendar privileges like crazed badgers.
The other big variable facing Democrats is the broader context: What sort of decisions will Democrats be facing in 2024? At this point, we don’t know for sure whether President Biden is running for a second term, and we don’t know if he’ll face major competition if he does. If Biden has to fight for renomination, how he performed in particular states in 2020 may have some influence on a loyal DNC deciding where he has to run in 2024. That might really doom Iowa, if it’s not already doomed, given Biden’s fourth-place finish there in 2020. And Biden finished fifth in New Hampshire. The DNC likely wouldn’t want to give calendar privileges to the home state of a potential rival.
But decisions have to be made, and the Rules and Bylaws Committee is set to make them when it meets from December 1 through 3 in Washington, D.C.
Andrew Sullivan is gloating about this FoxNews poll which claims Kerry is trailing “Shrub” in the battleground states by 37% – 43%
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120492,00.html
Ruy doesn’t normally comment on reader feedback, but I would appreciate his views on this subject.
MARCU$
I’m just finishing a trip to southern Arizona. While Tucson and the southwest corner of AZ are the most Democratic parts of the state, I’m encouraged by some of the conversations I had with Democrats and Republicans.
A few things to note:
* McCain swallowed his pride in ’00 and supported Bush. But in ’04 many Republicans here are not happy about the treatment that McCain has received from the Rovians. That could turn into a backlash.
* I talked with several Republicans who were disillusioned with the war. These would probably fall into the group of voters who sit out the election.
* For what it’s worth, many of the MPs in the Abu Ghraib scandal were trained in southern AZ and people here aren’t happy about that. My guess is that there’s some defensiveness and embarrassment, but over time it will be an even worse issue for Bush here.
I’m pretty optimistic about AZ.
–Dan
I think his analysis of Ohio has missed one point. As chronicled in the NY Times magazine article (The Multilevel Marketing of the President), the president’s campaign committee has a massive GOTV operation going on here. This operation is targeting the exurbs that Gersh mentions as susceptable to GOTV efforts.
The moribund Ohio Dem party has no chance of mounting an effort to counterbalance this in the urban areas much less in the rural southeast. Kerry’s campaign HQ in Columbus wasn’t fully staffed as of a month ago (I don’t know about now.)
Statewide polls continue to show Ohio to be tight. The election here will almost certainly be decided by turnout. On this score, Bush’s GOTV efforts could neutralize his negative poll numbers here.
Shorter version: Kerry needs to get off his arse and organize Ohio.
Mr. Gersh’s article also seems a pretty dated in one respect. He says Bush’s approval rating hovers around 50 percent. In the last several weeks, his approval rating has ranged from 42-48 percent; that’s not “around 50 percent.” BTW, the only poll that shows Bush’s approval higher than 46 percent is Fox, which has it at 48.
I agree with Patrick. Illinois is among the ten states most likely to go Democratic in November. So are California and New Jersey, recent outlier polls to the contrary notwithstanding. Various organizations including Gallup and Faux News have identified a group of 15 to 17 battleground states. Illinois, California, and New Jersey are not on any of their lists. I can’t believe that Bush will put resources into any of them.
The most contentious thing I saw in that article was labeling IL as a “leaner.”
If you look at the primaries this year, the election results in 2000 and 2002, IL is as much a gimme as most of New England when it comes to state-wide elections.