Presidential Primaries Prevent Democracy

The United States is totally failing to maintain a presidential election process that results in candidates who are ready based on experience and political success. Since 1789, when the US Constitution came into effect, there have been many iterations of the process of choosing a president. The only part that remains is the Electoral College. And even that had some early modifications. Many believe that ending the Electoral College can prevent the problem of a lack of experienced, successful and popular candidates. Unfortunately, the candidates are selected long before the Electoral College votes.

The American primary election system is a misnomer. It is not a system; it is a mismatched collection of elections and selections based upon a concept that fossilized in the aftermath of the Civil War. The concept, if you can elevate it to that level, is that our elections, comprising the same two major parties since the Civil War, have supplied new presidents. Before the Civil War, every decade there was a political realignment, and politicians changed their affiliation based on the same honorable motives as we have today. They chose the party they believed would give them a victory.

These two political artifacts of the Civil War have won every single presidential election since the war began. It is as if they exist as the last battleground. Even below the federal level, no other party has been capable of emerging from holding over 10% of the reins of power across the nation. Each year, the two major parties’ power coalesces as they continuously rig the process by convincing people it would be more democratic to let people vote for which person would represent their party. This means that no matter what the two major parties’ level of popularity, their candidates will be on the ballot in every single state.

Primaries became the major focus in selecting the candidates for all parties in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation. Starting in 1976, the “modern” primary election system took form. Before that, party bosses picked the candidate and fought it out at the convention. Since the 1960s, primaries have been held in most states. Their purpose was to give the appearance of a democratic process and a false appearance of party unity. The goal in the 1970s for both parties was to increase democratic participation in the selection process. After a couple of disappointing election losses by the Democrats, they instituted super delegates to override the will of the people. They wanted to ensure that their candidate would be an experienced and successful candidate. That turned into a disaster for the Democrats as experienced and successful are not what wins elections. The Republicans went for finding the most popular candidate as early as possible. This puts the emphasis on popularity and party unity. And with 45 years of experience, neither party is producing the caliber of presidential candidates as in the past, nor are many of these candidates particularly popular; especially the Democratic ones.

Between the two parties, there have been 17 different candidates since 1976 who have run for president. In 11 total elections, the only winning candidate that had a record worthy of being a presidential candidate was George H. W. Bush. And he only won because his opponent, Dukakis, was not ready for prime time and because of some carryover popularity of Reagan. Popularity, however, brought victories in seven of the 11 elections. Note that George H.W. Bush lost a second term when faced with an actual popular candidate in Bill Clinton. G.W. Bush had the same meh popularity as his father, but he faced two unpopular Democratic candidates that had both experience and success. Trump won his first race based on popularity and lost re-election because of the unusual circumstance of COVID shone a light on his incompetence, just the reverse of Carter, who won because of the unusual circumstance of Nixon’s resignation and Ford’s meh popularity. Carter lost re-election because of the popularity of Reagan and his handling of the Iran hostages. Democrats, when faced with a popular Republican, respond with experience and success and always lose. They win only when an outlier popular candidate wins the nomination.

It’s time we made some changes to the primaries, making them nonpartisan, planning numerous regularly scheduled debates and creating national rules across all states. I have outlined a plan in a sequel article called Reinvent the Presidential Primaries.