The Texas Two-Step of Tuesday was a interesting opportunity to see how the race to 2,025 has played out over this primary season. We saw Hillary Clinton win the first step – the primary – and Barack Obama (likely to) win the second – the caucus. In so many ways, this is a microcosm of what we have seen time and time again in this race: Clinton generally winning the primaries and Obama generally winning the caucuses.
I’m no fan of caucuses. Winning one is less about which candidate is better than which can pack a room. But caucuses are a part of the process and those who follow politics closely knew going in that going in. But we also knew that super delegates were a part of the process. It seems hypocritical to me that we accept the results of one while dissing the other.
Talking with non-political junkies, i.e., normal folks, over the last few weeks, it has become clear to me that most people have never participated in a caucus and that the meme spoonfed to them by the media about superdelegates “deciding the nominee” has taken hold. I think the case can be made just as easily that caucuses shouldn’t have a role in “deciding the nominee,” either. Two sides of the same coin, if you ask me. (As for the allocation of pledged delegates – well, that’s a post for another day.)
A look at how the superdelegates came to be is in order. From Wikipedia:
After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party implemented changes in its delegate selection process, based on the work of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. The purpose of the changes was to make the composition of the convention less subject to control by party leaders and more responsive to the votes cast during the campaign for the nomination.
These comprehensive changes left some Democrats believing that the role of party leaders and elected officials had been unduly diminished, weakening the Democratic tickets of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter. In 1982, a commission chaired by former North Carolina Governor James Hunt created superdelegates. Under the original Hunt plan, superdelegates consisted of 30% of the total delegate count, but when it was finally implemented in 1984, superdelegates consisted of 14% of the total count. The number has steadily increased until today, where superdelegates are approximately 20% of the total delegate count.
From CQ:
They were supposed to be the voice of the Democratic Party’s insiders, free to participate in the party’s conventions without picking sides and to vote for the candidate they thought would have the best chance to win the White House. Now, the party’s “superdelegates” may be forced to become exactly what they were never supposed to be: a rubber stamp for the party’s voters.
I think that the role of the superdelegates is to offset that of the quite undemocratic caucuses.
They eliminate the secret ballot, forcing voters to declare their loyalties publicly, and are thus vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation. They also shut out many citizens who have to work during caucus times. If you can’t show up at a specific hour, you can’t vote — a particular problem for people with fixed shifts, including many of the working poor. (The supposedly democratic caucuses can also discriminate, as happened to Sabbath-observant Jews who couldn’t get to Nevada‘s Saturday caucuses.) And there are usually no absentee ballots, of course.
And in this post, we see how this plays out:
In states won by Obama, 6.6 million Americans have decided the distribution of 925 delegates, for a rate of 1 delegate for every 7000 or so participants. In states won by Hillary Clinton, 12.6 million American have decided the distribution of 1072 delegates, or 1 delegate for every 11700 participants.
Those party insiders (cough, Donna Brazile, cough) who have dogged the superdelegates while saying nothing of the role of caucuses should be ashamed of themselves. They both are a part of the political process. If you want to change the rules, do so at the beginning of the game, not in the middle.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
The democrat party is one messed up situration the way the delegates are awarded. The canadate thats win a state should get all the delegates and then they would not have this problem! Oh way a minute, they could not bypass the votes of the people and elect the canadate they wanted if that was the way they did it!
http://goodtimepolitics.wordpress.com/
Thanks for addressing this topic. Caucuses are the most manipulated and undemocratic voting system I have seen. The more I read from those who have taken part in a caucus the worse it gets.
As someone who worked on the IA caucus in 200, I have mixed feelings about caucuses.
I like the fact that it is “retail politics”, it’s nice for voters to be able to ask the candidates questions. There’ s a lot of one on one questions and the voters really get to know the candidates.
I don’t like the fact that union members are often put in almost binding situations. We had one supporter who REALLY wanted to caucus for us but didn’t want his boss to see him. Like you quoted earlier, it is VERY public.
I also like the fact that the ads don’t matter as much as face-to-face contact. I think it also causes voters to follow issues more closely.
It tests a campaigns organizational skills and people who participate in the caucuses are the ones who really believe in their candidates. I’m not saying that primary voters dont care but this is giving up a few hours on what is usually the coldest night of the year (IA).
I wish more people participated though, it comes down to a small percentage of a small groups.
However, I like the fact that the candidates get “back to main street” and there is more one on one.
That is a very interesting post.
A friend told me that the caucus model is a lame attempt at “team building.” If you have ever attended any of these moronic management efforts, you know why I’m sneering. I saw Donna Brazile defend the caucus format on CNN and I had to laugh.
They are undemocratic. They’re great fun for people with lots of time (like some of us who sit at computers). Old people who have trouble getting out, parents (especially single parents), retail workers, not so much.
The elderly and the lower wage folks are the ones the Democratic Party is supposed to protect. Yet the caucus system discriminates against them. The current system the party users is hurting the party and America by fouling up the democratic process.
I do hope that Michigan and Florida hold new elections to help us sort through this mess. I am not in favor of seating delegates based on the existing vote totals, which were based on incomplete election processes.
As for funding them, I think the Democratic Party should set up a separate donations website, with a goal of a specific amount needed to fund the two special elections.
I also think we need a new national chairman.
This is a great post. You make some excellent points.
If the superdelegates are boud to follow the vote in their state or district then their intended purpose is rendered meaningless. And before folks assume that I support Senator Clinton’s attempt to leverage superdelegates to overcome her inability to win a majority of elected delegates, let me identify myself as an Obama supporter (after Edwards left the race). Having said that, the superdelegates had better have very sound reasons for overturning the will of the voters in favor of an establishment candidate such as Clinton who will unquestionably energize a dispirited and divided Republican Party and whose negatives make winning moderate independents in November problematic. I fear we will, yet again, face a bring out the base and suppress the opponent’s turn out election. I liked it in the old days when we fought these things between the forty yard lines. It is no coincidence that we were much better able to formulate sound public policy after those elections than after the modern slash and burn elections.
Caucuses are indeed less democratic than primaries. I have personally been disenfranchised by having a caucus conflict with work. I’d like to see us never hold another caucus and go totally to primaries. I’m sure many people have other views on the subject. I think we need to have a dispassionate discussion of this. The time for that discussion is not during the heat of a campaign. Particularly one where one campaign has consistently tried to alibi their own failures by blaming the rules that were well known by all in advance.
The reason to scrap caucuses is not because Clinton has performed so poorly in them. Obama’s campaign has organized circles around her’s. There were no impediments to her competing in them except the arrogance that led her campaign to discount her opposition and conclude that it wasn’t necessary.
The Democratic Party is an important institution that clearly needs to take a look at the way delegates are chosen to our national convention. The proportional allocation system sure needs some tweaking. Let’s take a look at this next year. Let’s win in November first.
Great post, Vivian. In general I’m a bigger fan of Primaries than caucuses, but I agree that whether we like them or not is irrelevant at this point.
The rules of the game were set before anybody started playing. Whining about caucuses and “insiginificant states” is no more nor less ridiculous than whining about superdelegates. The rules are the rules – everybody has to follow the same ones, and we can work on changing the ones we don’t like down the road.
The same argument holds, not incidentally, for the Clinton argument visa vis Michigan and Florida. When this contest started, the rules regarding those two states’ delegates were in place. That Clinton wants to change those rules now that they don’t benefit her is disingenuous, as well.
I definitely prefer primaries and think we could have had an interesting discussion about the pros and cons of each system, but it’s undermined by the Clinton Camp’s self-fulfilling prophecy. After Iowa and Nevada (where Clinton’s team generated more turnout statewide but failed to strategically link better turnout to more delegates), they started taking a very negative view of the caucus process. Because they think that caucuses are inherrently flawed and designed to highlight Obama’s strengths and Hillary’s weaknesses, they choose not to compete in caucus states to the same degree that they do in primary states–and because they’re not investing in those states to the same degree that Obama is, Obama frequently wins in a landslade, which only serves to reinforce the notion that caucuses are inherrently anti-Hillary so she shouldn’t even bother.
The Washington Post has a great article up on some of the internal politics of Clinton’s campaign, and it hits at the internal division over how to handle the caucus states at the end of page 3 and the beginning of page 4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030503621.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008030600084
Good post, Vivian.
Michigan made its choice to have an early primary. Besides, nearly every name was removed from the ballot. Even though I am a Clinton supporter, I can find no justification for seating those delegates, even in a do-over situation.
Florida has a different set of circumstances in that the Republican-controlled legislature set the date. The candidates, for the most part, did not campaign there, yet some 1.7 million Democrats voted in a closed primary. I think the argument can be made that the FL delegation should be seated with a penalty imposed (like only seating half) because the Democrats there had no choice in the matter. I don’t think, however, there should be a do-over here, either.
At the same time, I fully understand the argument against seating any delegates from either state. Rules are rules, after all, even if they hurt my candidate.
In the end, this really is less about our preferred candidates than it is about the process. Whether Clinton did better in primaries or Obama did better in caucuses isn’t the point. The point is that we should all want a fair system. And if the system is messed up, we should be calling out those people who perpetuate it.
Excellent post Vivian. Like you, I am not a fan of caucuses. You’ve already pointed out their shortcomings, which boil down to the fact that they are not very democratic. They disenfranchise whole swaths of people, including those who work; those on travel who, obviously, can’t file an absentee ballot; and some entire religions when those caucuses are held on a particular faith tradition’s Sabbath. And to add insult to exclusion, they deny voters a secret ballot, which can and does subject those voters to pressure.
The biggest problem is that the winner of a system of caucuses may not be the strongest candidate in a general election where it’s not as easy to game the system for the benefit of that state’s activists. In a general election, all those excluded from the caucuses can, and will, come out to vote, and it may not be for the candidate who breezed throught the undemocratic caucus system.
I’m an Obama supporter but I’d feel a lot more secure if he were doing as well in the large, more inclusive primaries as he is in the insulated world of the caucuses.
It seems to be that dislike of caucuses is pretty unanimous, but as someone who has studied election systems, I think it’s worth defending them. I suppose the first thing I should say is that the reason Texas uses their “two-step” method is to prevent Republicans from crashing the party (so to speak). The idea is that Republicans won’t be willing to come back and wait around to caucus, while they might show up to quickly vote in states where there is no party registration. In practice, I know that this worked. I know many republicans in my neighborhood were bragging about how they had showed up to vote for Clinton in the primary because they thought she would be easier for McCain to beat, but those same people didn’t bother to come stand around for a couple of hours to caucus. In that respect, the caucus may have given a better sampling of what Texas democrats were actually thinking (consider how close the margin in the primary was).
Secondly, the idea that a caucus is really just a popularity contest is somewhat misleading. In the Texas caucus, we basically just waited in line and wrote our name down on a piece of paper. Essentially it was just voting. Okay, it wasn’t secret ballot, but that isn’t necessarily a problem; why do we believe that people shouldn’t have to publicly justify why they’re voting for a candidate? We had public voting in this country for well over a century until we ran into the problem of buying votes. I’m guessing there aren’t any accusations of that happening right now? If not, then there’s probably no reason to be upset about it.
But of course, there’s always the argument that caucuses are “undemocratic.” Perhaps so, but is it any worse than the “first past the post” system we use in the primary, where someone could win by getting less than 50% of the vote if there are more than 3 candidates? At least in the Iowa caucus, people get the opportunity to have a second, or third, or fourth, etc., choice, while in a normal primary people only get a first choice. How is the idea that someone can win because they won 40% of the first choice democratic? At least some caucuses can counteract this.
Also, what about the unfairness of geographic representation in primaries? Texas was broken down into geographic districts that award delegates based on winning various districts. As a result, one person might win the popular vote but lose the delegate count, as was a real concern for Clinton. As it stands, Clinton won delegates and the popular vote, but just because the two occurred simultaneously, that doesn’t mean the process is wholly democratic.
And, what about the fact that Texas, which will not be voting for Democrat in November, is getting a chance to decide who is the best candidate? Is that a good system or not? We are picking the Party’s nominee, not necessarily picking the candidate that is most favorable to Democrats (and any Republicans and Independents that happen to join in) nationwide. What about the staggered voting system of the primary system, which seems to benefit states that go first as opposed to those that go second? Is that more or less “democratic?”
Listen, I’m not trying to justify the caucus, or argue against the system we have, but what I am doing is suggesting that there are problems with EVERY election system, including just a pure popular vote. I think it is unfair to discount the Texas caucus and to praise the Texas primary as somehow being a better reflection of the real result.
Um, I didn’t see anyone discounting the TX caucus. As for the unfairness of the delegate allocation, as I mentioned above, that’s a topic for another post.
Made the following post on not Larry Sabato yesterday, one on topic and one off topic. I also hate the term superdelegate. They are not super, they are just not pledged.
How laughable by Obama supporters on the one hand to brag about netting more delegates out of Texas where Obama lost the primary (subverting the will of the people) and on the other hand bitching about the possibility of unpledged delegates choosing the nominee (subverting the will of the people).
Deliciously ironic and quite hypocitical when in both cases, merely rules of the game (stupid rules in the Texas case).
Speaking of allowable rules, I predict the Democratic Parties of FL and MI will resubmit new delegate selection processes to the DNC for approval (which will happen) thereby avoiding a credentials fight (also a legal way to have them seated). Both states will be fully represented in Denver, NOT subverting the will of the people in 2 battleground states in the fall.
I’m no fan of Sen. Clinton, but the Florida delegates should be seated as they are.
Caucuses strike me as an exceptionally bad method of picking delegates for all the reasons mentioned above.
“…the Republican-controlled legislature set the date.”
Of course there were only 2 votes in either house of the Florida legislature against the bill. Florida Democrats didn’t exactly put up a fuss about it.
And it should be noted that Florida is being penalized by the RNC too. Their rules call for Florida to lose half its national convention delegates for holding an early primary, and they were still planning on enforcing them as of last November. Of course, with a consensus candidate, they may end up seating the whole delegation (and a few other violators as well) for the sake of making nice. But they don’t have one candidate trying to get the rules overturned for the sake of gaining an edge.
And as far as Obama and the superdelegates go, the difference is this: Obama himself has never advocated changing the rules to pledge the automatic delegates. He has made an appeal to those individuals to consider the results of the actual voting when making their decisions. A number of his more hot-aired supporters have called for trashing the rules, but they don’t speak for the candidate himself.