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 Monday, March 24, 2008
Primaries are not elections

I like closed primaries. A political party is an advocacy group, and that group may nominate and endorse a candidate in the presidential election. This is clear enough when considering minor parties. There's no reason why non-Greens ought to have any say in choosing whom the Green Party nominates for president. Why should it be any different for the Democratic or Republican party?

If a party allows non-members to vote in its primary process, it's purely a strategic decision. Some Democrats feel that allowing non-Democrats to vote in their primary is likely to result in a better nominee. If the party in a state feels that way, that's their prerogative, but it has nothing to do with a Republican's constitutional right to vote in a Democratic election.

Those who criticize closed primaries -- or state caucuses, or superdelegates -- as undemocratic are missing the distinction between the primary and the real election. (Either that or they know better but are being disingenuous.) In spite of the shorthand used universally in the news media, the candidates in the primary election are not running for president; they are vying to be their party's nominee. If they don't get the nomination, they can still run for president. Mike Huckabee, John Edwards, Ron Paul, or Dennis Kucinich can still run for president if he likes; he just won't have the backing of the Republican or Democratic party. That backing is what McCain has won and Obama and Clinton are still contesting.

Here is John Yoo in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the Democratic Party's nomination process:

Sound undemocratic? It is. That the 2008 Democratic nominee for president will be chosen by individuals no one voted for in the primaries flew for too long under the commentariat's radar. This from the party that litigated to "make every vote count" in the 2000 Florida recount, reviled the institution of the Electoral College for letting the loser of the national popular election win the presidency, and has called the Bush administration illegitimate ever since.

He's right that superdelegates make the procedure less democratic. That's the whole point. He goes awry in insinuating that there's something wrong with that. By comparing the Democratic Party's nominating procedure with the 2000 general election, he's implying that there is a disenfranchisement issue, which there is not. If it's true that votes went uncounted in Florida in 2000, that is a crime because our constitution gives citizens the right to vote in the general election. Perhaps Mr Yoo is reading a different constitution (the same one that tells him that the president is exempt from all law so long as he declares war, I suppose) but my constitution says nothing at all about party nominating procedures.

I have several quibbles with Yoo's highly misleading paragraph about the 1824 election, too, but that'll have to wait for another post.

Voting for your opponent

On Saturday, I wrote, "And don't even get me started on the double stupidity of voting in the other party's primary in an attempt to elect the candidate you consider most defeatable." I'm started now, so let's pursue it.

The Texas primary is an open primary. That is, Republicans are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary. In the days leading up to the Texas primary, radio celebrity Rush Limbaugh, who has spent more than a decade telling his listeners what a horrible horrible person Hillary Clinton is, advised his Republican listeners to vote for her. Why? Limbaugh's argument was that Clinton is less electable than Obama. Therefore, having her chosen as the Democratic nominee would increase the chances of a Republican victory in the fall.

Mr Limbaugh has done his followers a great disservice. For starters, it's not at all clear that Clinton is less electable than Obama. The case Clinton's supporters are making to the Democratic superdelegates is precisely the opposite, that Obama is the one who is unelectable. Obama's supporters deny this, and argue to the contrary that he is more electable than she. Me, I think they're both about equally electable.

Suppose that Limbaugh is right and Clinton really is less electable than Obama, and suppose further than his little gimmick of getting Republicans to vote for her in the Democratic primary succeeds in securing her the nomination. It's still a bad move strategically.

Most of the larger indicators favor the Democrats in the upcoming election. Nothing is guaranteed, obviously, but there's a very good chance that the Democratic candidate will defeat the Republican candidate regardless of whom the parties nominate. If that happens, then Limbaugh's accomplishment will be to pick a Democratic candidate who will perhaps win in less of a landslide but will win nevertheless. If Limbaugh's listeners actually believe that Ms Clinton is the horrible ogre he unceasingly portrays her as, they will have him to thank for making that ogre the president of the United States.

But Limbaugh doesn't really care about that. His reasoning is simple, and it is sound. Supporting Clinton in the Democratic primary may not help the Republican cause, but it surely helps Mr Limbaugh's cause. For 16 years, he's made a career out of attacking Clintons. If Hillary Clinton doesn't win the primary, he'll have to rely on something else. No doubt he'll find a way to attack Obama, or any other Democrat that comes along. But he probably won't be as good at it as he was with Clinton.

11:06:31 PM  [permalink]  comment []