The Truce: Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party, page 27
There is some truth to this interpretation. Both Biden and Hillary Clinton scored some of their biggest wins over Bernie Sanders in South Carolina. Accordingly, moving up South Carolina’s primary might also be seen as a way to put obstacles in the path of any challenger to the incumbent president or—one day—to his anointed successor.
On the other hand, in 2008, Barack Obama bested Clinton and John Edwards in South Carolina by a thumping margin as a progressive insurgent. Moreover, Edwards had won the South Carolina primary four years before that, balking John Kerry on his otherwise untroubled march to the nomination. If Biden chose South Carolina for its predictability, he might be disappointed.
The remainder of the new calendar also largely aligned with Biden’s general election needs. It would spur Democrats to get a head start organizing the key battlegrounds of Nevada, Michigan, and Georgia, close contests in 2020 that were essential to Biden’s electoral college victory.
Biden’s slate stripped Iowa—a state which had gone for Trump in two straight elections—of power. However, New Hampshire, which Biden had won by seven points in 2020, was staying in the early window. And, according to Elleithee, an RBC member, it was Biden who saved their spot.
“It is because of President Biden that New Hampshire is being offered a waiver to stay second in the nation,” Elleithee said.
Elleithee noted there was substantial support for pushing New Hampshire down the list.
“A lot of people were saying, ‘Well, let’s bump them. Let’s maybe push them further back into the window. That might actually make more sense.’ The president saved them,” he explained.
With South Carolina going first, New Hampshire could no longer claim it was the “first-in-the-nation” primary. Sharing a date with Nevada also meant it was not alone as the second stop on the calendar. Still, Elleithee made the case that, practically speaking, this is where New Hampshire had always been—as the perennial second contest—and that the distinction of being the first-in-the-nation primary, rather than a caucus, was always a “fallacy.”
“The committee was torn on whether or not New Hampshire should remain in the early window at all,” Elleithee elaborated. “I think they made some very compelling arguments to stay in early window, not the least of which is they make the most sense [as the representative] from the East.”
In his assessment of why the DNC kept New Hampshire among the early states, Elleithee touched on a few of the requirements the committee had as it evaluated the various applicants. Ideally, the DNC wanted states from the different major regions of the country. It also wanted to select states where candidates would be able to compete without massive budgets. This gave smaller states, which are easier and cheaper to barnstorm, an advantage in the selection process. It also meant locations with pricier media markets, like New Jersey—which is largely serviced by television stations in the major cities of New York and Philadelphia—were out.
“There were slim pickings among the Eastern states,” Elleithee explained.
Delaware, which is the second smallest state by size and roughly a third non-white, would seem to fit the bill. However, in Delaware’s case, its association with Biden proved damaging. A former DNC official asked to maintain anonymity when discussing Delaware due to the sensitivity of the matter.
“Let’s stay on background on the Delaware question,” the official said. “At least until Joe Biden leaves office.”
According to this official, when the Delaware delegation came to the DNC, they were told in no uncertain terms that it would not work out by Elaine Kamarck, an RBC member and fiancée of Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who was the Democrats’ House majority whip at the time.
Kamarck saw Delaware as “the worst idea.” She had two opposing concerns. Legitimate challengers might stay away and view the state as in the bag for Biden. Meanwhile, more left-field upstarts like Marianne Williamson, the New Age author who entered the Democratic Primary in 2020 and was running again in 2024, could “wound” Biden if they decided to compete in Delaware and notched even 30 percent of the vote.
“There is literally no upside to having the home state of the incumbent president in the early window,” Kamarck said, according to the staffer. “It becomes a wasted primary.”
With few options in the East palatable to the RBC, New Hampshire would basically stay second on the calendar. Iowa received no such olive branches, and a wide range of voices pronounced the outcome just.
“Iowa failed the country,” Shakir wrote in his op-ed. “It embarrassed a party that was trying to defeat Donald Trump by appealing to democratic foundations and principles. And most unfortunately, Iowa failed its own residents, who cycle after cycle had shown an incredible seriousness of purpose in fulfilling their unique role to choose a president.”
While others may have rejoiced at Iowa’s downfall, the decision left many in the state with raw feelings. Scott Brennan, Iowa’s representative on the RBC, told a local newspaper, The Courier, that the move would help drive the state further right.
“Republicans in Iowa will seize this opportunity to double down on their caucuses and feed the narrative that Democrats have turned their back on Iowa,” Brennan said. “We are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of electoral failure and creating a Fox News bubble for our presidential candidates in which they have no opportunity or responsibility to meet and communicate with voters in red-leaning states.”
There was bitterness from New Hampshire too. Brennan voted against the measure along with New Hampshire’s RBC delegate Joanne Dowdell. “It is frustrating because the DNC is set to punish us despite the fact we don’t have the ability to change state law,” Dowdell said.
Her comment underscored a major potential problem with the DNC’s plan. The party organization controls the nomination process and the delegates that are awarded based on the primary results, but it is not actually in charge of the primaries themselves. While the DNC voted to make changes to the primary calendar, it had no direct power to make that calendar a reality. Primaries are run by state governments and scheduled according to state law, and caucuses are generally run by the state-level political parties, which are not obliged to take orders from the DNC.
In New Hampshire’s case, the law mandating the first-in-the-nation primary was bipartisan and applied to both the Democratic and Republican races. For its changes to be implemented, the DNC would need to rely on the good graces of New Hampshire’s secretary of state or legislature. Iowa and its caucus law posed a similar problem—and, as of this writing—both states are led by Republicans who have little motivation to do any favors for the DNC.
There were similar problems elsewhere. While Georgia was theoretically being rewarded by the committee with an opportunity to move up its date, it had a Republican governor and secretary of state who control the calendar. As of this writing, both of these Republicans insist the date for the primary is already set at its normal place outside of the early window.
Republican power in Georgia meant the DNC’s handling of its reforms gave the opposition the ability to create serious headaches for the Democrats. It also highlighted a simple fact: while the Democrats’ primary process was mired in debate and uncertainty, the Republican National Committee and its constituents swiftly signed off on their 2024 schedule and were set to maintain their status quo. While the major establishment Democratic institutions may have been more unified than their progressive counterparts, they couldn’t match the ruthless efficiency on the opposite side of the two-party system.
The DNC could not dictate the primary calendar outright, but its control of the nominating process gave it substantial leverage to enforce its will, and the Rules and Bylaws Committee sketched out a range of fairly stern penalties to that end. This enforcement mechanism was based on a precedent set in 2008, which was the last time the Democrats had a major fight over the primary calendar.
That cycle showed how difficult and dangerous it can be for the party to change the primary process. The problems in the 2008 race actually started in 2006 when, in a gesture at diversity, the DNC opened up the pre-window period to add South Carolina and Nevada for the 2008 primary. That last series of reforms to the calendar ended up putting the entire system through an intense stress test.
When the pre-window period was expanded to include Nevada and South Carolina for 2008, Florida and Michigan opted to jump the line. Each scheduled primaries before Iowa (and all the other early states) without obtaining a waiver. The DNC initially reacted harshly, stripping Florida and Michigan of all their delegates at the national convention and warning candidates not to campaign there.
This became a potent issue in the protracted contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama had done as the DNC wished. He had taken his name off the Michigan ballot (it wasn’t an option to do this in Florida) and he had refrained from campaigning in either of the two states. Most of the other candidates in the primary, including Biden, had done the same. Clinton had not; unlike the other candidates, she had kept her name on the Michigan ballot and had visited Florida again and again for fundraisers in the days leading up to its vote. Naturally, Clinton won the most votes in both Florida and Michigan. When the officially recognized primaries were over, Obama held an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates and he was set to become the nominee—unless you were to count the disqualified delegates from Florida and Michigan.
With the race down to the wire, the Clinton campaign and its supporters—hardened in opposition to Obama by months of campaign brawling—seized on the possibility of legitimizing the Florida and Michigan delegates, who, after all, were backed by the votes of millions of Americans, and just maybe snatching the nomination from Obama. It turned into a bruising battle, which featured a tumultuous protest by hard-core Clinton supporters on the outskirts of a decisive 2008 Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting at a Marriott hotel in Washington.
In the end, the RBC settled on a face-saving compromise: Florida and Michigan would each have half of their pledged delegates seated. It was not enough for Clinton to win or to throw the convention into chaos, but it was something. The rogue states were punished for their intransigence, and the nomination was settled, but the roughly two million Democrats who voted in Michigan’s and Florida’s primaries would at least have some voice at the convention.
That compromise served as the blueprint when the RBC met in late 2022 and outlined the penalty for states that refuse to comply with the DNC’s 2024 primary calendar. The rules would automatically strip any state that held a nominating contest outside the window without a valid waiver of half its delegates. Moreover, any candidate that campaigned in such a state would lose all pledged delegates from that state.
During the 2022 RBC meeting, David McDonald, a committee member, elaborated: “The penalties [for non-compliant states] are automatic and don’t require a vote of the DNC. You lose half your delegates without us taking any action. But in practice, we are highly likely to take away the rest of the delegates with an actual vote depending on the state. That’s what happened in 2008. Because if a state is large enough, half of its delegates is still a big chunk of delegates. So for larger states, we might well take away the rest of the delegates [and] go beyond the automatic.”
Of course, the enforcers of these rules on the RBC would confront a situation somewhat unlike 2008. Rather than policing up-jumped states who sought to disrupt the established order, the RBC would be trying to institute a new one. And their vision of enforcement gives color to the fears that the DNC’s calendar reforms could go seriously awry. If New Hampshire scheduled a primary before South Carolina, as its long-standing law would require its secretary of state to do, Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and any other campaigns in the field would face hard choices driven by New Hampshire’s potential as a battleground state in a general election race.
If the state’s leaders follow through on their threat to ignore the DNC’s rulings, Biden would be forced to either boycott New Hampshire, which would mean devoting no early resources to the state, or to campaign there and open himself up to delegate penalties in a primary or charges of hypocrisy later on.
Biden entered the 2024 race as a powerful incumbent within his own party, but he won the White House in 2020 by fewer than 100,000 votes spread across several states. As his reelection bid began, Biden could much more easily afford to sacrifice New Hampshire’s convention delegates than risk losing its electoral votes. State leaders potentially could exert considerable leverage on the Biden campaign by arguing that sitting out a noncompliant primary would cost him those electoral votes in the general. As of this writing and as the 2024 general election draws nearer, those pressures appear likely to build.
Biden’s own calendar may have created land mines for him on the general election trail. But the delegate issue wasn’t necessarily the most dangerous looming obstacle the reforms posed for the party.
That was Biden’s fifth principle. In his letter outlining his recommendations for the primaries, Biden called for the calendar to be reset every four years. In agreeing to do this, the party baked in potential fights down the road.
The infighting that may occur during the 2024 race is likely to be just a small preview of what will come down the line. There has already been acrimony over the calendar with a powerful incumbent and a primary that is not expected to be competitive. Imagine what could happen if a more crowded field of candidates fights over the calendar. The reforms guarantee that, every four years, the stage will be set for serious battles and candidates scrambling to gain advantages from the schedules.
The calendar decisions each cycle, by necessity, will occur in obscure party committee meetings well before anyone casts a vote. Thanks to modern laws, you won’t find anyone lighting a cigarette in those meetings, but they could represent a return of the smoke-filled room. After all of his efforts to heal the divisions within the party, Biden created a new venue for major internecine fights going forward.
Perhaps the clearest winners from the calendar makeover were South Carolina and the man who was pivotal in delivering the state to Biden: Jim Clyburn. At the end of the DNC meeting in Philadelphia, the last word went to “Big Jim,” who delivered final remarks from the dais. His stamp on the new process was clear.
On his way out of the venue, we asked Clyburn whether he had talked with Biden about moving his home state to first position.
“Not for one second. Never. I don’t know where people get that idea,” Clyburn insisted.
However, as he was walking away, Clyburn paused, turned around, and seemed to admit he had indeed made a request on behalf of his state.
“I just wanted to be in the window,” he said with a wry smile.
Chapter 16
AFTERBURN
The progressive surge that ignited in 2016 offered a challenge to the Democratic party and posed practical questions. Will it last, or is it a flash in the pan? Who will lead the insurgents as they try to reach the next level and enact their transformative vision for American politics?
Bernie Sanders—the man who struck the match—does not have a clear answer. A pair of phone conversations with him showed the questions that remain for the movement he inspired may be even more fundamental than worrying about its future.
“You use the word ‘the left.’ I’m not quite sure what that means,” Sanders said in one of our interviews for this book.
Sanders knew the progressive movement he helped galvanize isn’t necessarily a unified force. He had no clear heir, and the leaders that have emerged in the space have demonstrated vastly different priorities.
While progressives may not be entirely on the same page, in the nearly ten years since Sanders launched his first presidential campaign, they have unquestionably become a force. The work Joe Biden, a mainstream Democratic president, has done to cater to progressives suggests they will have an ongoing, important role in the party. And, from taking down local machines, to pressing for reforms in the primary process, and pushing through their legislative priorities in a hostile Congress, it’s also evident they have already had immense impact. These gains, however fragile they may be, and the efforts of Biden, Barack Obama, and others to build an alliance with progressives within the Democratic Party, are a profound tribute to the political significance of the movement Bernie Sanders shaped.
While Sanders was reluctant to characterize the larger left, he knew what he wanted his own movement to be. For Sanders, progressive politics should focus on economics and policy rather than identity.
“The struggle for America is the need to bring together the working-class, low-income people in this country who form the vast majority of our people. It is not identity politics. Alright? It is not seeing that a Black woman goes to the moon. That’s fine. It is to make sure that Black kids in America—they have the opportunity to get a college education, they get health care as a human right, they get jobs that pay them, and everybody else, a living wage,” Sanders said, adding, “Our job is to bring people together around an agenda that works for all workers.”
By explicitly rejecting “identity politics” in favor of socialist economics, Sanders chose a side in a debate that raged among progressives as they strived to build a winning coalition amid a series of new movements like MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and the push for transgender rights. Sanders also dialed in on the central rift within the Democratic Party and the question that bedeviled the Democratic Socialists of America in their electoral work: whether to operate within the Democratic Party or outside of it.
In his three Senate races, Sanders ran as a Democrat in the primary, won the nomination, and then declined it before running as an independent. During his 2016 presidential campaign, he briefly enrolled as a Democrat to participate in the New Hampshire primary before promptly un-enrolling. Sanders’s contortions frustrated many mainline Democrats who viewed him as an invading force.
