In search of 'The Primary Solution'
BONUS: What exactly are the 'double haters'?
Permit me to indulge in more reflections on yet another threat to democracy. No, not an aspiring autocrat running for president or a collapse of journalism leading to an uninformed public.
If America is a troubled nation (and I think most people can agree that it is), how do we turn it around? As is the case with most complex problems, there is no easy fix. But one young man has an idea that could change the face of American democracy for the better.
While his premise might seem naive to some, Nick Troiano is the author of a new book, A Primary Solution: Rescuing our democracy from the fringes, that at least offers some hope. What, pray tell, is the main culprit? As the subtitle suggests:
In a divided America, the biggest solvable problem fueling political extremism and dysfunction is hiding in plain sight: party primaries. The Primary Solution shows how to fix them.
I would go further and argue that “parties” in general are problematic (more on that later), but getting rid of partisan primaries might accomplish a number of worthy goals. As Troiano points out, party primaries were conceived roughly 100 years ago to “democratize candidate nominations,” but today their “exclusionary rules and low turnout” guarantee the exact opposite.
In today’s elections, only a sliver of the electorate (the party activists who vote in primaries and caucuses) decide the vast majority of our elections on the national and state levels — and sometimes even in our towns, cities and school boards. I have argued before that another possible solution is to make all local elections nonpartisan.
I do agree with Troiano that the problem is worse on the national level: House and Senate races, as well as the presidential elections. One result of partisan primaries is that the candidates that emerge victorious have done so by pandering to the activists bases of their parties. That’s because the activists pay close attention and they’re the ones who are most inclined to open their wallets when the cash-hungry office-seeker makes the ask. They’re often the voters who are glued to cable news and spend a lot of time on the platform formerly known as Twitter. In other words, the political energy, right and left, is all on the fringes.
In so-called “safe” congressional districts, incumbent members of the House of Representatives understand that the chief threat to their reelection lies not in a strong challenge from the other party, but from being primaried by a member of their own party who is unhappy with the incumbent’s lack of adherence to party orthodoxy, or in the case of the Republican Party, insufficient fealty to Donald Trump.
In the other chamber, only five states still have split Senate delegations represented by one Democrat and one Republican. It is expected that the number of split delegations will be even lower after the 2024 November elections. This, of course, pushes both the incumbent and the challenger farther to the extremes, and makes them ill-prepared, if elected, to do their jobs and pass legislation that has broad appeal.
The faithful will always remain dedicated to their party and its putative philosophy and goals. But increasing numbers of Americans have, like yours truly, refused to register with either of the two major parties, choosing instead to align with minor parties or no party at all.
The result is the so-called “rise of the independents.” Gallup polling from 11 months ago revealed that a record 49% of Americans identify as politically independent, nearly the same percentage as those who are actually enrolled in either of the two major parties. Steve Rattner does a crackerjack video presentation on this, too, complete with his trademark charts.
“By far the dominant U.S. party isn’t Democrats or Republicans,” reports Axios. “It’s: ‘I’ll shop around, thank you.’”
And as Troiano observes, “We run our country like a company that scrutinizes its final products but entirely ignores its own assembly line. It’s time we refocus our attention.” Or, as my Substack colleague Jon Ward puts it, “The broken toys keep coming off the line. So we buy different toys, yet those too are broken. But instead of asking why toys keep breaking, we just keep trying to buy a new toy.”
How to effect change? Troiano suggests nonpartisan primaries, not to be confused with open primaries in which any registered voter can vote in a party primary. For a long time, I’ve resisted the idea that party primaries should be open to all voters regardless of whether they are enrolled in the party or not. After all, these parties are private organizations and if you want to vote in one of their primaries, then you should have the guts to register with the organizing party. As others have pointed out, however, the problem with my logic is that these primaries are publicly funded, paid for by all taxpayers, be they Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or anything in between. So if they’re funded by everyone, they should be open to everyone of voting age who resides in the jurisdiction.
Trouble is, most states don’t permit open primaries, resulting in an estimated 23.5 million independent voters being locked out of the process. My state of Connecticut allows unaffiliated voters to vote in a primary election if authorized by a political party’s rules (it’s called a “partially closed primary”). But of course neither of Connecticut’s major political parties allows it, so the system is effectively closed.
We are making some progress, however. Twelve states have changed their systems in recent years, and at least three more are considering it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But others have doubled down. To wit, the conference also reported that last year, Tennessee added criminal penalties for participating in a party’s primary without being a “bona fide” member of the party, and Wyoming moved to a closed primary system where only party members may participate.
So as you can see, the main obstacle to primary reform and the strengthening of the middle is the parties themselves. They have simply become too powerful and their interests are not always aligned with the people’s.
Meanwhile, read Troiano’s book, or watch the interview above to get a better sense of what he’s talking about. As Barton Swaim noted in his Wall Street Journal review of Toriano’s work (free link):
The book has more to do with Congressional and state-level races than with presidential ones, but its appearance just before Super Tuesday is fortuitous timing: Both the Democratic and Republican parties seem poised to nominate two men for the presidency whom a large majority of Americans would prefer not to see again.
Meanwhile, I am reminded of what George Washington said about political parties in his farewell address:
Ever heard of the ‘double haters’
On a related matter, there is an interesting column in this morning’s USA Today by a couple of experienced national pollsters on the likely role the so-called “double haters” could play in the presidential election in November. Read on:
“Will Biden or Trump win ‘double haters’? Unhappy voters may decide 2024 election” by Celinda Lake and Christine Matthews (free link)
Polls have consistently shown that most Americans are dissatisfied with this year’s likely presidential choices, with both Trump’s and Biden’s unfavorable ratings below water. So for lack of a better term, the authors have coined “double haters” to describe those of us who disapprove of both of them.
A Marquette University poll conducted in early- to mid-February fixes this group at about 17% of the electorate, which the USA Today writers say “is nearly identical to the share of voters in 2016 who disliked both Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump ended up winning this group, which broke toward him in the late stages of the campaign and may have been a key factor in his victory.”
Interestingly, exit polling showed that in 2020 only about 3% of voters shared an unfavorable view of both Trump and Biden. This year some of the double-haters could wind up voting for independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., if he makes it onto the ballot in their state. Indeed, in the Marquette poll RFK2 wins a plurality of those who dislike Trump and Biden.
But I suspect the election will be decided by the double haters in key swing states like Michigan. That state has a large Muslim/Arab-American population that went overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, allowing him to win Michigan by nearly 4 percentage points.
That same group is now deeply disappointed in Biden’s mostly pro-Israel stance on the matter of Israel’s war against Hamas. But will they vote for Trump, who during his first presidential campaign in 2015 proposed “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on?”
I don’t think so. More likely they will vote third party or they will simply stay home.
Hard to see Biden getting reelected without Michigan. If Biden does indeed lose, look for the “double haters” in Michigan as a major culprit. You heard it here.