2028 Primary Stupidity
A dumb way to choose candidates? Or the dumbest way?
This morning’s episode of The Daily, “Democratic Anger and Republican Revenge: Welcome to the Primaries,” illustrates yet again the absurdity of the way we choose candidates for high office.
The transcription is not yet available but, in a nutshell:
Republican primaries for key US Senate, US House, and even some state legislative races are being dominated by President Trump’s revenge tour against Republican politicians who have dared oppose him. It highlights a weekend report from one of the guests, Shane Goldmacher, “Trump’s Push for Electoral Retribution Heads to the Ballot Box,” which is more detailed that the podcast discussion.
But, basically, Republican-aligned groups are spending millions of dollars going after easily re-electable Republican incumbents, rather than saving their war chest to target Democrats in a crucial midterm election that will determine how much of Trump’s agenda can be passed in the remainder of his term. In particular, they’re going after Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who votes with Trump essentially all the time but voted to convict in the post-January 6 impeachment trial; Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who’s voted with Trump 91% of the time but opposed him on the release of the Epstein files and the Iran War; and several Indiana state legislators who voted against gerrymandering the state’s congressional districts.
This is all good news for Democrats and others who oppose Trump. But it’s just idiotic from a political strategy standpoint. The only thing Trump should be worried about is keeping his thin majorities in Congress.
Meanwhile, Democratic primary voters in Maine have nominated a Nazi* firebrand with no political experience rather than popular two-term Governor Janet Mills because she’s not sufficiently exciting. Since the party needs to run the table on the Senate races in November, and Republican Susan Collins is seemingly quite vulnerable, this seems wildly stupid. But Democrats are mad at Chuck Schumer, so they’re sticking it to him. Because reasons.
Choosing candidates based on the preferences of the angriest, most rabidly ideological voters makes no sense at all. And, of course, the fact that the House is gerrymandered such that 32 of 435 seats are considered competitive, and we are so polarized that 46 of 50 states have both of their Senators from the same party, means there’s seldom punishment at the ballot box for choosing the worst candidates. We’re just punished as a society.
*He had a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest for twenty years. He claims he was unaware. I don’t believe he could possibly be that stupid.
UPDATE: After seeing the tattoo in question, I withdraw my original conclusion. It’s more than plausible he thought this more akin to a Punisher skill than something linked to Adolf Hitler or the Third Reich. Despite some mildly racist social media posts, there’s no evidence that he’s a hardcore racist, much less a skinhead or Nazi.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Several commentators below have pointed to pretty damning evidence that he was well aware of what the symbol was and only had it covered when it became a problem politically.
Susan Collins, not Olympia Snowe.
Is there a better way? As I see it there are 2 issues that reinforce each other and with our current SCOTUS I see zero chance of making things better. First, only the true believers vote in primaries and they are happy to choose radical candidates. Second, we have gerrymandering which guarantees the radical candidate wins. Occasionally a radical nominated for a state level position like senator or governor where gerrymandering cant save them will result in a loss like when in Delaware the GOP nominated a witch for senator in 2016.
Steve
Janet Mills also doesn’t excite the boring moderate labor class in Maine. Maine is an extremely blue collar state with a still-large fishing industry, and Platner can talk that talk. Sounds like the locals dgaf about the Nazi tattoo because they see him as a more genuine person, which…fair. From the national perspective, he never should have gotten that far, but he built momentum at the right time to become the de facto alternative to the old guard that nobody’s happy with.
An even better example of what you’re talking about here is in Nebraska, where the Senate primary has one Dem who’s a pretty obvious GOP plant up against a latecomer who’s only there to drop out because the Nebraska Democratic Party recognizes that the best chance to flip the seat is the guy running as an Independent. Useful!
@steve222: The better way is to have parties chose their own candidates. This would likely lead to more parties because factions within parties who were denied access to the ballot would need to break away instead of staying in the party (think the DSA, MAGA, the Tea Party).
This is how the rest of the world works (with some limited exceptions).
See here for more.
To the point of the OP: NPR had a piece about Trump targeting GOP state senate candidates in their primaries because they didn’t vote for his gerrymandering scheme.
One last note: primaries are what gave us Trump. If the GOP used an elite-level process they never would have given him the keys to the party (just go back and see how party elites were reacting to him even before he was nominated, if even the way Ted Cruz acted at the 2016 RNC).
A plurality of GOP primary voters and then the EC led to what we have been living with for the last decade. To give a slight variation on my mantra: flawed institutions matter.
@Michael Reynolds: Fixed. They’re interchangeable in my mind.
@Steven L. Taylor: 100%. Trump would have been like the 8th choice from the 2016 field had party elites done the nominating. Of course, Jeb/Marco/Kasich/Cruz may well have lost to Hillary, since it would have been a radically different dynamic.
IMO, “Idiots Acting Idiotically” ranks alongside “Dogs Bites Man” in the headline impact department.
@James Joyner:
Given the flukey nature of 2016, that is quite possible. But I still don’t think that the lesson they would have learned is “we should have nominated Trump.”
All of this reminds me that every time I see Lindsey Graham sloppily kissing Trump’s ass in public, I think of this video.
And this one.
And stuff like this.
@Steven L. Taylor: Thanks! I think you are probably correct though I remain a bit skeptical that it would work as well in the US as elsewhere. IIRC, we didnt really adopt the primary system until after WW2 and not widely until after the 60s and I dont think our congressmen were much better in the past. However, I do agree that we dont get a Trump if the party elites had a choice.
Query- What’s cause and effect here? Did the switch to the primary system lead to our extreme polarization? Did the long term efforts of the political elites to control the media and create hyper-partisanship set up a population in which the most extreme candidates would thrive? How much of this is general voter apathy? If turn out in primaries was high we also, I think, have fewer of these awful candidates.
Steve
@steve222: FWIW, we have been using primaries as the main nomination mechanism for everything but president for well over a century. It has profoundly shaped partisan competition in the US.
Primaries as the controlling mechanism for the president came in 1972 (prior to that time, presidential primaries were basically “beauty contests” with the conventions being the main nomination meachnism.
My point is not that primaries cause polarization. My point is that primaries stifle new party formation. Primaries also amplify the more ideological elements of the parties because those voters are more likely to vote in primaries.
Higher turnout in primaries might ameliorate that to a degree, but the reality is that turnout in the US in low as a general matter, for a variety of reasons and it will never be high for nomination races since they aren’t the “real” elections in many people’s minds.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Agreed. The long-term damage to the brand—and the loss of a party championing what the elites of 2015 and prior valued—wouldn’t have been worth it to them.
It continues to amaze me the degree to which people will abandon their principles for political advantage. See also: Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
@steve222:
I see @Steven L. Taylor: has replied. I’d add a couple of observations:
First, the irony of primaries being sold as more democratic. I think they more represent a rule of bureaucracies, leaders seek power and perks, they seek to shed accountability.
Second, I’d note on your observation about control of media, that this is true, but is also very asymmetric, as is partisan extremism. But Joel Gray and Liza Minelli had the real answer to how extreme partisanship developed,
One, they have not yet nominated Platner. The primary is in June.
Two, Mills is not really that popular. A March 2026 poll from Emerson had her at 54% disapproval rating.
Three, it’s not that she’s not “exciting.” She’s old, and was (correctly, I think) perceived to be a Collins-in-waiting.
I don’t know what to make of Platner. He’s been drawing large crowds for a while now. From an electoral perspective, I think this is what happens when people feel ignored, or frustrated. They get angry, and the candidates they seek out are the ones who reflect that frustration. Platner works in one of the primary industrial drivers of the Maine economy. People are willing to wave off an old tattoo that he got when he was young and clueless…is that a mistake? Or is it where we end up when people are f*%king angry?
@Jen: Fair enough, although Mills dropped out because Platner was running away with it. Regardless of her current polling, she got elected statewide twice. Platner has not yet won a meaningful election. It’s just a huge gamble, although one that could pay off.
@James Joyner: I would like to go on the record as saying the tattoo thing was, indeed, a youthful indiscretion he’s outgrown and that if elected Platner will be the greatest senator Maine has ever had. And in the interest of gaining a thin margin in the Senate, I think every other Dem in the country should make a similar declaration.
I’ll also note that the electorate have a limited memory, as evidenced by the reelection of Trump. Six months is sometimes cited as their limit. We are now within six months of the Nov 3 midterms. From here out it all counts.
@James Joyner: Maine is a very white state. Perhaps a Nazi tattoo just plays favorably there?
Meanwhile, I just hope he’s one of the idiots who believes Nazis were really socialists, and he’s going to Washington to help implement (sigh) Hitler’s socialist agenda. It’s at least as plausible as him not knowing he had a Nazi tattoo for 20 years.
@gVOR10:
Nah, he had it for 20 years; he was surely questioned, if not outright informed, at some point in the last 175,200 hours since he got the tattoo that he has a prominent Nazi symbol on his chest. He was willing to go through the money and pain of having it inked onto his chest, but not to have it removed or covered up. Until it became publicly known, and then was much too inconvenient.
Now, if the story had been that he had a weird black bar on his chest, and ope! it’s covering up a very old Nazi tattoo that he was ashamed of, that’s an entirely different story.
In my 42 years I have yet to break my “don’t vote or support Nazi’s” pledge. I admit Mainers have a harder decision than I, but for anyone not living in Maine it should be a pretty easy choice to say “I’d rather not” to having a Nazi candidate–even a youthfully indiscrete one! It’s even easier to not go out of one’s way to declare support for the cretin.
@Steven L. Taylor:
While I don’t disagree, the record of the Dem party at least, choosing a candidate is at best mixed. Since it is under discussion, Maine for example, Schumer and the Maine Dem party bet the house on Mills. And in Mass in 2010 the Dems anointed Martha Coakley for Ted Kennedy’s seat. Coakley being a known terrible campaigner.
@Sleeping Dog:
Didn’t she win a multi-candidate primary?
I’ll also add that people can and do change, and this is why all tattoos should be very carefully considered.
I held a lot of beliefs in my early- to mid-twenties that I am 180 degrees away from now. While a tattoo of my policy beliefs was never in the cards, and I certainly would not have combined a night of drinking + policy beliefs + ink, my hunch is that it does happen. He’s had the tattoo covered up.
Have there been subsequent revelations of his holding these views? Either now or even back then? (I haven’t heard of any, but really I’m watching this race in a neighboring state so maybe at about a 50% level of attention.)
I get the sense that the reason it’s being largely ignored by Maine voters has roots in one of the following: no additional evidence to back up that these are strongly-held current beliefs; young people do dumb things (especially after drinking and in groups); young people can have dumb views; and a “so what, he’s saying the right things now.”
@Neil Hudelson:
Yes, but she was the party’s candidate
@Sleeping Dog:
Two thoughts.
1. Having Schumer and some local politicos recruiting someone to run in a primary is not what I am really envisioning when I say I want an institutionalized party to select candidates.
2. In such an environment (i.e., one without primaries), maybe someone like Plattner forms his own party and competes, and we all get to see that the Dems picked a lackluster candidate.
@Sleeping Dog:
I forgot to address this. None of what you are describing is “The Democratic Party” selecting general election candidates.
Part of what I am trying to get people to see is that what we often call “The Dems” is not actually a specific actor.
Currently, the only individuals empowered to select candidates (save in some rare examples) are primary voters.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Something relevant to all three of these quotes is that primaries are, for the most part, under the thumbs of 50 state legislatures. None of which want national parties poking their fingers in. It’s one of the last major holdouts of state sovereignty. Ask the Libertarians or Greens about the difficulties it creates. Neither of those can consistently get candidates for President or US Senator on the ballots in all 50 states. Myself, I don’t believe the two major national parties will ever be able to break the state legislatures.
@Michael Cain:
I would be curious as to what you mean by this.
As well as this:
I just don’t know what this is supposed to mean. I am not about to get Tommy Tubberville as governor because the state legislature is driving that bus (they may prefer him, but they aren’t the mover). State legislatures don’t recruit candidates.
For that matter, what is your conception of the national parties?
I agree that the legal parameters are dictated by statute, but they don’t have actual candidate selection under their thumbs.
And sure, I can see that there might be some pushback on nationally centralized candidate selection by state party elites, but there is nothing in what I am proposing that would preclude state-level input, or even control, of these processes.
@Sleeping Dog:
Because she won the primary. Not because “the party” put her on the ballot.
@Jen:
Ignored by activist Maine Dems, at least. Maybe most Maine voters are only vaguely aware? We have short memories and attention spans. Last year this time, progressives were cheering Mills as the first governor to spar with Trump 2.0 on trans rights as other libs retreated. Mills quickly went “first Dem Mainer to twice win statewide in generations” to old hat.
But I’ve lived long enough to see public perception of Hillary Clinton morph from firebreathing socialist-feminist (the 90s) to warmongering establishmentarian (00s) to nation’s most popular active politico (2010-2014) to unlikeable bad candidate (2015-). Americans are schizo.
The NRSC intends to make Platner’s controversies known to Mainers beyond Dem primary voters — not the tatt, but his whole Reddit account treasure trove: self-described “communist” (2021); agreed “all cops” were bastards (2020); homophobic slurs (2018); women shouldn’t get drunk if worried about rape (2012) etc. They’ll try to soften him up from the right and the left.
Comparisons with Trump are relevant in that a) Trump never won Maine for a reason; Maine wasn’t sold on controversial mistakes = authenticity.
And b) nominating Platner indicates Dem hypocrisy, which Collins has signaled will be a main point of attack: “Platner is the MAGA-like character in this race, not me.” As good a hail mary as any, I guess.
But the main attack will not be some old ink, it’ll be Swift Boating on the working class outsider oysterman schtick, to portray Platner as a phony campus leftist. His paternal granffather was a (fantastic) and accomplished modernist achitect; his father a powerful attorney; his mother a DNC delegate. They’ve donated tens of thousands to Dems and sent Graham to an elite Connecticut boarding school.
This is typical of that oppo:
No one should underestimate Susan Collins. Sarah Gideon infamously led 2020 polls wire to wire.
Fortunately, Dems now suddenly lead Republicans in favorability and are competitive also in the Iowa, Texas, and Ohio senate races.
Platner’s tattoo has been wildly overblown. I’ve been interested in World War 2 history all my life, but it would never have occurred to me that the tattoo had any necessary association with the Nazis*. Platner’s explanation that he and his buddies chose it from the selection on the wall at a tattoo parlour seems eminently plausible to me. And since he presumably hasn’t spent much of the intervening years walking around in public bare-chested, it’s equally plausible nobody ever told him it was the insignia of an SS division. In the absence of anything in his record resembling Nazi sympathies, his account of its history is perfectly reasonable.
Rather than preferrring him to Governor Janet Mills “because she’s not sufficiently exciting”, it’s likely Maine Democrats have bitter memories of what happened when party insiders pushed a 79 year-old into a presidential nomination, and recoiled from risking a repeat performance.
*My AI search engine reports that the death’s head symbol has been used by Prussian/German army units since the 1740s. Moreover:
– Spanish 8th Light Cavalry Regiment “Lusitania” (“Dragones de la Muerte”) earned it after heavy losses at the 1744 Battle of Madonna dell’Olmo.
– Polish “Death Hussars” (Dywizjon Jazdy Ochotniczej) and Poznański Ochotniczy Batalion Śmierci used it in the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921).
– Estonian Kuperjanov Battalion adopted skull-and-crossbones in 1918, still in use today.
– British 17th Lancers (now Royal Lancers) wear it since 1759 to honor General Wolfe, with “Death or Glory” motto.
@Neil Hudelson: It’s a huge stretch to call Platner’s old tattoo a “prominent Nazi symbol”. Courtesy of my AI seach engine:
I don’t know of anyone demanding all the “Nazi symbols” be removed from Hazchem notices.
@gVOR10: More from my valuable AI search engine in response to my query about the unofficial use of the death’s head symbol in the US military:
@James Joyner:
I don’t really know why, exactly, but I really fucking hate people like that. It’s like a physical revulsion, like they’re roadkill or an episode of The Pitt, they make me want to look away. I don’t like weak people, especially weak people posturing as Alpha tough guys when what they really are is office-bound pussies. I don’t like despising people, it’s not good for your mind.
@Ken_L:
I don’t know man. It’s pretty famous.
@Ken_L:
How about his deceleration in January 2026 (after the issue of his tattoo was out there and he had covered it up with a Nordic symbol) that he was a “long time fan” of a white supremacist youtube channel? Or the following month when he retweeted a white nationalist?
@Neil Hudelson:
Indeed. there are credible reports that he referred to it as “my totenkopf” in 2012 in DC.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I seem to remember a very smart professor with the initials S.L.T. educating us that we have a 2 party system primarily due to first past the post districts…
Without getting rid of those (or fully moving to RCV?), I don’t see how we get viable new parties…
@SKI: Now that story is something I was not aware of*, and is very troubling. I can’t track down the name of the guy who dropped out of the Senate race when Mills entered it, but I’m guessing he’s regretting his choice right now.
Mills never should have been encouraged to run, IMHO. It’s an old political fallback position to look at who has won statewide and assume that + name ID = best chance of winning. It shows to me at least that Schumer STILL doesn’t get it that age is now a huge factor. I mean, my gawd, we have the President of the United States babbling and clearly on the decline.
* Again, I’ve been paying only slightly more attention to that race than others, simply because it’s the state next door.
@SKI: Forgive me if I don’t regard as “credible” stories sourced to a single anonymous “former acquaintance”, especially given the nonsensical “speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue”.