In Praise of Consensus
Unity is good, and "coronation" is the wrong word.
My co-blogger, James Joyner asks if the coronation of Harris as the presumptive nominee is a good idea or not. I am going to unequivocally state that yes, yes it is.
First, I don’t like the word “coronation” because I think it has the wrong general connotation and is also simply inaccurate. I do not fault James for using it, as that is what the media, writ large, has decided to call an outcome in which Harris faces no real opposition in the process of replacing Biden as the Democratic Party’s choice for nominee. Indeed, I almost used it myself in the title of this post because it is a useful shorthand.
However, as the reader can see above, I went with “consensus” and that is indeed what we are seeing. The word “coronation” connotes royalty and some kind of inherent right to a position regardless of what anyone else thinks or whatever arguments they could make. Quite clearly if there was a significant faction of the Democratic Party that truly thought it could make a case to be the new standard bearer, then we would not have consensus, but instead we would have a fight.
I would say that “coronation” would be the right word if Biden and his faction of the party were strong-arming out another faction to block them from competing and using their power to put Harris on the ballot. But this is not what is happening. What is happening is there is rapid consensus forming around the idea of a Harris-led ticket.
This leads to my second point, both from the point of view of the Democratic Party, but also from the general anti-Trump coalition that includes Never-Trump Republicans and independents, a fight would have been a serious problem. As I have been arguing for some time, one of the major risks of Biden bowing out was that it would cause a public fight within the party (which many in the media seemed to be salivating over, to be honest). Such a fight would have taken the focus off of both Trump and of anything positive about the Democrats. It would also have provided nothing but an avalanche of material for the Trump campaign.
Moreover, given that the exact ideological differences between Harris and Whitmer and Nesom and Shaprio and Whomever are relatively small in the grand scheme of things, what would have been the point?
If one’s goal is to defeat Trump, then the current scenario is the preferred one.
Indeed, I had two main concerns about Biden dropping out from the get-go. The first was that there would be a damaging intra-party fight. That concern appears to be laid to rest and in quick order to my relieve. The second are concerns linked to gender and race and the unfortunate fact that some voters will have trouble voting for a woman of color.
I will also state that I do not think that there is any particular need for candidate selection to have internal democratic mechanisms. This is not because I don’t value democracy! It is because there is no particular reason why a candidate picked by internal democratic means provides either the best candidate in terms of campaigning and most assuredly does not provide one that necessarily does the best job of representing the party.
The goal of nominating a candidate under a party label ought to be a process by which that party provides the voters with a person who is representative of what that party is and who reflects what that party’s label means. That is the way it works in pretty much the rest of the world (with a few exceptions, and even then those exceptions really are not like the US).
Indeed, after years of study and contemplation I have come to see primaries as a major problem (and I once would have argued that primaries were democratic and good because of that–I have a vague recollection of making that argument on a blog, but I can’t recall if it was here or on PoliBlog–or maybe both).
I am reminded of this quote from political scientist E. E. Schattschneider from his 1942 book, Party Government, “Democracy is not to be found in the parties but between the parties.” We need parties to provide voters with clear choices and labels that help voters make choices. It more likely to produce that clarity via candidate selection processes other than primaries.
I think Trump is an apex example of this, insofar at the party itself did not pick Trump. The primary process did and then the party did not transform Trump, Trump transformed the party.
If the nominee matters more than the party, that is telling. While part of this is presidentialization of the party system the primary process just amplifies that affect by several quanta.
On balance I think that because all of us grew up with primaries (for most offices) and have experienced them as integral to presidential nominations since 1972, we think of them as normal and therefore as good. But if the goal is the selection of candidates who are good representatives of their parties so as to provide voters with clear choices, they don’t work so well.
As a bonus, more consensus!
A big shoe drops via Axios: Nancy Pelosi endorses Kamala Harris as Democratic nominee.
And, more:
The Hill: Voto Latino pledges $44M to support Harris.
The Hill: ActBlue rakes in nearly $50 million in 7 hours after Harris campaign launch.
Via Newsweek: Nikki Haley Voters PAC Announces Support for Kamala Harris.
I’ve not been surprised at the coalescing because: money. She’s got it and no one else does.
I obviously have no idea what was happening behind the scenes, but I would not be surprised to discover that there was a bit of that. And comments by AOC over the weekend suggest that there was a significant not-Harris faction. Either she overstated it, they fell in line on their own, or there was a bit of pressure.
But I doubt that Biden would have stepped aside if there was a chance of a big messy floor fight.
This rings true and righteous. Well said.
@Gustopher:
Or Ms AOC knows how to perform Theatre quite well for maximising attention from her Lefty Left fans, and as well was perhaps no better way to get the Lefty Left to jump in a Pavlovian fashion to supporting an ex-prosecutor than to speak darkly of unnamed elites opposing…
As she matures, she does show signs of becoming quite operationally savvy in contrast to many of her Lefty peers. That deserves respect.
It can be observered further (as Pf. Taylor has in fact to my recollection) that it is not particularly genuinely ‘democratic’ to have a selection process which in operational fact is only voted and attended by a fraction of even the party-identifying, it is really operationally the façade of democracy, an excercise in self-delusion.
The pseudo-democratic primaries I have come to conclude from understanding gained from Pr. Taylor are one of the fundamental critical errors of the current American system – a reform that turned out to have rather fundamentally bad unintended consequences.
@Michael Reynolds: It certainly matters. I do think it is more complicated than just money, TBH.
@Gustopher: Perhaps. But if the reporting is accurate (and who knows?) Biden only really came to a decision on Saturday and there was a limited number of people who were aware before they posted the letter. There isn’t a lot of room for pre-setting the table under those circumstances.
@Lounsbury:
Agreed.
@Michael Reynolds: if I have not misunderstood what I read earlier this year, the State level operational access to Ballot, and notably the ability to replace the ticket, should have been a non trivial point of consideration, as I understood that there would in any other scenario potentially daunting substitution issues.
Money, administrative process advtages, combined continuity w change narrative potential…
Really while no pretence should be advanced that she does not face a significant chance of losing, given overall factors the Democrats would have been engaging in gross political malpractice to attempt anything but this.
I have not talked to a single Democrat who is outraged at the “anointing” of Harris. I’m hearing “we have a much better chance of winning now, great” – this is coming from the people who have always been lukewarm on Harris too.
A party should transform if its winning faction transforms it. If there’s no particular reason why a party must choose candidates by democratic means, there’s no reason why a party should be static.
The fact of Trump indicates a rot in the Republican electorate. It’s a long-term good democratic processes exposed this rot, to be confronted and defeated. Conservatives who lost the battle for the Republican Party — and long downplayed this rot — should work harder towards that defeat, not blame primaries.
Supposedly sane Republicans couldn’t find or rally behind a consensus candidate to stop Trump, nor come up with a plan to foreclose him. After Jan 6, Senate Republicans could have ended him politically by convicting him. They declined. The blame lies with their inability to put patriotism above personal ambition. More Republican rot.
Americans believe democracy is an empirical good — democracy for democracy’s sake. If democratic methods produce non-ideal short term outcomes, then these are necessary growing pains. This is how our history has played out.
It’s the argument of authoritarians like Xi, Putin, Trump, and Vance that democracy is bad because sometimes it produces bad outcomes. But that’s anti-American. So I doubt democratic reforms like primaries will go away. They can be tweaked and optimized though. And they need not be purely-democratic to be better than undemocratic alternatives.
Trump and his nicknames. Now he’s referring to Kamala “Dumb as a Rock” Harris.
Is Harris the single best candidate irregardless of circumstances? I neither know nor care. Given current circumstances, she is the only possible pick. And I am pleasantly surprised we got here without a glaring, and lengthy, display of Dems in Disarray. Parties are indeed weak, but apparently the Schumers, Jeffries, Obamas, Clintons, and especially Pelosis of the Party were able to quietly herd the cats into doing the right thing. The righteousness of their actions is confirmed by the rapid inflow of money and endorsements. Perhaps, given the extreme circumstances necessary to pull it off, an example that proves the rule of weak parties.
All I know for sure is this is the first day in three weeks I’ve felt hope for the Republic.
So I was busy with other stuff all Sunday. I go dark for one day and see what happens!
I was not advocating for this. Now that it’s done, I will say that Harris seems to like to mix it up more than Biden did. And maybe that will work out well for her in a one-on-one with Trump. It’s hard to look overly combative next to Trump.
The fact that there is no immigration bill is on Trump’s shoulders. She should be in Trump’s face about that every single day. Every time he mentions it. Maybe when he doesn’t. I don’t know.
Trump didn’t want to solve the problem, he wanted to look good. That’s his fundamental problem as President. Push that story. I think Harris can maybe do that better than Joe, and not because of age differences, but because of habit and personality.
@CSK: True to form. Projection, projection, projection. Every accusation is a confession.
Which is why the opposition party and its partisans (as well as the
lameMain Stream Media*, apparently) use the term “coronation” rather than “consensus” or “unifying” choice.*I am making this observation about the Main Stream Media in concurrence with the statement of the author of the post making no value judgement as to the motives of said media in language selection or rhetorical intent.
@anjin-san:
To the contrary, I did some canvassing for the county Democrats on Sunday. The people I spoke to were unanimous that their largest concern was avoiding having Trump get back into office, and about half of them volunteered that they wanted Harris to take over.
@Lounsbury: Your vision of Lefty Leftists having Pavlovian reactions to supporting a former prosecutor is, well, quaint comes to mind. A profound misunderstanding of “the Left’s” relationship with our American justice system but to be expected from a commentator (or common tater for those who like old dad jokes) predisposed to reflexively attack values he doesn’t share with an almost Pavlovian eagerness,
It’s been interesting to observe Republicans in my community who quietly let out a sigh of relief when Biden stepped aside. Not because they think it enhanced Trump’s odds, but because it gave them a more rational anti-Trump choice in November.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Your peculiar misreading is pecular. I did not write of Pavlovian reactions to a former prosecutor, I wrote, ” jump in a Pavlovian fashion to supporting an ex-prosecutor than to speak darkly of unnamed elites opposing…”
The Pavlovia reaction is to the evocation of unnamed Elites (otherwise evoked as “DNC” etc)
@CSK: That is most unfelicitous. As I have read he went on a tweeting [in his off-brand version] rampage on the withdrawal, it rather does suggest that he is rattled and feels wrong-footed.
@DK: an impressively long post to indicate you have understood effectively nothing of the arguments, information and even data that Pf. Taylor has shared in his examinations of the US structure, comparatives with other shall we say quite healthy democracies.
Slogans are rather poor replacements for analytics.
If Harris is “dumb as a rock” surely Trump isn’t afraid to debate her.
But wait: https://newrepublic.com/post/184090/trump-desperate-move-terrified-kamala-harris-debate
@Lounsbury: You coulda just written “I’m a windbag who cannot engage honestly with differences of opinion” and been done. Not that it’s not known already.
This is an empty slogan. You’ve analyzed nothing, failed to list these other healthy democracies, nor summarized what makes them healthier than the United States and why. Vague posturing, empty sloganeering.
@DK:
Agreed–in general elections. The problem is that the primary electorate get the chance to shape the party. We would be far better off if parties had to really answer to competitive general elections, instead of being shaped by primaries.
And make no mistake: primary voters have an outsized and distorting voice, and are not as democratic as they appear (if representation has anything to do with democracy, which is definitely does).
@DK:
I would note that he did not even win an absolute majority of the primary vote in 2016.
And I would note that my attemtps at explaining how I sincerely think things work and why it matters is not a defense of Republicans or really, of anyone.
@DK: Ah the rubber-glue response demarche. Rather boring.
@Steven L. Taylor: Indeed it is clear once one has understood what you have laid out in terms of the party lack of structure, controle, but at same time the odd lack of control in semi-state (as in government) mandate, that US primaries are in the end something of the façade of democracy given the particiation rates, the narrowness – even in context of party political membership. Something akin to rotten boroughs, but without even the gatekeeping…. a rather Weimarian design becoming evident I think.
@Lounsbury: Ah, the deflection because you have no names, facts, data, or analysis to back up your vague posturing — just slogans and unintelligible syntax. Rather predictable.
Never Trump Jonathan V Last writes that the last 2 days indicated that the Democratic Party is a healthy institution, while the Republican Party is not. I think he’s spot on.
At OTB, there has been a tendency to accredit US government dysfunction with a pox on both their houses and that has never set right with me. The behind-the-scenes mechanizations of Democratic brokers, then the rapid consensus behind Harris that emerged after Biden’s decision are both additional data points indicating that US party weakness is asymmetrical. Though neither party establishment is even close to being optimally (read: not maximally) in control, the GOP has been uniquely f’d up – since McConnell’s anti-Obama nihilism days, I’d say.
@Lounsbury:
I’m pretty damn far to the left, especially by American standards. Yet, as stated before, Harris was my first choice early in the nomination cycle. Why? Practical politics.
At this point, the most those in my lane can do is nudge the party to the left. Part of that is accepting candidates who may not align with all of our preferences rather than sitting out.
In reality, most of the work to realign the center is done at the grassroots level. For those within government, it comes from within the legislature–specifically the House, because the Senate is the Senate.
@Kurtz:
I don’t get his bloviation either. I’m pretty far left at this point and I’ll take Harris any day over Trump. I’m going to assume the vast majority of the U.S. left feels the same way, cause they’re not idiots. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the problem is idiot lefties, I think the problem is radical centrists who would rather call themselves conservatives but for the fact that the GOP ruined that label for them. There’s nothing left or center about people like Manchin.
Further, the idiot lefties that aren’t going to vote for Harris anyway. It’ll be some sort of excuse like “both parties are the same” (puke), or because they are actual self admitted tankies, or they are just idiots. I got into an argument with a moron lefty who, 1. said that there’s no difference between Harris and Trump (or Biden and Trump) for that matter, and 2. said she was going to vote for Jill Stein cause if the Greens get 5% they get 20 million in public money. I don’t know which is the dumber argument.
Out of curiosity, anyone have an idea which population is larger: the politically unaware non-voter or the politically aware leftist (broadly, anything right of center) that won’t vote for a Democrat cause they are the same as a Republican?
@CSK: Every accusation is a confession with him.
@Scott F.:
Good article you cited. Quoting a section of it for emphasis:
“On the night of June 27, the various power centers within the Democratic party began a difficult conversation: Was Joe Biden still capable of running a vigorous campaign?
Over three weeks the party reached a diffuse—if not unanimous—consensus: He was not. This consensus was the product of all levels of the party: Elder statesmen such as Nancy Pelosi, elected Democrats analyzing their own future prospects, donors making decisions about spending, and the main body of public opinion among Democratic voters.
Once this consensus was reached, the various power centers began a dialogue with the party’s leader, President Biden. The party expressed its choice. Biden pushed back. The party took up the question again and, after due consideration, held firm.
Joe Biden then stepped aside for the good of the nation.
This is how healthy institutions are supposed to work.”
I was not familiar with this quote before now. Thank you.
It’s stirring up quite a lot of contradictory thoughts in my head — which I’m enjoying.
Party, factions, affinity groups, etc. Where is democracy to be found? Where should it be found?
Times like these I wish we could have a dynamic, small group discussion. Cuz I just don’t have the time or commitment to hashing it out in writing.
Still though, thank you for the stimulating quote.*
To be sure, the rest of the post was good too. Just not as good as the quote 😉
Spoken like a true conservative, sir!
More seriously, I think that one of the side-effects of affluence is a slow inflation in the fraction of people who reflexively feel that any change would likely be for the worse. I have felt for a while now that the Dems need to be much more vocal in pointing out who the radicals are in this election — they need to make all of those comfortable go-along-to-get-along types afraid of the Trump Revolution that is promised, so that they will join forces with the groups (nonwhites, non-fundies, LGBTQ+, civil servants) who have been explicitly threatened.
@DK: Really quite boring, the rubber-glue act, lacks panache. In any case since Taylor’s long effort at education and learned argument has evidently not been able to break through, it is rather a delusional waste to believe any exchange with you is anything other than close-minded partisan posturing, points scoring. Rather a waste in end.
@DrDaveT: One should think Abortion and Contraceptives are fertile ground and plausible broader arguments that can echo beyond the Left.
@Scott F.:
It appears very few of you actually understand Pf Taylor’s institutional and structure analyses.
The recent events say nothing about assymemtry in weakness in party in the terms Taylor has analysed, from a systems and institutional factors PoV. They do indicate that at this time that Party is more healthy in its overall cultural environment, but that is not the same as the institutional problem that Taylor has laid his fingers on – and as he has ably noted many times, it is luck and cultural chance that it is not the Left side. The institutional and systems weaknesses are the same. Where the infection took root does not make the Left side of the body immune nor structurally more immune.
(Now one can admit in the USA context that a Party representing a population fraction that is losing relative ground is likely to be less resistant to the populist authoritarian virus)
Partisan self-congratulation, although so very expected from humans being so profoundly chimp-band tribal, won’t lead to systematic fixes unfortunately.
You have transversal structural issues, which the sickness of one party that happened to get infected first is making painfully evident.
@Steven L. Taylor: This is part of why I am such a big fan of the Top 2 Primary used in states like Washington and California.
We don’t guarantee any party a spot on the general election ballot, only the top two vote-getters.
This has had a huge moderating effect on the crazy candidates because even in nutty bright-red Republican districts there is usually a MAGA candidate and a more mainstream Republican candidate to choose from in the General. Generally, all the Ds in the district vote for the mainstream R, which means the crazy person usually loses.
Short of ranked-choice, which feels like a pipe dream, this has survived constitutional scrutiny and has been the law for a very long time.
@Tony W: I am not a fan of top Two, and really mostly what you get out of that system is linked to the pre-existing partisan lean of the district. I was just looking at some of that in fact.
I know that the promise is that Top Two leads to moderation, but really I don’t think there is a lot of evidence that this is the case.
Really, most elections don’t yield crazies (if crazies means people like MTG), so definitionally, Top Two is producing a lot of crazies.
And I can’t stress enough that Top Two and RCV are ultimately constrained by the district itself and the way it is drawn.
If you want a good book on the RCV issue, I would recommend Jack Santucci’s recent book, “More Parties or No Parties”
@Tony W: Also, and as it pertains to the comment you are responding to, Top Two is party weakening mechanism. It isn’t even a primary and the party labels are all self-selected. In makes it even harder for voters to know what the label means.
@Scott F.:
If you mean from James, Matt, and myself, I don’t think that is accurate.
I am sure that I will write about this at some point, but in the simplest of terms, the party did not remove Biden. Biden removed himself. The power was with the candidate, not with the institutional party.
And it is quite possible to correctly note that the Democratic Party is healthier than the Republican Party and still understand that our parties are weak.
Also note: the Dems rallied to convince Biden to leave because they feared losing. The Reps are currently in the lead in this race and so they do not have any incentive to oust their guy (and it is too late now, anyway).
@Tony W: @Steven L. Taylor: I can’t speak for other states or situations, but in my county, candidates from both parties were on the last primary election ballot. The only way to “strategically vote” for a Republican candidate was to forgo voting for your candidate from your own party.