Parties, Primaries, and Polarization

Tyler Mruczinski, “Parties, Primaries, and Polarization,” The Vital Center 2, no. 1 (Winter 2023): 47–52.
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A national primary is a Madisonian idea. As we approach what is sure to be a divisive primary season for Republicans and another close general election, it behooves us to candidly reflect on the utility of this idea. Do we want a small fraction of the base of either party to wield disproportionate influence over who the rest of the American citizenry can choose to be their President?

William Hogarth’s The Polling depicts the foibles of an eighteenth-century election. (Wikimedia Commons)

As the primaries continue and Super Tuesday draws nearer, it becomes increasingly important to understand how we arrived at the current state of American primaries. In this landscape, uninformed and unrepresentative voters in a handful of states select the two candidates to lead the most powerful nation on earth. In response to this, we will offer a proposal to reform these processes. It is essential for Americans to know that our system has not always operated this way, and understanding how we got to this point is key for charting a new course.

Political parties have existed since the beginning of the republic, and the Founding generation realized both the utility of parties within a democratic society and the danger they posed when organized from the bottom up rather than the top down. This top-down republican leadership is what the Founding generation referred to as the “natural aristocracy.” John Adams, as moderate and independent-spirited a man as any, defined the natural aristocrat as anyone who, having superiority in education, wealth, stature, genius, learning, beauty, or motions, is able to influence and direct his politically equal fellow citizens’ choice from among democratic options. Adams said,

Pick up, the first 100 men you meet, and make a Republick. Every Man will have an equal Vote. But when deliberations and discussions are opened it will be found that 25, by their Talents, Virtues being equal, will be able to carry 50 Votes. Every one of these 25, is an Aristocrat, in my Sense of the Word; whether he obtains his one Vote in Addition to his own, by his Birth Fortune, Figure, Eloquence, Science, learning, Craft Cunning, or even his Character for good fellowship and a bon vivant. […] Surely no authority can be more expressly in point to prove the existence of Inequalities, not of rights, but of moral intellectual and physical inqualities in Families, descents and Generations. If a descent from, pious, virtuous, wealthy litterary or scientific Ancestors is a letter of recommendation, or introduction in a Mans his favour, and enables him to influence only one vote in Addition to his own, he is an Aristocrat, for a democrat can have but one Vote. Aaron Burr had 100,000 Votes from the single Circumstance of his descent from President Burr and President Edwards.

Adams’s reference to the democrat’s creed of “one man, one vote” makes it clear that he is not talking about the kind of “establishment elite” or nefarious “globalist uniparty” feared and regurgitated by far-right partisans. Instead, Adams is making a common classical-republican claim: that the majority of the people, from whom sovereignty derived, could not be expected to be fully informed or attentive to exigencies required for a functioning and free democratic republic. Taking this premise as true, a patriotic “cadre” of sorts was required to benevolently guide civil-political culture and discussions, but a cadre from which the people were totally free to choose by their suffrage from among competing factions and interests. An example of this can be found in the framing and ratification of the Constitution. As scholar of the early republic, Joseph Ellis, has written in The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, a small group of “elite” nationalists were able to introduce into the public discussion the need for a modified constitution establishing a strong federal government. Likewise, an “elite” of opponents spread reasons for rejecting a new constitution throughout the public. The people were then left free, through their suffrage, to decide the matter, but not without the influence of the aforementioned “elitist” camps. Ellis says,

founding elite were driven by motives that were more political than economic, chiefly the desire to expand the meaning of the American Revolution so that it could function on a larger, indeed national, scale. The great conflict, as I see it, was not between “aristocracy” and “democracy,” whatever those elusive categories might mean, but rather between “nationalists” and “confederationists,” which is shorthand for those who believed that the principles of the American Revolution could flourish in a much larger political theater and those who did not. Finally, my version of the story regards the successful collaboration of this small cadre not as a betrayal of the core convictions of the American Revolution, but rather as a quite brilliant rescue.

This idea of competition among the elites as popular government in practice seeped into American party organization in various forms, all of them progressively better than the last. When Madison, Hamilton, Henry Knox, and John Jay were fulfilling their roles as patriotic elites, they did so without any popular mandate and initially in backchannel coded letters. Following the end of Washington’s presidency, congressional caucuses consisting of the people’s representatives chose party nominees in secret. The Jackson Era saw these secretive party caucuses abolished as the “People’s President,” Andrew Jackson, was swept into power as a reformer, partly owing to the fact that he was the killer of the “caucus curse,” “the tried patriot and incorruptible man” who stood against “barter and bargain” for the presidency be-cause “it should be derived from the people.” To replace “King Caucus,” national party conventions were organized. These public and democratic gather-ings became extra-constitutional institutions where delegates hashed out the meaning of the Constitution and the future of the United States. As these delegates were officers and lieutenants of state and county parties, delegations became more localized. This localization made it harder to select party candidates for the presidency, as it was now requisite that candidates be acceptable to delegates’ state and regional concerns. This had a positive impact, resulting in candidates who were more representative of the whole nation—a necessity for extensive republican government.

Additionally, there were constitutional benefits to the new mode of selection. The presidents were not only answerable to the people but also to members of the party. The party leaders were often members of Congress or former members, which made the president dependent upon those who held the pen and the purse. Lincoln recognized this fact of American politics. This meant that a strong check was put on the power of the one-man executive branch. Under this system, an “imperial” presidency was almost unthink-able. In their classic study of the evolution of legislative and judicial relations with the executive branch, Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg demonstrate that even under the effects of the centralizing crisis that was the Civil War—which saw the largest expansion of presidential war power to date and the later amendments to the Constitution, which expanded the power of the central government at the expense of the states (thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments)—the relation between he who executes the laws and those who make the laws underwent little permanent change. Once hostilities stopped, Congress resumed its primacy in the federal government.

Caricature of Boss Tweed and election fraud, by Thomas Nast. ( Wikimedia Commons)

The time was right for another benign evolution in the selection of presidential nominees, and the Pro-gressive Era provided a solution. The revealing car-toons of Thomas Nast and others seeded political revolt among the masses, who demanded change. The year 1912 saw the first significant use of the presidential primary as Theodore Roosevelt faced off against William Howard Taft. Great and astounding new technologies made the campaign truly national. Theodore Roosevelt employed a professional campaign staff that delivered live and constant telegraphed news from around the country. Roosevelt would be told minute by minute the content of speeches Taft made, and then he would rebut them on the other side of the country. From the beginning, however, there were inherent tensions in the new system, subtly apparent in the feud between Roosevelt and Taft. Part of this conflict was whether the primaries were to be a necessary expedient in the moderate progression of American democracy or whether they were a revolutionary, populist phenomenon. Taft believed the primaries were meant to give the people influence, but not direct control, over the party selection. His view of primaries was much like Madison’s view of republican government in Federalist 10; the point was to hear the expressions of the party faithful and “refine and enlarge” their views. Roosevelt’s view was that the primaries were a part of a larger battle against “the boss, of crooked politicians behind the boss and people who are owned by the bosses,” as well as other “reactionary” forces. The rowdy campaign speeches and public disagreements among party leaders—heretofore reserved for polite cold shoulders or “leaked” letters or thoughts to the press—now became open and, like a bad wound, inflamed. In turn, party voters became polarized. The reformers could never have predicted that this would unleash candidate-centered demagoguery and extremism into American politics. Much like Donald Trump today, Roosevelt eviscerated his opponent as a tool of party bosses (Trump’s “deep state” or “uniparty”) and “rigging” (Trump verbatim) the election against him.[1] Party unity discipline was shattered, and the Republicans were trounced in the subsequent general election. Despite all that, the experiment was not a complete failure. As Corcoran and Kendall argue in their in-depth study of the 1912 presidential primaries,

Advocates of a more democratic electoral process had reason to believe that the Progressive cause of presidential primaries was advanced in 1912. Roosevelt and La Follette supporters could be pleased that Taft’s machine-engineered renomination was a Pyrrhic victory. Under the old system, Taft almost certainly would have been smoothly renominated and re-elected. Yet the 1912 campaign was hardly a victory for direct popular control of the nominating process. The primary “winners,” Roosevelt and Clark, were both denied nomination at their party conventions. Wilson’s “progressive” candidacy was also a victory for old-style state machine politics and vote-trading at the national convention. Although a party would never again reject the clear mandate of the primaries after 1912, the first primaries revealed tendencies that reformers had not anticipated.

As Corcoran and Kendall note above, the quirks of the system were recognized and subsequently fixed. States that chose to adopt primaries gener-ally adopted “preference” primaries in which party members could express approval or disapproval for certain candidates but did not tie the hands of the conventions. People were generally satisfied with this arrangement because it added the opportunity for registered partisans to influence the future of their party’s symbolism and platform at moments where it really mattered (such as in 1944, 1952, and 1964 for the Republicans), while at all other times deferring to the direction of party bosses and professionals.

This delicate peace was shattered by the miscalculations of Democrat party leaders in 1968. It had been a year of violence, breakdown of law, and loss of trust in civil institutions. It was fertile soil for radicalism, and the climate in Chicago provided the opportunity for it to sprout into revolution. There was a disconnect between the elite and party establishment and the emerging generation of Democrats. The reporter Harrison Salisbury described the “gap between the hot reality in Chicago and the cool of the air-conditioned offices,” the “children” versus Daley’s “blue-helmets.” Those very terms evoke images of extremism. Harrison used martial terms in describing the arrayed forces: “mustered,” “brutality,” “charge.” What had caused this? The nomination process had once again failed. Hubert Humphrey, despite not having contested a single primary, was selected by the party bosses. The liberal, antiwar base felt unheard by the “air-conditioned-office” men. They saw violence as the only way to express their dissatisfaction. To reconcile this and keep radicalism at bay, the Democratic National Convention formed the McGovern-Fraser Commission to formulate new rules governing the selection of Presidential nominees. The commission adopted resolutions that were binding for state parties. These resolutions entailed 1) a mandated adoption of a primary for every state Democratic party (only fifteen states had Democratic primaries in use by 1968); 2) abolition of fees and filings that served to “compromise full and meaningful participation by inhibiting or preventing a Democrat from exercising his influence in the delegate selection process”; 3) affirmative action for the seating of women, young Democrats, and racial minorities; and 4) direct democracy in the selection of party delegates by rank-and-file party members for choosing presidential preference delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Democrats functioned under the guidelines of the commission for the first time in 1972. Republicans followed suit four years later under a modified form.

While these were good and democratic ideals, the reform has totally failed to satisfactorily achieve its goals. The problem lies in the commission’s misguided notion that “there is no one selection system ideal for all states” so that it was not “desirable to lay down uniform rules for delegate selection in the guidelines.” Fifty-one years on, what have been the results of this decentralized system? Trust in government has fallen from an almost all-time high of 77 percent in the mid-to-late 1960s to a dangerous 20 percent in 2022. A noticeable drop-off began when the McGovern-Fraser Commission’s proposed rules changes went into effect. In a similar way, party weakening accelerated since 1972 with a steady increase in the numbers of Americans identifying as independents. This is actually bad for the health of a democratic society. While these individuals no longer identify with a party, they are still more polarized. Parties act as a glue that holds individuals together. They provide an institutional space for them to express their anger, concerns, and desires with likeminded people in a manner that con-forms with civil society, democratic etiquette, and respect for the rights of others. So-called elites (party bosses, policymakers, interest groups) then provide direction for party members to direct their energy and emotions toward compatible goals in a peaceful way through the ballot box. Without the moderating effect of strong national party infrastructure and party “elites” (super-delegates, elected officials, elder statesmen, party bosses, etc.), voters are taken in by insur-gent dogmatists and demagogue candidates who then direct their energies and inflame their wounds. This is despite the fact that those candidates have less experience, connections, or institutional knowhow to reach substantive policy goals. The result is gridlocked or dysfunctional government and lost opportunities to improve the welfare of the people and nation. Increasingly polarized citizens then lose further trust in the possibility of good government and so increasingly turn to more insurgent and radical candidates. And the cycle continues until an eventual implosion. Even when moderate establishment candidates do win, the party is still weakened after expensive, divisive primaries; over time, it is probable that the party base will still become more polarized or radical because extremists will still have a platform in a party primary.

So how do we fix this? There are two options, both of which lead to the same result. Either party bosses and establishments voluntarily institute a one-day national primary for the selection of their nominees for president, or federal legislation establishes a one-day national primary. The benefits of a one-day national primary are these: it removes the inequitable influence of often non-representative “front-loaded” primaries; it removes the power of dark money special interest groups in campaigns; it expands access to the ballot box by ending caucuses and making all states equal in potential importance; it ensures proportional winning of convention delegates; and, finally, it encourages coalition building, as candidates will have to appeal to a different regions of the country, and, with the possibility or reality of no candidate having a majority of delegates going into convention, it will force them to be as broadly appealing as possible. As I mentioned earlier, front-loaded primaries, such as those in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, disproportionately impact the candidate pool, with early wins creating momentum and garnering heightened media attention. This spotlight can lead to neglect of potentially more qualified candidates, fostering a lack of information about them. Consequently, voters in later states may feel compelled to choose candidates with perceived momentum, inadvertently limiting the diversity of options and influencing the election outcome. All this is contrary to what John Adams earlier called the democrat’s principle that one man “can have but one vote.”

Directly connected to the problem of front-loading is the power special interests hold in primaries. Can-didates need large amounts of cash and fast if they wish to have a chance at a respectable showing early on, or even to qualify for the debates. This leads to dark money, special interests, often far removed from the policy preferences of the median voter, having great leverage over potential candidates. Candidates are then forced to choose between being indebted to partisan special interests or a likely failed campaign before voting even begins. Again, this reverberates into either further polarization or the electorate feeling unrepresented, both of which destabilize our free system of government. A national primary will not end the problem of dark money entirely, but it will weaken its impact by providing candidates with more time to build a grassroots base of small donors and increasing their leverage against corporate super PACs.

The elimination of caucuses will increase ballot box access and voting equality. Out of all the forms of candidate selection, caucuses are the least representative and most disenfranchising. They have the lowest turnout, often averaging around 1 percent to 3 percent of eligible voters because of the physical stamina required to participate. The elderly, working individuals, and the disabled cannot always attend, and members of the military overseas or stationed at forts and bases in other parts of the country, as well as students away at college, are denied a voice because caucuses do not use normative secret balloting. Caucus goers have often been found to be significantly more polarized than similar voters in states that hold secret ballot primaries. A theorized reason is that the lower turnout in caucuses makes it easier for factions to “capture” a greater share of the vote. Ending caucuses would allow more participation thereby diluting the strength of factions and extremists. Finally, a proportional primary election system (in which all states vote on the same day) will ensure that if a candidate receives enough delegates to be declared the nominee, he or she would need to have been acceptable to the overwhelming majority of the party. If no candidate receives a majority of delegates, the nomination process would move to the convention, where different factions, party bosses, and candidates will check and balance each to produce a candidate that can unify the party. This is the same principle James Madison expressed in Federalist No. 51 when he wrote the following:

It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure […] in the federal republic of the United States. […] the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

A national primary is a Madisonian idea. As we approach what is sure to be a divisive primary season for Republicans and another close general election, it behooves us to candidly reflect on the utility of this idea. Do we want a small fraction of the base of either party to wield disproportionate influence over who the rest of the American citizenry can choose to be their President? We must remember that the President is the only national representative of the American people, the only government officer voted on by all eligible voters in all fifty states. It is therefore undemocratic for such a small and increasingly extreme group of voters to act as guardians of the presidential chair simply by the accident of state set primary dates that allowed for the propulsion of ideologues. The way to solve this is by widening the pool of voters so as to make “ambition counteract ambition” until “the private interest of every individual, may be a centinel over the public rights.” The more voters there are, the wider the array of prevalent political interests, the harder it becomes for any one ideological faction to capture the reins of power. As we vote in order to govern ourselves, let us ever be doubtful of the ability of a few of us to govern the many others.

Endnote:

[1] Roosevelt lost the New York primary; similarly when Trump lost Iowa to Ted Cruz in 2016, he claimed it was due to fraud.