Statistically it’s true. Your mom is, on average, an upper-middle class white 51- year-old registered Democrat. Statistically, she’ll vote for Hillary.
Your dad, however, is statistically a 54-year-old registered Republican (also white, in case there was doubt) who will vote for Giuliani.
And you, a WASPy-but-could-almost-be-Asian-or-Jewish (statistically) Ivy League student, will vote for Barack.
Domestic tensions will fester over winter break as you and your parents bicker about your irreconcilable political differences.
And meanwhile, who wins the primaries? It’s easy — we just count up all the middle aged white women, middle aged white men, Ivy League students, all other groups, and tally their respective candidates. In fact, why even hold elections — let’s just use the census.
Um, hold on. In reality, obviously, people don’t vote solely based on race, gender, class, sexual or religious identifications. I don’t mean to imply that race or gender are at all superficial; they can have powerful effects on how elected officials govern and interact with the citizenry. But those aren’t the only things that matter, and the American psyche is more convoluted than the above description. Call it critical thought, call it postmodernity — the point is that there are hundreds of intervening factors that move us away from an identity-based politics. And the more opportunity America has to get to know its candidates, the more chance there is for intervening factors to complicate elections. One of the chief factors pushing us (at least a bit) towards this politics of ideas is the structure of the primary elections.
By localizing and even individualizing campaigns, the primaries do something to restore the fair contest of ideas otherwise precluded by the importance of large-scale media and candidate wealth. Consider the Republican race, where Mitt Romney comes in fourth in national polls, but probably has the greatest chance of winning because of his sizable leads in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Come-from-behind candidates like him would never have a chance if the primaries weren’t staggered.
The problem is that the primaries won’t last much longer in their current form. As evidenced by Michigan and Florida’s attempts to move their primary dates up to the front of the pack, the disincentives that the Democratic and Republican parties can create to prevent individual states from holding early elections have lost their traction. The threat of having no formal delegates at the national caucuses is outstripped by the growing media attention — and therefore campaign attention — that early elections would receive. This tragedy of the commons effect, beneficial to each individual state but bad for the country, is impelling us toward a national primary day.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the future of the Oval Office will only be filled with more Clintons and Bush’s. In fact, the death of the current system can potentially result in a far more democratic means of conducting primary elections, as there are ways of preserving the elements we like about the current staggered system while ditching the problematic parts. The vast majority of Americans, for instance, should be delighted at the prospect of presidential candidates chosen because they represent American interests instead of the interests of Iowa and New Hampshire. As far as democratic practice is concerned, the Iowa/New Hampshire system is on par with letting all 38-year-olds, or all black people, choose the presidential candidates.
One alternative, called the “Delaware Plan,” is that smaller states hold their primaries first and larger states later. This might accomplish some localization, but still weights some (rural) interests ahead of others. Another option would be to stagger primaries regionally, rotating the order every four years. It seems slightly fairer on the whole, but year to year would produce candidates even more weighted towards certain regional interests. The difference between Democrats in California and the South is profound, and such dissonance could produce a candidate with an impaired ability to compete in the general election, as well as govern, once president.
One of the better plans on the table, called the “American Plan,” is to elongate the primary season by holding a few states’ primaries every two weeks, for five months. This would allow non-establishment candidates to gather momentum instead of being trounced by their rivals’ money and media attention on Super Tuesday (this year Super Duper Tuesday). The order of states would rotate, but a few small states would always go first, leaving us with traces of the problematic small-state bias again.
The best plan I’ve heard of (I don’t think it has a cool name) is to arrange primaries by congressional district, each four years selecting 20 or so districts nationwide to go first. The rest of the season could work like the above plan, gradually increasing the number of districts that vote every couple weeks, achieving a backloaded rather than frontloaded election. The wonderful thing about this is that it localizes the beginning of the race without giving permanently enhanced power to any one group of Americans. As America continues to grow more urban, this plan will ensure that the primaries evolve to reflect that. Ideas will at least have a chance to speak louder than media and money.
The notion that blacks will vote for Barack because he’s black, and women for Hillary because she’s a woman, is largely wrong. In fact, Barack’s race might hurt him among black voters (for the greater stress placed on racism as a probable factor in the general elections). Among female voters, Hillary is having the hardest time convincing highly educated feminists to flock to her. While it heartens me that she’s being examined substantively in this way, I still fear that the deluge of primaries on Feb. 5 will allow her perceived hegemony and feminist image to trample the gains other candidates have made to that point. Based on what happens in the next two months — on how many states are angered by feelings of disenfranchisement — American democracy will look different four years from now. Hopefully, it’ll look more democratic. As this primary system falls apart, we need to implement one that gives deference to ideas, not rural interests, money and media image.
Tim Krueger is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at tkrueger@cornellsun.com. Educating Your Guesses appears alternate Thursdays.