A National Primary Inevitable?

In Chicago recently, a smoke-free room full of Democratic Party pols turned thumbs down on all of the grand ideas being tossed around in both parties for reforming how they nominate their candidates for president.

"No," they said, to a rotating series of regional primaries staggered from late winter through Spring 2004, "No" to staggering primaries by time zone. "No" to an "inverted pyramid" of "pods" in which the ten states with the fewest people go first and the ten with the most go last.

The pods are the favorite, the Democrats were told, of their Republican counterparts. "What is this, The Night of the Living Dead?" snapped Jim Ruvulo, an Ohio Democratic elder, at the notion of his state being seeded in Pod #5.

After Harvard's Thomas Patterson told the Democrats of a poll he'd done the week before which showed, as polls have shown for years, that the public prefers a national primary to the current or any other system, the Ohio man grumped, "I don't care what the public thinks, I care about picking a winning candidate."

"I wouldn't want to see that in print," said Elaine Kamarck, a panel member (and another Harvard professor), who is close to Al Gore. She then went on to make essentially the same point, but in more judicious terms. "I'm opposed to any change," said Kamarck. "What are we trying to cure?"

What reformers in both parties want to cure is "front-loading" - the current pile-up of presidential contests at the start of the primary season.

This year, more than half the elected convention delegates in both parties were chosen during an eight-day period in March, and both presidential nominations were decided on the first of these days. The great majority of both Democratic and Republican voters, accordingly, never got a chance to be heard. A further surge to the front of the line is expected in '04 by states left out in the cold this time.

Unfazed, Kamarck argued that history shows the party that gets the job done first always wins in November. Choosing her words very carefully, this major Gore confidant concluded, "I would not advise a Democratic president to waste any of his political capital trying to get 15 or 20 states to move their primaries around." With the vice president's campaign manager - another member of the panel - nodding right along, it was clear where the Democratic nominee stood.

In a break with tradition, it's now the Republicans who are trying to impose tough national rules on the states. Where does the Democratic commitment to non-reform leave them? Tom Samsonetti, who heads the Republican National Committee rules committee, vows to carry on anyway, and says Austin - unlike Nashville - retains an open mind. Maybe. But getting the needed compliance for any of these pie-in-the-sky proposals from state legislatures throughout the country would be tough even with all-out support from both natinal parties. Without it, chances are nil.

And where does that leave the public? Oddly enough, the public could wind up getting, in stages, exactly what it wants.

In both parties, it's taken for granted that, if nothing is done to stop it, the front of the next primary calendar will be even more loaded than it is now. As the stampede towards the opening week of the primary window proceeds, it's only a matter of time before 70, 80, even 90 percent of the state primaries are held right at the start. Behold, a national primary after all.

The big argument against mega-front-loading and a national primary is that it favors an establishment-backed front-runner. But guess what? Even before front-loading - a creation of the 1990s - no establishment-backed front-runner in either party has failed to win the nomination since Ed Muskie in 1972.

Were a national primary held in which the front-runner had to win a majority or face a run-off, it's far from certain that the establishment choice would escape a run-off every time or even most of the time. The runner-up, having defeated the rest of the contenders in a vote of the entire country, would go into that run-off with far better credentials and momentum than somebody who had barnstormed Iowa and New Hampshire since Day One and merely done "better than expected."

With the entire country scheduled to vote the same day, the broadcast networks (and not just cable) would probably carry debates - by far the best means anyone has ever found for getting voters to focus on the policies and attributes of candidates for office.
That may not happen in '04. These things take time. It took 60 years for the current system of state primaries to replace the boss-run conventions of the 19th and most of the 20th centuries. But at their meeting in Chicago, Democrats, by opting to do nothing, inadvertently took a step in the right direction.