Guests
Paul SteklerDocumentary Filmmaker and Wofford Denius Chair in Entertainment Studies at the University of Texas at Austin
Hosts
Jeremi SuriProfessor of History at the University of Texas at Austin
FEMALE 1: This.
MALE 1: Is Democracy.
FEMALE 1: A podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s –
MALE 1: – most influential democracy.
Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week, we’re going to talk about presidential primaries. How did this system of nominating, selecting, and promoting presidential candidates, how did it come into existence? It is a particularly American form of politics and democracy. Why do we do this? How is the system evolved over time? Where can we go in the future to reform or replace this system? We have with us our good friend and expert on all things political, Paul Stekler.
Paul Stekler: How are you doing?
Jeremi Suri: Paul, as all of you know, is the Wofford Denius Chair in Entertainment Studies. He’s a nationally recognized documentary filmmaker who has made some of those important documentaries on major figures in our history, from George Wallace to Ann Richards and many, many others. He’s also a beloved professor and commentator on politics. As we were talking before, he’s still not quite at the age where he can run for president. You need to cross 70 in a few more years, Paul.
Paul Stekler: I’ll be there soon. One more river to cross.
Jeremi Suri: One more river to cross to Jordan. Before we get to our discussion with Paul, we have, of course, our scene setting poem with Zachary Suri. Zachary, what’s the title of your poem?
Zachary Suri: Later.
Jeremi Suri: Later. Let’s hear it now.
Zachary Suri: Later. How does a battle of generations, of forced reckoning with our future and with two men born over half a century before an iPhone ever fell out of heaven or flew up from below, before a black man was ever cheered in the cold wind of Grant Park on a Tuesday in November? How does such a large liberal cleavage break apart into a thousand pieces of rebel, shipping 500 candidates from 500 states with a thousand predictions for our future? How did a sleepy beginning at the start of summer with the floods beginning to steep in through the cracks, self healthcare, addressing inequality and put Donald’s tiny hands in the raging fire of scorn truth? I don’t mean to be a cynic questioning the bonds of modern American Republicanism. Don’t mean to charge the party supposedly to solve racism with racism. Don’t mean to blame two old white men for winning. But it seems a little odd for a race that flew down endless polygraphs of electability, numerous tornados and finger-pointings, an array of minute investigations of past mistakes made.
It seems a little bit of a strange finish, this untriumphant beginning to hope for a triumph. How does a battle of generations end with a candidate list two or three generations old? The youngest candidate from seven decades of age of politics, the 38 year-old former candidate who could wade through the muddy gate in 20 years and still be younger. How does a large that broke cleavage end up with America’s youth standing near the edge and staring down the ravine, having to choose between this barely president cliff without one hanging off the left side? How did a sleepy beginning at the start of summer fall into this spring of eternal disappointment, warm into these two lukewarm passive gas station coffee, burn off into the blank stares and filler words? Once more, we were told to wait patiently. Once more we were left with a gut feeling of uncertainty. Once more we will show up, if not for now, then to ensure there is a later.
Jeremi Suri: Lots of references in there, Zachary. What is your poem about?
Zachary Suri: My poem is really about how disappointing it is for much of the American electorate, particularly young people, that the two main candidates for the Democratic Party are in the highest risk group for the coronavirus.
Jeremi Suri: Because they’re 70-year-olds.
Zachary Suri: Yeah, exactly. It’s really about how we really need to think more deeply about how we choose nominees for the major parties in America.
Jeremi Suri: So you’re not satisfied with this process?
Zachary Suri: I’m not satisfied, no.
Jeremi Suri: Well, this is a good place to turn to Paul and to start with a little history. Paul, how did we get this system? Primaries begin in the early 20th century, right? As an effort to give members of the party who are not the elites more say, is that correct?
Paul Stekler: I’m wondering if this is a progressive impulse that sort of comes out of the Republican debacle of 1912.
Jeremi Suri: Yes.
Paul Stekler: With an unpopular president, William Taft, and a very popular former President, Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt can’t get the nomination because it was controlled by the Republican Party. So he runs as a Bull Moose third party person. Quite frankly, if he’d been a Republican nominee, he would’ve beaten Woodrow Wilson.
Jeremi Suri: Easily. Easily, in fact.
Paul Stekler: He was most popular politician in the United States. So it was a move to democratize the process. It democratized the process a little bit. It didn’t really have much of an impact on nominations. It was mostly still closed door bosses. I don’t mean bosses pejoratively, it’s just the people that ran the parties in different places, were able to try to figure out who their strongest candidate was. Quite frankly, there is some wisdom in that. From all the [inaudible] that we’ve had in the Republican Party four years ago and the democratic party this year, there is something to say that people that actually know something about politics can figure out who the strongest candidate is. Remember, the party loyalists care about winning, they’re not caring about ideology so much or for specific issues. They know that politics is about addition, not subtraction. Addition a lot of times it’s compromised.
Jeremi Suri: Yes.
Paul Stekler: It produces better candidates. Now, do the primaries have an impact on it? They began to have an impact in the 50’s, specifically in ’56 when there were some choices for the vice president to run for Adlai Stephenson was Kefauver versus, oh gosh, was Kefauver, Stevenson’s vice presidential pick?
Jeremi Suri: I think so. Yeah.
Paul Stekler: Yeah. John F. Kennedy might or might not.
Jeremi Suri: Right. That was the debate actually then.
Paul Stekler: But the big deal was Kennedy beating Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary and the West Virginia primaries in 1960. Could a Catholic, I mean, you’re talking about how the politics of the country has changed. Looking at an African-American as president, which is completely crazy from the politics back then. But back then, wow, could a Catholic get elected president because he’d owe his allegiance to the Pope? So that’s your first big step. In 1968, there’s a lot of anti-war sentiment in the Democratic Party with two anti-war candidates, McCarthy and McGovern, and clearly Robert Kennedy too before he’s assassinated. But they nominate Hubert Humphrey. He’s not exactly the devil incarnate.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: But a lot of people in the party go, “This was not fair.”
Jeremi Suri: Well, he did not won a single primary.
Paul Stekler: I’m not even sure he even entered any primaries.
Jeremi Suri: Right. So this really blows things up in a certain way.
Paul Stekler: Well, as in all things, when a party loses, a lot of times the pieces are picked up by other parts of the party. So leading up to 1972, I believe George McGovern lead the reform efforts to reform their party process and all of a sudden, winning the primaries was the clear way to win delegates to be nominated. McGovern is nominated. By the way, guess who came in second to the total vote in 1972 among Democrats?
Jeremi Suri: George Wallace.
Zachary Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: Okay. He would have done even better if he hadn’t been shot in Maryland. That day he won the Maryland and Michigan primaries on an anti-busing.
Jeremi Suri: This is all in your documentary for those who [inaudible].
Paul Stekler: That’s true. George Wallace: Setting the Woods on Fire, a fine film. After McGovern gets creamed, because as much as he was a lovely person, I very fondly remember dinner I had with him in New Orleans years later. When you meet people, people that you looked up to and they actually turn out to be great people. He was so sweet.
Jeremi Suri: That hasn’t happened to me yet.
Paul Stekler: I remember when wandering in the French Quarter, we wander into a jazz bar and all the musicians wanted to meet him.
Jeremi Suri: You got McGovern drunk, didn’t you?
Paul Stekler: No. He was not drunk, he was not a big drinker, at least when he was with me. But after that, the party kind of, well, actually, they didn’t retool because Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere winning primaries. Remember, his big deal was that he was able to slay the George Wallace dragon in Florida, but nobody took him seriously as a candidate. After he did that, he was able to roll through. So it’s hard for me to say that this is a bad or a good product. Donald Trump was not exactly what you would expect to come out of the 2016 primary unless you are thinking about it really strongly, he had a strong base. Clearly, a lot of those people, the governors and senators, were kind of [inaudible] in terms of candidacies, they’re terrible candidates.
Jeremi Suri: They also knocked each other which was part of the issue as well, right?
Paul Stekler: Yeah, but then just none of them are very good. There are certain people that are good. Barack Obama was a great candidate. Now, we tend to forget that in 2008, in a fair fight, he might’ve lost to Hillary Clinton. What happens there is that Hillary Clinton spends all her money early and she runs out of money and Obama is able to organize all those caucus states.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: So essentially, they fight fairly evenly in the primaries and people tend to forget that she won Texas and Ohio the same night.
Jeremi Suri: That’s right.
Paul Stekler: But essentially, he was fighting by himself in the caucus states. So when you have a close fight in a primary, you get 10 votes, I get eight votes. But if you’re in a caucus and you sweep, you get 20 votes and you get a bigger margin in Idaho or Wyoming than you actually get in Ohio or Michigan. So he played the game better. Again, this is not to take anybody to think badly about them. It’s kind of like when you play baseball, learn how to play baseball.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: If you’re a football player, you’re not going to win at baseball.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: So you’ve got to know the rules. You’ve got to be able to play the game.
Jeremi Suri: But one of the things that’s happened in terms of the rules or the way the game is played, is we go from a time with the early primaries, as you said so well, around the time of Theodore Roosevelt, 1912. The first primaries in 1901 and 1905 in Florida and Wisconsin. But we go through that period to World War II where the primaries really aren’t that important.
Paul Stekler: Right.
Jeremi Suri: Then after World War II, they are important to signaling to the bosses, whether a Catholic can win or whether someone else can win. But after ’68, with the McGovern reforms, the primaries and the caucuses actually become the determining elements for who is going to be the nominee. That’s a sea change from where we are before that period. Now, it seems like the party bosses struggled to have any influence at all over this process, is that correct?
Paul Stekler: Yeah. I’m not sure that’s good. Again, people that are political pros are not idiots. They’re not totally negative, they’re not stealing our things and it’s not like Bernie go on the establishment. The corporate Democrats.
Jeremi Suri: So this is interesting. He would argue though, that the establishment still has too much control over the party.
Paul Stekler: Well, I would argue he’s not even a Democrat. That’s part of his problem. You scream and yell about the party long enough, and then when you’re one-on-one with Joe Biden, who is not Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was really disliked by a lot of people. Nobody dislikes Joe Biden. He might not think he’s competent, you might think he’s too conservative, whatever that means. It’s not as if he’s a hell of a lot different in voting record in the Senate, but nobody dislikes him. If nobody dislikes him, and you’re depending on the party apparatus and you’re not even a Democrat, what do you expect to happen? It’s hard for me to feel that sorry for Bernie. This could be completely different. By the time this comes out, Michigan will be done. I’d be very surprised if Biden doesn’t win in a landslide in Michigan. Essentially then, the cards are written in Florida now that Bernie has made Fidel Castro his running mate, he’s unelectable in Florida. He’s going to get killed in Georgia. He’s just not going to get a whole lot of the African American vote. I like the idea of mobilizing the youth vote. The problem is it never happens. It never happens.
Paul Stekler: Zachary?
Zachary Suri: Well, I think what’s particularly interesting about what you’re saying is that our urge is always to democratize the process when really we maybe should be thinking about how we can pick the best candidates. But how do we also make sure that beyond just making sure that the party wins, that we get the best president from this process.
Paul Stekler: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Who was the best president? Now, H. L. Mencken said, “The only cure for democracy is more democracy.” I’m not sure that he’s right. Now, that he’s in his grave. It’s who makes the choice, you or me. Well, again, who makes the choice? I’m going to think differently than you do.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: If you don’t win, then you’ve lost.
Jeremi Suri: By definition, yes.
Paul Stekler: Goldwater gets killed in 1964 and it leads to a revolution in the Republican Party, and we ended up with Reagan 16 years later. The Republican Party completely changes. To a certain extent after McGovern’s defeat in the landslide to Nixon in 1972, the Democrats become a much more liberal party. Then when there’s the landslide reaction to Nixon in 1974, all of a sudden, you have a gigantic liberal wave into Congress. Not quite as much as 1964 with the Johnson landslide, but it leads to a lot of legislation. There’s consequences in terms of who wins and who loses. If you lose, especially in a time when having 51 votes in the Senate means I can put anybody I want on the courts, then you really lost.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah, it’s a big deal. Right. One of the things that as political scientists and historians we study are not simply the ways in which people vote, but also the ways in which the process structures the choices you have, right?
Paul Stekler: Yeah.
Jeremi Suri: What are the choices determined for you. Part of the issue with primaries and caucuses is not simply whether the establishment gets to choose or whether the voters get to choose, it’s the order and the way in which the issues are presented to us. We have a question about that from Dvid Wu. Let’s hear David’s question.
MALE 2: Why do certain states get the privilege of holding the first caucuses and primaries? If president is the only reason, why doesn’t the federal government set up a rotating basis or create a more fair system?
Paul Stekler: Well, the federal government’s not in charge. The political parties are in charge.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: So this is not a federal decision, this is a party decision.
Jeremi Suri: Why do we have the system though, where New Hampshire and Iowa and others get to go early, states that are so unrepresentative of the country?
Paul Stekler: I think, it’s just president. Remember back, 30 years ago, they weren’t quite as unrepresentative. Going to New Hampshire was kind of a cute thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever been up in New Hampshire.
Jeremi Suri: Sure, it’s a cute place.
Paul Stekler: But you bump into candidates around the corner all over the place. Robert Altman did that, dated series Tanner ’88.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah, I remember.
Paul Stekler: He has a fake candidate running around campaign, he’s bumping into everybody running for president.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah, of course.
Paul Stekler: It’s either ’88 or ’84, but it’s just precedence. I think with the debacle of Iowa, good luck. I think Iowa was gone. I think that so many people being pissed off with the process of New Hampshire not being representative of the entire country. But you know something? You fix one problem, you get another problem. Is South Carolina more representative? Is Michigan more representative? Well, sometimes. But just because you have different demographics doesn’t mean that you’re going to get different results. So good luck. It’s like you solve one problem and you create another one.
Jeremi Suri: But it’s almost like the presidents for certain states going early empower certain groups in selecting who the candidates are over other groups in a way in which a smoke-filled room would have empowered certain bosses in a different way.
Paul Stekler: Sure. A lot of states have moved up. California moved all the way up because it used to be at the very end. It can make a decision if it was that close, but they didn’t want to be there, so they were closer up. Now, they had a lot more impact. I mean, probably not even though as anybody can remember that Bernie Sanders actually won it. He won the early vote and he got craned in the later votes. I mean, I have been a political junkie for a long time, but the Biden comeback over whatever it was 72 hours after South Carolina.
Jeremi Suri: Wow. How did that happen? These were primaries not caucuses.
Paul Stekler: Sure.
Jeremi Suri: How did this benefit Biden? How did he catch that wave?
Paul Stekler: I think basically people were scared of a Bernie Sanders, a race. I think across the country, sorry, Bernie supporters. They took a look at Bernie the top of the ticket, and what they saw was a Republican landslide. Here in Texas, find me somebody running in a flippable seat or a seat that’s actually competitive. Who actually had endorsed Bernie Sanders? There’s a reason why they didn’t. Because they thought rightly or wrongly they were going to lose with him on the ticket. They’ve been fighting this whole thing about your socialists. All of a sudden you have a socialist at the top of the ticket. So number one, fear. Number two, I think a lot of the candidates that were running out of money, actually did the mensch thing. Essentially, they said, “You know something? Amy Klobuchar, I now understand I’m not going to win.” Same thing with Buttigieg. Essentially, they pulled out. None of them wanted Bernie as the top of the ticket, and so they endorsed. I think for the first time I’ve ever seen you had this gigantic wave of people making a decision based on the same premise. The premise beating who can stop Bernie Sanders, wow, coming back from the dead, it’s Uncle Joe. It’s amazing now.
Jeremi Suri: Not that Uncle Joe, different Uncle Joe.
Paul Stekler: No.
Jeremi Suri: Not Stalin?
Paul Stekler: Not Stalin, who will be on the ticket if Fidel can’t make it.
Jeremi Suri: I will say, Paul, this is the least cynical I’ve ever heard you say. You think this was actually a case where the primary system encouraged Klobuchar and Buttigieg and others to think about the party and the interests of the country?
Paul Stekler: Yeah, I guess so. It’s like you don’t always have something so obvious in terms of the irrational choice. Those of us that have heard about rational choice theory. Again, I don’t want to dump on Senator Sanders, but this is not a big surprise. Now, again, some miracle may happen tonight. But he fought Hillary Clinton in a close race four years ago, but Hillary Clinton was really disliked by a lot of people, rightly or wrongly. I think this was the canary in the coal mine for those trying to figure out what was going to happen in November.
Jeremi Suri: Yes.
Paul Stekler: A lot of us looked at the Clinton campaign and said, “A campaign that can’t figure out its own slogan, was actually marketing 50 different slogans to figure out which one it is.” “Make America Great Again,” may sound dumb to a lot of people. It’s a pretty good bumper sticker.
Jeremi Suri: Right. So you think in this case, the system, and this has always been a debate, has actually helped to choose a winnable candidate. Because that’s what the parties want. They want someone who will win, as you said. Not necessarily the best person, but the person who will win in November.
Paul Stekler: I think it’s helped to choose the candidate that I think most people democratic politics think is the strongest candidates. Irony is, we started out with most of them thinking that Biden was the strongest candidate and we’re going to end up with Biden as a strongest candidate. The president for this is McCain in 2008. Now, of course, this could be bad president because McCain was the strongest, he went down, he came back, he got the nomination, and he got killed in the election. Now, I think this is a different election. Basically, and tell me if I’m wrong about this, when I talk to people that know a lot more than I do, people that have run presidential campaigns, the deal is, is this election about Trump or is this a choice? If the election is just about President Trump, it’s a 40, 60 thing against them.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: This is not a good, or 43 to whatever.
Jeremi Suri: He’s made no effort to reach out to voters who didn’t vote for him before.
Paul Stekler: No.
Jeremi Suri: He’s a minority president.
Paul Stekler: So he’s got to make this into a choice. Now, clearly, he would have rather have run against Bernie Sanders.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: He called Bernie a communists the other night.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: He can do different things against Biden. But the problem with him and Biden is then, unless you just watch Fox News 24 hours a day, you’re into conspiracy theories, or you really think that Burisma was more important than anything else in the world. It’s really hard to dislike Joe Biden.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: He’s one of the best liked people in American politics, especially, among his peers. I’m not saying it’s not impossible, you got $250 million and you can do all kind of fake videos and do all sorts of things. But if this is an election about Donald Trump, Donald Trump has got some challenges.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah. Back to the primaries. In your reading of this, Paul, as someone who’s followed so many of these so closely, primaries are about policy, or are they about likability?
Paul Stekler: I think they’re more about likability. You’re always looking for that unicorn, that fabulous candidate. Then no matter what you think of Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton was a fabulous candidates.
Jeremi Suri: Absolutely.
Paul Stekler: Barack Obama was an amazing candidate. They’re not that many of them.
Jeremi Suri: Ronald Reagan, you could argue, was a [inaudible] .
Paul Stekler: Ronald Reagan was a great candidate. For his time, within a more limited deal, George W Bush was a pretty good candidate.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: He almost, or maybe he did lose against the pretty terrible candidate.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: Al Gore was very wooden.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: It just wasn’t a great candidate, this is an election he should not have lost.
Jeremi Suri: What’s interesting is all of these figures who turned out to be effective candidates coming out of primaries what the primary did was identify someone who people liked, people liked Reagan, people liked George W Bush, they liked Obama, and they liked Clinton. I mean, like in the sense that, personally people found them compelling individuals.
Paul Stekler: But I think this is known beforehand. Everybody knew how talented Bill Clinton was.
Jeremi Suri: Yes.
Paul Stekler: Remember he went through the speech that he gave in the 1992 convention where-
Jeremi Suri: The ’84 convention, I think.
Paul Stekler: It wasn’t ’84.
Jeremi Suri: Dukakis, ’88.
Paul Stekler: Yeah. He was horrible. He went on and on and on, and then he made fun on himself.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: That’s a true test of a good candidate, somebody who can actually make fun of themselves. Barack Obama, after the 2004 convention, he came and he spoke here at the Book Festival in 2006, I’d never seen anybody that good.
Jeremi Suri: Really.
Paul Stekler: George W Bush was an incredibly personable guy. If you want the candidate you’re going to have a beer with, even though he didn’t drink, it’s not a bad candidate to have with. If you look at the candidates right now, Donald Trump is a very interesting character. Those long, crazy rallies are riveting in their surrealness. I’ve never seen anything like it, I’ve never seen somebody insult so many candidates. I think Matthew Dowd was over my house with a bunch of people during the 2016 primary, we were watching the debate where within 30 seconds, Donald Trump calls Rubio, little Rubio.
Jeremi Suri: Little Marco.
Paul Stekler: Little Marco, and he calls Cruz lying Ted. I looked at it and I go, “I don’t understand.” I’d never seen anything like it. But you know something, if you’re going to be a TV star, you go for it. Now the thing about this process is, I’m not disappointed that we have 70 year-old’s, what I’m disappointed at is I’m still looking for that younger candidate who actually deserves to be able to be seen as a great candidate. I’m sorry, all the people that didn’t make it this time, we’re not great candidates. They were okay.
Jeremi Suri: It wasn’t the system, it was their deficiencies, not the system?
Paul Stekler: I think it was just because of luck or draw whatever, none of these people were great candidates.
Jeremi Suri: Someone said, Buttigieg was a great candidate.
Paul Stekler: He was the mayor of a tiny town.
Jeremi Suri: Just as Clinton was the governor of a tiny state.
Paul Stekler: He’s a much better candidates. He’s very young. This is going to sound terrible, and maybe you’re going to kick me off your podcasts, but we don’t elect short people as Presidents.
Jeremi Suri: That’s true.
Paul Stekler: Most male Presidents are like 6 ft.1.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: There’s a reason as horrible as that reason may be, that we tend to look at different. This is partially why I think women are going to have a tougher time bursting through, but I’m sure this is going to happen in our lifetime. I’m not going to go on the record on this, but I saw Stacey Abrahms is over the LBJ School.
Jeremi Suri: [inaudible] too.
Paul Stekler: Wow. There are very few people in politics. You may not like her ideology, you may not like her politics, oh my God, is she an amazing speaker.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: That’s what you’re looking for in a candidate, somebody that you don’t forget. Somebody who’s inspiring, who makes you feel something that makes you feel like they’re talking to you.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: That’s a good candidate. I think we’re stuck with not great candidates.
Jeremi Suri: We have another student question. This one is about the way we vote. One of the distinctive features of the American system is not simply that we have these primaries, but that even when the delegates are proportioned out, it tends to be a winner take all system, which is in the sense that you get to vote for one person. You don’t get to vote for a second choice or third choice.
Paul Stekler: Yeah.
Jeremi Suri: Some have argued that if there were ranked choice voting where you got to put list of preferences, someone like Elizabeth Warren would do well because a lot of people had her as their second or third choice.
Paul Stekler: Right.
Jeremi Suri: Let’s hear Noah George’s question on this.
MALE 3: Hi, my name is Noah George . I’m a freshman government major. My question is, do you think that primaries should utilize rank choice ballots to prevent those participating in early voting and supportive suspended campaigns from having their votes wasted?
Paul Stekler: No.
Jeremi Suri: Okay.
Paul Stekler: You’re asking the voter to be very sophisticated and very strategic. You pick somebody, drops out, too bad, you made a bad bet. It’s like we vote for somebody that we want to win. I’m not in the favor of strategizing, but I’m not in charge of this. Maybe the young people will do this and maybe it’ll create a better system. But like I said, you’re just going to create your own problems.
Jeremi Suri: Right. It’s an interesting thing about our system, Paul, in that we have a very complicated system in terms of how the primaries and caucuses work and in terms of the electoral college, but very simple system in terms of how people vote.
Paul Stekler: Yeah.
Jeremi Suri: You’re comfortable with that?
Paul Stekler: No, I’m comfortable with the two party system. I think it works better. Look at the Israeli election. Look at the Italian elections. Proportional representation is a road to madness.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: Even the British elections that are somewhat multi-party, I don’t think work quite as well, but it’s hard to say. As Jeremy Corbyn did a suicide pact with the Labour Party, maybe that’s skewed things.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Paul Stekler: So I think the system works the way it works, there are certain truisms. Maybe Elizabeth Warren was the second most popular candidate, I’ll tell you the favor she did for Biden was taking Bloomberg out.
Jeremi Suri: Yes, of course.
Paul Stekler: But the problem is that it’s a murder suicide pact, it’s very much like Christie and Rubio.
Jeremi Suri: I was just going to say.
Paul Stekler: Yeah. In 2016, if you take somebody out just understand that you’re going out there with them.
Jeremi Suri: Well, that’s the thing, the dynamic of primaries, it does seem to me is that if you go on the attack you risk actually taking yourself and the other person out, that seems to be the precedent. What you want to do is actually become the most compelling character and not the most negative character.
Paul Stekler: Unless you’re Donald Trump, maybe he skewed everything. If he skewed everything then none of his solutions are going to work much. But there are candidates, I remember Bill Clinton when he was opposing the opposition of the inheritance tax.
Jeremi Suri: Okay.
Paul Stekler: Clinton was able to do things, I think what he said was because they were talking about how you’re going to lose the family farm. He goes, “I don’t think there’s anybody who’s on a tractor that would be hurt by this bill.” This is what a good candidate can do, it’s what a good communicator can do.
Jeremi Suri: Absolutely. One of my favorite moments is when Franklin Roosevelt calls his Republican opposition the horse-and-buggy politicians and says, “We’re moving into the modern world. We need a modern government.” Part of it is being able to make these issues vivid for people, and your point earlier I think is one worth stressing. The primaries and the caucuses especially in small states, they provide local citizens like citizens in New Hampshire a unique opportunity to actually meet all the candidates. There is something to that, there is something to that shoe-leather politics.
Paul Stekler: I hope in a system like Iowa they can actually figure out how to run an election.
Jeremi Suri: That’s another story. Zachary, what do you think? Do you think there is some merit? This is a far more positive view, this is an unprecedented podcast where Paul Stekler is less cynical than you on the primary system. What do you think? Are you persuaded or you still think we need to change the system?
Zachary Suri: I am persuaded that the system is in many ways a practical system for winning an election as a party. The premise I disagree with is more, I think that at least for younger people in American society we think less about party and victory for a candidate, and more about where we want the country to go. I think the issue is that in some ways that disregards the realities of politics which are that we need in some ways a compromised candidate, we can’t always get what we want. But I also think there needs to be a way as young people who feel this way become the majority of the Democratic Party, for us to take this into account and to focus more on policy. That may be through the party, that may be through more Democratic primaries, but we definitely need to continue to look at these processes critically.
Jeremi Suri: Right. It does seem like the order of our primaries gives us certain advantages, certain kinds of candidates. Julián Castro, I think was accurate, and I think Bloomberg echoed this as well by saying that starting out in Iowa and New Hampshire, you give white voters quite a lot of say. It takes a long time to get to a state where you actually have a large number of Latino voters, Texas is the first state where that comes up. If you think if Latina and Latinos are becoming actually the majority-minority in parts of the country, that’s a pretty significant oversight in the system. So Paul, are you for reforming the system anyway? If you could be the guard of primaries, what would you change in the structure? Not the candidates, but in the way they’re setup. How would you change them?
Paul Stekler: I don’t know, I think I may change the order of these a little bit. I think Iowa has essentially made itself a persona non grata.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: But I have no flip answer on this. Like I said, I think whenever you change a process you solve some problems and you create other problems. So you’d have to think about this.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
Paul Stekler: I think what I’m looking forward to is really better candidates, not these candidates are terrible but better candidates in the future. We keep talking about how our generation is going to pass the baton and if anything they’ve gotten older this time
Jeremi Suri: Absolutely
Paul Stekler: Okay. But me and that cohort is going to die sometime, so essentially, there’s got to be better candidates. It’s always hard and you look at people, people are going, “Nikki Haley is going to be a great candidate in 2024.” Well, maybe, you look good on paper but sometimes looking good on paper doesn’t actually actualize itself in the real world. Sherrod Brown, I thought was going to be by far the strongest candidate. For me, if Brown was a candidate, I think the election is over just because he’s a progressive who doesn’t sound too liberal, and he’s been able to win in Ohio and very popular, he’s charismatic, and he said, “I didn’t want to run.” Now, I think there’s logistical reasons for that. So who knows? It’s like if you don’t run you can win, and even if you do run some of this is luck.
Jeremi Suri: Right. Some of it’s the moment, their certain moments. I mean, Jimmy Carter is the candidate of post-Watergate, there’s no doubt about it. He doesn’t win a primary, he wouldn’t win primaries in the early 70s or in the 80s.
Paul Stekler: But he chose the right time. Barack Obama was thinking, “Maybe I shouldn’t run in 2008.” Tom Daschle said, “This is your moment.” Quite frankly, Elizabeth Warren’s moment was probably 2015 when Bernie said, “You should run.”
Jeremi Suri: Right. That makes a lot of sense. Zachary, let’s close with you here. What do you think we can do to get young people more interested in the system? Paul has laid out for us not just the virtues of the system, but the reasons why the system exist the way it does for choosing our candidates. If we’re going to get better candidates in the system, we do need to have more participation from young people. So far there’s been more participation by young people but they haven’t really dominated these primaries in the way they could have, that was Bernie’s hope. How can we get young people more involved in this process?
Zachary Suri: I think what I really starts with is exactly what you’re talking about, which is getting better candidates in the race. We need a candidate that doesn’t like Bernie Sanders only speak to a specific group of young people or a specific group of disenfranchised voter, we need candidates who can speak to both groups. I think going back and talking about some of these stories of older candidates really tell this, and that is that we need candidates who are charismatic and who can speak to these issues and make young people feel like they matter. I think we need to encourage younger people not necessarily Peter Buttigieg, but people like Peter Buttigieg to run again and to make sure that their voices are heard.
Jeremi Suri: In your sense Cory Booker, Peter Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, they were just a little too early?
Zachary Suri: Yeah. I also think that we need to find a better young person to take that baton.
Jeremi Suri: Great. Well, we’re all waiting for you, Zachary. I think this has been a fantastically interesting discussion of the ins and outs of primaries as history, as lived politics and as possibility. I think Paul’s point is really well taken, which is that this primary system as messy as it is it’s designed as bouillabaisse for us to see if there’s a candidate who can rise to the top. That has happened in many cases, maybe to some extent it’s happened with Joe Biden this year on the Democratic side. Reforming that system’s important but also, getting candidates in who can find a way to move through that system and bring people together, that’s actually what American politics is all about. This goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville, it’s a messy mix of different groups, different religions, different views, and it’s the candidate who, as Paul said, can play addition, can actually add the different groups together that seems to make the most sense. We will be able to watch this and learn from this as we go forward. Thank you for joining us for this week of This is Democracy.
MALE 1: This podcast is produced by the liberal arts development studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke, and you can find his music at harrisonlemke.com.
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