by Pa Rock
Lifetime Democratic Voter
In a move clearly designed to allow President Joe Biden to dominate the nomination process for 2024, the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Committee voted on Friday to follow Biden's recommendation and shuffle the order in which states will choose their favorites for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. Biden wants South Carolina to hold the first-in-the-nation Democratic primary, and the committee voted to go with his recommendation.
South Carolina represents Joe Biden's comfort food, his mac-and-cheese if you will. It was the state that pulled Biden forward and essentially clinched the nomination for him in 2020, and Biden would like to begin there next year so that he can come roaring out of the gate. But bringing South Carolina forward, along with some other important states like Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia, knocks the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary out of their traditional spots at the front of the process - and Democratic voters in those states are not happy about the indignity being imposed on them by their party.
New Hampshire has a law on the books which declares that their primary will always be the first in the nation, but the DNC has moved to head that off by imposing punishment on states which jump the line and hold their primaries ahead of the DNC favored states. States that fail to follow the DNC directives will lose half of their delegates to the national convention - and Democratic candidates who campaign actively in those states will be "punished." Democrats have also empowered their party chair, Jaime Harrison, to take any other "appropriate steps" to implement the new order.
(A heavy hand with a big stick is always a fine way to display and enforce democratic principles!)
The entire Democratic National Committee will vote on the new primary voting order when it meets in early 2023. If everyone gets in lockstep with the party king and king-makers, the first-in-the-nation Democratic primary will be held in South Carolina on Saturday, February 3rd, 2024, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on Tuesday, February 6th, and Georgia a week later on Tuesday, February 13th.
New Hampshire's two Democratic senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, are both righteously pissed, and Joanne Dowdell, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New Hampshire, stated bluntly that New Hampshire has a law on the books mandating that their presidential primaries will always be first, and "we (New Hampshire) will not be breaking our law," which, translates into the vernacular as "We will be going first!"
(Here's the answer to the problem, for anyone who cares: A system of three regional primaries where the eastern states all vote one day, the midwestern states another day, and the western states on yet another day - and the order of voting will rotate each election cycle. Within three cycles each area of the country would have the important and influential role of going first one time. And, candidates would not have to rush all over the country, willy-nilly like fleas hoping around on a dog, but could focus their efforts on one particular section of the country at a time. It would save time, energy, campaign dollars, and airplane fuel - and it just makes too much damned sense!)
I'm certain that Democratic Party Chair Jaime Harrison, who was at the rules committee hearing, and the influencers in South Carolina who seem to be dictating just how democracy will work (or not) within the Democratic Party - don't give two rips about what a lifelong Democratic voter in rural Missouri thinks about all of their machinations - but I will tell them anyway.
This Democratic voter will not be cowed by political bullies who want to arrange the process to meet their own ends. By the time my state has its primary, late in the process, the candidate has always been decided and my friends and I are encouraged to show our party loyalty by getting on the bandwagon. Well, pee on that! When the Missouri primary finally rolls around, I will be voting for the person whom I believe is best qualified and most able to do the job. And, as someone who is beginning to understand the infirmities brought on by aging, I also will not be voting for anyone in the presidential primary who is over the age of seventy - period!
Changing the rules in order to benefit one particular candidate is a castration of democracy, and enforcing the new rules by threats of reprisal sounds an awfully lot like the authoritarian operating policies of the party that we are working to defeat.
The Democratic Party must be better than that.
1 comment:
I am not sure how putting states other than the GOP leaning white populated small electoral vote states of New Hampshire and Iowa equate to castration of democracy.
If memory serves me correctly candidates forced smiles on their faces as they trudged through the snowy climes of those two states. And Iowa uses arcane caucus rules, not direct elections, to ultimately choose their winners. They have a notorious history of flubbing the process.
South Carolina's Representative James Clyburn snatched Joe Biden from losing the last Democratic nomination. Biden is a man who pays his debts. That said, he did not let Clyburn dictate Biden's choice to fill a seat on the Supreme Court. Clyburn wanted South Carolina Judge J. Michelle Childs. Ketanji Brown Jackson got the nod.
Joe Biden has said that government should look like the people it governs. The Democratic Party owes recent successes in large part to women, especially Black women. When it comes to being heard in the nominating process, we should hear them before a presumptive nominee has been selected.
Attacks on Joe Biden being old are in poor form, albeit all the rave on propaganda outlets like FOXNews. Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House and the man responsible for slaughtering courtesy and considerate behavior in Congress, has finally come to his senses and told the GOP to quit attacking Biden. Those attacks don't square with Biden's record of accomplishments as President.
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