How the Democratic Party Gave Away Its Ability to Simply Pick a New Nominee

TIME

On July 20, 2024,  President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he was ending his campaign for reelection and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him.

Transcript

00:00At the state and city level, they were known as political machines.

00:19They would trade jobs and government contracts, and they would fight over who the nominee

00:23was going to be at the national level.

00:30Those party organizations begin to lose strength as you go through the 20th century.

00:36You hear a lot of talk about reform, and attention starts to focus on, well, could voters really

00:42have a say in nominating the candidates?

00:45It doesn't really go anywhere, except in the South, where the primary becomes the tool

00:51used by the white supremacists to make sure that the whites wouldn't be splitting their

00:56votes and a black candidate winning.

00:59You move up into the 60s, and the primaries are still there, but they're not dominant.

01:06It's still kind of the party machine, party organizations at state, national level that

01:11are making those choices.

01:12So you move into 1968, Lyndon Johnson was running for president, but he is weak because

01:18of the Vietnam War.

01:19He has a very close election win in the state of New Hampshire.

01:23As a result of that, and seeing that it was going to be a slog for Johnson to win the

01:28party's nomination, he surprisingly pulls out.

01:32I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as

01:41your president.

01:42As vice president, Hubert Humphrey jumps into the race, and Humphrey is organizing that

01:48state and national party apparatus that Johnson had behind him, so that by the time you roll

01:54around to the convention in Chicago, Humphrey's already, in effect, won the nomination, even

01:59though he did not run in a single primary.

02:02Now that is the old party structure.

02:05But parallel to it, you had folks like Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy running in the primaries,

02:13and they were winning.

02:14I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose equality.

02:21Kennedy, of course, is killed by an assassin.

02:24Eugene McCarthy rolls into Chicago, and him and his supporters are outraged that Humphrey's

02:30going to be nominated, even though he has not won even a majority of the delegates through

02:35the primary system.

02:37Humphrey's playing by the rules of the game.

02:38They've just, they've lost credibility over the decades.

02:45Chicago was an extraordinary moment in 1968.

02:48You've got mass protests over the Vietnam War, and also great resistance to the economic

02:54inequality, racial injustice in the country.

02:58The Chicago political structure is controlled by Mayor Daley, who is outraged by these signs

03:05of protest, and as later reports would conclude, there was a police riot.

03:14The police just went crazy, and they were beating up the protesters outside the Democratic

03:19Convention.

03:21This is on the streets, is mayhem.

03:24Well, they all have different points of view, and there are some powerful leaders.

03:28So they get down to a convention, and you can expect to have something happen.

03:32We have one factor that seems to heal, to cause a healing process to speed up, and that

03:37is the Republican opposition.

03:40But as the convention is coming to a close, you've got this rebellion within the convention

03:46hall, and the critics in the party are saying this is not democratic.

03:49Meanwhile, on the streets, you've got the students, and the socialists, and other protesters

03:55saying that the party is not democratic, that America is not democratic, and it is a real

04:01crisis.

04:05One of the last acts of the convention, 68, was a referendum to start an investigation

04:14to look into how the party nominates its candidates.

04:17One of the results is the adoption around the country of direct primary elections to

04:23select the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

04:27I accept your nomination with a full and grateful heart.

04:381972, this process we're talking about, is why there is no political party to step in

04:44and say, Mr. Joe Biden, thank you for your career, but you're not going to be the candidate.

04:49If you were in Germany, France, or England, you would have had the party leadership ushering

04:54them off the stage.

04:56There would have been some kind of intervention.

04:59My vision for America's future, all merited a second term, but nothing, nothing can come

05:07in the way of saving our democracy.

05:10That includes personal ambition.

05:11I'd like to thank our great Vice President Kamala Harris, she's experienced, she's tough,

05:17she's capable.

05:18She's been an incredible partner to me, and a leader for our country.

05:22In America, there is no power, there is no party there who is going to move the candidate

05:28out.

05:29The candidate controls their own destiny.

05:31I knew you were still there.

05:33You're not going anywhere, Joe.

05:35Oh, I'm watching you, kid.

05:37I'm watching you, kid.

05:38I love you.

05:39I love you, Joe.

05:41The purpose for the primaries back to 68 was more democracy, get people involved.

05:47This needs to be about participation.

05:50What we found over the decades is the proportion of people turning out to vote in the primary

05:56was very small, 15, 20, sometimes very competitive election, possibly 30%.

06:02And the people who are turning out were not representative.

06:05They tend to be more liberal, and especially on the conservative side, very conservative

06:11libertarian.

06:12And it helps to explain why Donald Trump, you know, has locked up the nomination, even

06:16though there are plenty of Republicans who have doubts about him.

06:20The people who show up at the primary are making the decision about the nomination.

06:25Now we're looking at a situation with Kamala Harris being endorsed by Joe Biden and other

06:30leaders, and we're going to have kind of off-road sort of political maneuvering.

06:36There's going to be a lot of coming discussion about whether this is democratic, whether

06:40there ought to be an open convention to decide it, whether having the delegates vote virtually

06:46without any kind of public debate is really a violation of democratic procedure.

06:53And my point here is, go back to the beginning.

06:56The way this was set up in 1972 and how it's evolved into really a process of relatively

07:03small numbers, more extreme elements of our political process participating, has guaranteed

07:09this was not going to be democratic.

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