Dems’ Candidate Swap Reinforces Mediating Electoral Institutions

If the recent news from Delaware is correct, Americans this fall will not be treated to the presidential rematch they have all been dreading. But what will they encounter instead? As Democrats retrench following President Biden’s withdrawal, party elites seem to be coalescing around Vice President Kamala Harris to head their ticket. By current Democratic rhetoric, this 11th-hour substitution seems… “undemocratic.” But it actually fits within America’s larger tradition of presidential elections — a tradition Democrats have been working to undermine.

An Unpopular Candidate

On December 3, 2019, Harris suspended her first and only presidential campaign. After briefly registering 15% support in July, Harris was polling in the low single digits (3.4% in Real Clear Politics, RCP, average), and her flagging campaign was out of funds to even reach the first primaries. It seemed like nearly nobody wanted Kamala Harris to be president, and there was no point in continuing any longer.

Then Harris got chosen for a different role. Months before he won the nomination, Joe Biden had vowed to pick a woman as his running mate, a category he later narrowed to include only black women. Harris was the only black woman who ran a serious presidential campaign, and Biden finally chose her.

As the vice presidency has exposed Harris to more Americans, her polling has grown steadily worse. In April 2021, a CNN poll measured her approval at 52% among registered voters, while only 40% disapproved (an aggregate +12%), while an Economist/YouGov poll found 47% of registered voters approved and 39% disapproved (aggregate +8%). As Harris was tasked with combating the worsening immigration crisis, her approval numbers grew steadily worse. The last poll measuring a net positive approval for Harris came in September 2021.

Today, for comparison, the latest CNN poll (November 2023) found 39% approval and 61% disapproval for Harris (aggregate -22%), and the latest Economist/YouGov poll (July 2024) found 39% approval and 51% disapproval (aggregate -12%) — poll results do fluctuate, after all. In the latest RCP average, Harris has an aggregate -15% approval rating.

The 2024 Democratic presidential primary was far from energetic, with most Democrats supporting the incumbent president, Joe Biden, by default. In any event, Harris chose not to run, and most people assumed she would continue as Biden’s running mate in his reelection bid. Most people assumed this, until Biden abruptly withdrew from the race this weekend and endorsed Harris.

Within hours, Harris had gained the endorsements of all 50 state party chairs, nine governors, and 85 members of Congress. While the Democratic Party has not officially nominated a candidate yet, right now Harris seems to be the likeliest choice by far.

Democracy?

In other words, the Democratic Party seems poised to nominate a candidate for president who, in many ways, seems un-“democratic.” She was not chosen or even voted on by their primary voters. Her only presidential campaign fizzled before voting began. Even if she had been on the ballot, public opinion surveys do not suggest that she would be a particularly popular candidate.

For months, a “core” message of Biden’s reelection bid has been that “democracy is on the ballot.” Biden has said this. Harris has said this. The slogan appears on overpriced t-shirts. Biden even proclaimed this message back during the midterm elections. The message always accompanies insinuations that former President Donald Trump and his political allies pose an existential threat to “democracy.” Democracy is never defined but generally seems to mean an electoral system in which the people have a right to express their political preferences through voting.

(Somehow, this logic only applies when the people choose to elect Democratic partisans; if the people express their political preferences by voting for, say, MAGA Republicans or Donald Trump, that democratic exercise would also be deemed a threat to democracy.)

But what happens when these self-proclaimed defenders of democracy suddenly put a candidate on the ballot who was never chosen by her party’s voters? What kind of democracy are they defending now?

It’s worthwhile to point out the hypocrisy of a party that wraps itself in democratic language and embraces the will of the people, but who will employ (by their definition) various un-democratic means to secure political power. Another angle that shows the Democratic Party in an unfavorable light, on the same point, is election integrity.

American Institutions and Presidential Elections

But noting the hypocrisy should not end the inquiry. There is a deeper, more fundamental point to draw out. That is, American presidential elections have never been decided by direct popular election, and they were not designed to be. Rather, American presidential elections are filtered through intermediate institutions, including the Electoral College and political parties.

According to Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the president is chosen by electors, who in turn are appointed by the states. How the states choose their electors is entirely up to the state legislators. And nowhere does the Constitution specify that electors must be pledged to vote for particular candidates.

Political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but early defenses of that document, such as the Federalist Papers, assumed they would arise naturally. In fact, pseudo-parties formed with President Washington’s own administration. Beginning in the election of 1796, the parties’ congressional delegations held a caucus to choose their presidential candidates. That system lasted until the Federalist Party dissolved, and 1824 saw a four-way contest where a significant number of electors were chosen by voters, not by state legislators. Even then, no candidate gained a majority in the Electoral College, and the election was decided in the House of Representatives. New parties began to hold national nominating conventions to select their presidential candidates in 1832, and they continued to do so until the 1970s saw the rise of a new, more popular system of election.

National parties still technically nominate their presidential candidates at national conventions. The difference is that nowadays most delegates to the convention are pledged beforehand to a particular candidate, who won the primary in a particular state. In most modern elections, one candidate arrives at the convention with a clear majority of delegates pledged to support his or her candidacy.

Before the 1970s, only a small fraction of convention delegates were apportioned in primary elections. In 1952, Estes Kefauver won 12 out of 15 Democratic state primaries, but Adlai Stevenson won the party’s nomination after competing in none of them. In 1968, Eugene McCarthy won the most votes in Democratic primaries, but those primaries apportioned only 38% of the delegates; the national convention nominated Hubert Humphrey instead, who had not competed in the primaries.

These nominees, who lacked popular support, went on to lose in the general election, which was one factor in convincing parties to place more weight in the primary system.

Another feature of the contested convention system was that it often took multiple rounds of voting to determine the party nominee — called a “brokered convention” — which occurred 24 times between 1844 and 1952, according to Ballotpedia. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln went into the Republican convention as an underdog against Governor William Seward and only pulled into the lead on the third ballot. Sometimes, the voting could last for an unreasonably long time before an acceptable candidate was chosen. In 1880, Republican delegates nominated James Garfield on the 36th ballot. In 1924, Democratic delegates nominated John Davis on the 103rd ballot after 16 days.

In general, a brokered convention could indicate party disunity that might spell trouble in the general election. The closest modern analogue would be the Republican infighting over House speaker, which led to multiple rounds of voting before acceptable compromises were made (the first time) or an acceptable candidate was found (the second time). Only three presidential nominees from a brokered convention went on to win the general election, except in elections where both parties held brokered conventions.

The Main Point

Admittedly, this political history seems foreign to our ears, not to mention irrelevant, and it is likely to bore all but the most eager students of the past. The point of reviewing it is to show that recent Democratic moves are not that far out of the mainstream of American political history. Before the last 50 years, contested or brokered conventions at which party elites largely ignored the will of the voters were common — rarely successful, but common.

Indeed such allegedly “anti-democratic” operations can play an important role in mediating our presidential elections. Presidential nominating conventions are rough-and-tumble, political collision events, where politicians like Abraham Lincoln can rise to the top, and poorer candidates get weeded out before facing an opponent in a general election. It would be far easier for demagogues to charm their way to the White House on a platform of idiocy if they did not have to bring the nominating convention for a major party along with them. It would be far easier for an ailing incumbent to hide from the campaign trail without a convention to attend and oversee.

Democrats were the first party to attack the “anti-democratic” mechanisms of party conventions, but they are the first to return to their use. If they were consistent, they might also mute their attacks on the Electoral College, which also plays an important, mediating role in presidential elections, although a different one focused on balancing interests between states. If they were consistent, they would not attack their opponent with an overly narrow definition of “democracy” that could just as easily turn against them.

Of course, returning to the political era of “smoke-filled rooms” has its risks for Democrats. A last-minute candidate swap, a possible brokered convention, a nomination of an unpopular, untested candidate on the national stage — these could spell electoral disaster, as they did in many past elections. But, given the fact that Biden’s campaign was already on hospice care, it’s a risk they’re willing to take. It might be hypocritical, but it’s certainly also American.