Collapse of the Traditional System The Rush to Judgement

My 1999 article, “The National Primary System: A 21st Century Method for Nominating Presidential Candidates,” opened with the following statements:

We are only a few months away from a train wreck in American presidential politics.

California, New York, and the New England states will hold their presidential primaries on March 7, 2000. The Rocky Mountain states will follow on March 11. Then on March 14, the southern states will hold their “Super Tuesday” primaries. In the space of only a week, half of all the delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions will be chosen. What is happening is a “front-loading frenzy,” as each region of the country scrambles to get an earlier say, and therefore more political clout, in the presidential primary process.

What does this mean for America?

It means that the people will be forced into a rush to judgment, rather than be allowed to cast a carefully considered ballot.

It means that the candidate who can afford to carpet-bomb the airwaves across several dozen states simultaneously will grab the most delegates and lock up the nomination.

It means that Big Money will gain even greater control over our political system. (Gangale 1999a)

The traditional schedule of presidential primaries, caucuses, and conventions is simply that--a tradition--one which evolved piecemeal over a period of decades, without any systemic architecture. Iowa and New Hampshire always go first because... they are Iowa New Hampshire. Originally, the other states' primaries and conventions of were spread fairly evenly throughout the spring season, leading up to the nominating conventions in the summer. Whereas now there are only a handful of states that do not hold presidential primaries, prior to the McGovern reforms in the early 1970s, only a third of the states held such primaries. In those pre-reform days, instead of the delegates of a state being chosen in one day as in a primary election, they were usually selected in the course of a long process beginning with precinct caucuses, running through district or county caucuses, and culminating in state conventions. The process of selecting a party’s presidential candidate was the aggregation of decisions made in thousands of smoke-filled rooms. Such a process did not lend itself to as much media attention nor to a sense of a candidacy building momentum. Rather, there was more the sense that the delegate selection processes in each state were relatively isolated, with little influence on each other. In such an environment, there was little perceived advantage in a state choosing its delegates early.

The McGovern reforms changed this process. More states switched to primaries, which attracted more media attention. The concept of campaign momentum took shape; with increasing frequency, candidates without sufficient momentum dropped out of the race before the national conventions. Eventually, states realized that they could exert more influence over the process and the candidates as well as attract more money from campaigns and media coverage if they moved their primaries to the beginning of the season. The more the system shifted from caucuses to primaries, the more incentive it created for front-loading. This was the unintended and adverse consequence of the McGovern reforms.

The first break with tradition came in 1988, when a bloc of southern states decided to hold their primaries on the second Tuesday in March, calling it “Super Tuesday.” But any state or region of the country can play that game, and in the years since many have. In 1996, California (a region in its own right) moved its presidential primary from the first Tuesday in June to the second Tuesday in March; still not content with that, the most populous state in the union moved its primary to the first Tuesday in March four years later. California was joined by 11 other states, creating a “Mega Tuesday” in which a third of all conventional delegates were awarded on the same day. Also in 2000, a bloc of western states moved their primaries to the Saturday between Mega Tuesday and the South’s Super Tuesday.

As I wrote in an opinion editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer on April 13, 1999:

Don’t for a moment believe that it will stop there. New Hampshire already has had to move its primary to February to stay ahead of the pack. Clearly, March Madness will eventually give way to February Frenzy, and I invite you to come up with your own alliteration for January. In this brave new world of the 21st century, the word campaign will be obsolete in the political lexicon, to be replaced by blitzkrieg. (Gangale 1999b)

My prediction came true. Iowa held its 2004 caucus on January 19, and the New Hampshire primary occurred on January 27. The “February Frenzy” was so furious that Howard Dean threw in the towel on the 19th of that month. Only 20% of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention had been selected, but the other 80% of the American electorate didn’t matter. The nomination had been decided.

Figure 1 shows the progression of front-loading over the past four decades in terms of the percentage of congressional districts represented in state party conventions and presidential primaries held on or before March 15.* It can be seen that throughout the 1960s and 1970s, less than 10% of presidential contest occurred on this date. By 1988, this number had risen above 50%, and while it dropped the 1990s, it surged to 70% in 2000.

Front-loaded extravaganzas such as Super Tuesday and Mega Tuesday are the weapons of mass destruction in presidential politics. They kill candidacies by the score. In the last three contested Republican presidential nominations--1988, 1996, and 2000--the campaign season began with six, ten, and twelve candidates respectively. In each case, the race was conceded to the front-runner by the Ides of March. (Brock 2000, 9-10, 14)

Both Bill Bradley (D-NJ) and John McCain (R-AZ) conceded their parties’ nomination on March 8, 2000, the day after Mega Tuesday, before the Western Regional Primary and Super Tuesday even took place. Until 1976, New Hampshire held the first primary of the season on the first Tuesday in March, an event that began the campaign in earnest. In 2000, however, the first Tuesday in March marked not the beginning of the campaign, but the end.

Even so, we have yet to see the worst of it. For 2004, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) “lifted its window restriction on protecting New Hampshire and Iowa,” meaning that states were free to schedule primaries and caucuses before these two traditional events (Hegarty 2003). Of course, when other states moved up their primaries, New Hampshire and Iowa moved their schedules forward to stay ahead of the pack. It does not seem all that outlandish to predict that some year (perhaps 2008 or 2012) we will recover from our New Year’s Eve hangovers to find that we have already nominated our presidential candidates!

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