Our Revolution’s Board Chair Larry Cohen writes, “During the [Unity Reform] commission, we argued for more states to have primaries, and set more rules for those states that decided to continue with caucuses. Moving forward, we need to focus on voting rights in the party nominating process at all levels.” I hope he will reconsider his view.

If you think the political process is about selling a product, then primaries are terrific. The decline of significant voluntary associations in which people talk with one another about public affairs leaves no significant mediating bodies between the individual voter and candidates, resulting in mass and social media, and door-knockers who spend a couple of minutes selling their candidate “at the door,” influencing how votes are cast. Sound bites and pre-packaged sales pitches are what the potential voter is exposed to.

Contrast that with the months of neighbour/co-worker/co-religionist asking each other, “Who would be our party’s best candidate to beat the other party?”, and “What issues are most important for the nation’s future?” The Iowa caucuses are the closest thing we have in American politics to the town hall meeting of the past, though they were far from perfect—for two reasons. Most people were ineligible to participate: women, slaves, indentured servants, teenagers, or men without property or income couldn’t vote. Further, if you were in debt and your creditor was at the meeting, and a matter important to him was on the agenda, he influenced how you voted—whatever the “merits” of the case.

Critics say the caucuses are undemocratic because “only” 30% of the eligible voters participated. Caucus participants don’t make public policy; they don’t legislate. Rather, they are the people most concerned with who will make public policy—i.e. who will best represent me to the voters in November. “Democratic” isn’t the right category to apply here; it applies to governance, not to nominating party candidates.

Primaries were instituted to bypass the old “political machines” in which professional politicians in cigar smoke filled rooms made deals that determined platforms and candidates. But cleaning out the machines replaced one set of problems with another. The primary system rewards those who have the money to market themselves—either they are independently wealthy (Bloomberg, Trump, Steyer) or dependent on those with a lot of money (Biden, Buttigieg and others).

Thus far, only Sanders has been able to fully overcome dependence on large donors. But his army of volunteers presents a different problem: “activists” don’t represent the views of registered Democrats. The 1972 George McGovern campaign painfully illustrated that; he won the nomination because of a volunteer army, and carried only two states in the whole country in the general election. (Because “anybody but Trump” is a deep sentiment in the country, Sanders as nominee would do better.) At the other end of the political spectrum, the Barry Goldwater 1964 presidential campaign illustrated the same point.

There is a democracy problem, but it is a different one. To a great extent, what is said during pre-Party convention and pre-election months bears little relationship to what happens during governance. That’s because real power in the United States now is concentrated in the hands of a relative few who have lots of money, and because “The Market” and politicians respond to that money, not to a one-person/one-vote democratic system. Solving this problem will require at least dramatic tax reform (during the Eisenhower Republican Administration, the marginal income tax rate was over 90%, and there were steep corporate taxes), vigorous anti-trust action, breaking up the big banks, a strong public sector and more. Billionaires and multi-millionaires are incompatible with democracy.

Incompetence and probable naiveté about the “app” that was supposed to do the counting have made the Iowa caucuses a national joke. Perhaps Iowa will abandon them. Probably it will lose its place as the first state in the nominating process. That’s all too bad.

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Go here and listen to “The Day Democracy Died” Sung by The Founding Fathers.  It sums it all up.

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