Who to blame if you're mad about the Trump-Biden rematch
The 2024 contest that wasn't is a showcase of party weakness
On Tuesday, I voted in a Wisconsin election that had much of the worst that the US system has to offer: two confusing, densely worded ballot initatives, a referendum on public school funding (rather than just… adequately funding public schools in the first place), and an uncompetitive presidential primary for both parties.
All of these stem from political movements that once argued for changes in the name of more democracy. But as we continue to discuss all the problems with American democracy, it’s wise for us to consider the unintended consequences of reforms that appear more democratic on the surface – inviting more participation, at least in theory. Often, these reforms address real problems, but can end up making it easier for politicians to consolidate their power, and harder for the system to incorporate a wide range of perspectives, or for citizens to have meaningful opportunities to check that power.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the informal rules that guide presidential nominations. This was the seventh presidential primary I’ve voted in where the outcome was already all but certain. Some of those, of course, have involved an incumbent president, and this is where I want to turn readers’ attention to a piece I wrote recently at the LSE USAPP blog – it explains why parties are so presidency-centric and how they’ve become increasingly so over time. One result is that, at this point, meaningfully challenging an incumbent president requires years of advance planning and coordination. Unlike a lot of people I encounter, I’m not especially bothered by that in 2024 in particular. But I am bothered by it in general – presidents don’t have a right to a renomination.
Writing this piece, a few weeks before starting this endeavor with Jonathan and David, made me think about my long-standing disagreement with Jonathan about party weakness. One of the central arguments from the “parties are strong” camp is their remaining ability to control nominations, especially using what Jonathan and the others call the “networked party.” I’ve looked at “control” as one of the pillars of party strength, though not the whole story. But increasingly, I think we need to look at institutional strength and power in comparison to what else is going on in politics. And it’s here that the warnings of presidency scholars for several decades are now in evidence: the localized and grassroots party structures of the past were a mess in a lot of ways, but they could manage and recruit candidates to check individual presidents and hopefuls. We can see pretty clearly that the Republican Party is not much of a check on Trump, and its institutional autonomy is quickly eroding. The subtler, but still important case is the Democratic Party, which offers little in the way of institutional channels to counter presidential influence – even for a president who is unpopular and drew serious factional criticism in 2020. He's changed the primary calendar based on his own political fortunes – and in practice I think these changes are fine – but we should think about how parties are not in any sense meaningful counterweights against the institutional power of the presidency. Biden, like most before him, has been a reasonably responsible steward of party leadership, not threatening to violate the 22nd amendment or leading a political movement that has engaged in violence and threats. If we’ve learned anything in the last eight years, it’s that depending on presidential responsibility is a precarious position.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for the erosion of parties as institutional counterweights to the presidency. But a special shout-out goes to anyone in power who has pushed the “I vote for the person, not the party” line. The decline of the idea that parties can be legitimate institutions has paved a path directly to the 2024 “rematch.” It doesn’t matter who the person is – we need institutions that help spread power out among multiple people. Parties aren’t just labels. They’re part of the system we have that is supposed to make sure no single person is too important or too powerful. At least, that was once the idea.