On the morning of the last Democratic presidential debate ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez insisted that the party remains committed to diversity despite no candidates of color taking the stage Tuesday night.
Change the first primary states…
Oh thank god. I think it’s been almost HOURS since I’ve seen a “Dems in Disarray” narrative.
The term “participation trophy” comes to mind.
I am loathe to catch my hair on fire and shout #RIGGED MEDIA STORY!!! or whatever, but this has seemed like a rather manufactured crisis. We will have a pretty good idea of the extent to which the Democratic primary voting base is racist or sexist in, I dunno, maybe a generation or two. We can only have an extremely myopic view today.
Right now, in 2020, a highly crowded field saw the top two candidates emerge as the most recent Democratic vice president and the runner-up from the last primary. Shocker of shockers.
Coda: the backbone of the (IMO) most likely nominee’s support has been his heretofore indomitable strength among black voters, so it’s not like those voices are getting crowded out.
To be fair, it’s not the DNC’s fault that Harris, Booker, and Castro didn’t break through. That’s politics and it’s not predictable. Numerically, many more white male candidates have dropped out of the race than have candidates of color.
However, it is the DNC’s fault that the early primary process focuses heavily on states with near-zero diversity.
I don’t hear Biden quoting Tupac, so just how chill can he be, really?
Yeah, to hell with New Hampshire and South Carolina.
I don’t know how the DNC should go about adjusting its debate criteria, but it’s pretty obvious they need to do so. The individual donor thresholds, in particular, prompted many of the smaller campaigns to prioritize spending on getting new donors rather than actually campaigning. Conversely, the donor requirements also are going to keep a guy like Mike Bloomberg* off the stage because he’s self-funding the massive advertising blitz that has caused him to creep into mid-single digits in some of the recent polls. It’s a mess.
*For sake of clarity, Mike Bloomberg sucks.
Best song eva
Another great argument for a one-day national Primary.
I appreciate his sentiment, but nothing Perez or the DNC did changed the fact that the diversity candidates didn’t get the support from the people. It wasn’t that none tried; it was that none succeeded. They had ample opportunity with six televised debates to get traction. That’s not the fault of the process. That’s the fault of the candidate.
This campaign process has been entirely too long. That hasn’t helped either.
Said it before - a one-day primary gives everyone a chance. After Super Tuesday, the later primaries mean nothing.
A one-day primary would be interesting if and only if it were combined with something like instant runoff voting. Obama was a better candidate (and I think made a better president) than Clinton was/would have in 2008. He would have had no shot whatsoever in a first-past-the-post one-day primary.
Though I did, Harris qualified for tonight’s debate.
I theek she said that she didn’t see a path to the nomination.
If we want all candidates to have a chance, the piecemeal primary process is expensive and time-consuming.
I also want to see the general election hours be homogenized over the time zones. The election is generally decided before the west coast hours are expired. Again, there’s no reason in this day and age to have elections decided before everyone is allowed to vote.
ETA: And no TV coverage can announce anything until the last poll has closed. Period.
The damned tradition of the Presidential election having to be on a weekday baffles me. Many people have work hours and have employers that do not make it easy to get to the polls. And why limit it to just one day? I’d have the polls open at 6AM on a Friday and close 6PM the next day, Saturday. Ballots locked down for the duration. Everyone starts the tabulation 6PM Saturday and releases counts.
No, it is not the DNC’s fault.
Iowa has a law that allows the state to change the dates for the caucuses to occur no less than three days before any other caucus or primary.
New Hampshire has a state law that allows the state to change the date of its primary so that no other state cam have a primary ahead of New Hampshire.
The DNC has no control over state laws.
It probably didn’t used to be so non-diverse in Iowa,but it sure is now. Nevada and South Carolina ought to be 1st and 2nd.
The music is J S Bach—“Sleepers Awake.”
The question smacks of a falsely aggrieved, twisted, Dittohead narrative of reverse racism against white people being sold as affirmative action. If anyone believes that crap, then it makes perfect sense trying to throw a gotcha question about quotas unmet, into Democrats’ faces.
Nobody but Republicans, who are being deliberate tools about it, ever thought DNC should drop candidates on the stage like some deus ex machina of diversity.
And if that can be proven, there’re actually laws in place to ensure that anyone can vote and employers must give time off to do so.
An alternative: use the absentee ballot process (like I have for the last 20 years).
