The EconomistJuly 27th 2019 331T
wenty-fivecandidates are running for
the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Twenty of them will take the stage in next
week’s televised primary debates. So large a
slate could fill two football teams, provide
five sets of starters in the nbaor be the
primary cast for a Broadway musical.
Though fields of this size are atypical com-
pared with primaries in the 20th century,
they are becoming the new normal (see
chart on next page). In 2016 the Republican
field that included Donald Trump con-
tained 16 other candidates. Party bosses re-
cognise that having so many choices over-
whelms voters and encourages candidates
to take extreme positions. But doing some-
thing about it will require them to act in a
way that to many seems undemocratic.
The parties’ current nomination rules
allow almost anyone who wishes to run for
president to do so. To try to minimise the
chaos this invites, the Democratic National
Committee set minimum thresholds in
terms of polling numbers and fundraising
that had to be met in order to be included inthe televised debates. These are hard to cal-
ibrate precisely in advance. In this case the
system has thrown up too many candidates
for voters to evaluate. It rewards name rec-
ognition and social-media prowess, and
asks activists to make decisions about peo-
ple about whom they know little.
Absent from the 20 candidates who
were selected for the Democrats’ first tele-
vised debates was Steve Bullock, the gover-
nor of Monatana and the only Democratic
governor of a state won by Mr Trump in the
race, because he was lower in the polls and
had fewer individual campaign donors
than other candidates. Meanwhile Mari-
anne Williamson, spiritual guru, whose as-
sertion that “there’s no higher art than liv-
ing a beautiful life” may not be the winning
message Democrats are searching for in
2020, was allowed to speak on the party’s
platform to millions of Americans. It does
not have to be like this. Party leaders used
to exercise more sway over primaries. They
could do so again.The party subsides
Republicans’ and Democrats’ lack of con-
trol over their nominating process is a
uniquely American phenomenon. No-
where else in the world do political parties
engage in years-long campaign battles be-
tween candidates vying for the approval of
hyper-engaged partisans. Most other coun-
tries allow some combination of legisla-
tors, party members and interest groups to
select party leaders. This is the case in par-
liamentary democracies such as Britain
(where Conservative mps chose a slate of
two candidates to put to party members),
Canada and Australia, as well as in presi-
dential systems like France and Mexico,
where most parties choose their leaders
from a more restricted list.
The current system can trace its roots
back to the 1972 Democratic Convention in
Miami Beach. This was the first contest in
which the rules of the McGovern-Fraser
commission were adopted. That commis-
sion was tasked with creating more open
rules after Hubert Humphrey was nomi-
nated in a contentious convention, despite
not competing in any of 13 primary races.
(In the five decades since the adoption of
more democratic rules, the Democratic
Party has won fewer presidential elections
than in the five decades before, when can-
didates were chosen in smoke-filled
rooms.) Republicans were persuaded by
similar pro-democracy arguments and en-
acted plebiscitary reforms in the 1970s and
1980s, increasing the number of primaries
at the expense of caucuses and binding de-
legates to the voters’ decisions.
Fans of the current system consider it a
plus that the two parties are open to outsid-
ers like Mr Trump or Bernie Sanders. They
also point out that the 25 candidates on theOvercrowded primaries
A Democratic dilemma
WASHINGTON, DC
Should political parties really let anyone run for president?
United States
34 Robert Mueller’s testimony
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36 Indian-AmericansAlso in this section37 Lexington: Alaska Hotshots