84 Politics and elections
other minority groups. But the reforms had unforeseen effects. The number
of states operating presidential primaries rose dramatically from seventeen
in 1968 to thirty-eight in 1988, when over 80 per cent of the delegates to the
convention were selected by primary elections, compared with only one-third
twenty years earlier. Although the number of states holding primary elec-
tions declined to thirty-five in 2004, winning the nomination is no longer a
question of appealing to the members of the convention but of winning the
primary elections. Winning the primaries is now a matter of convincing mil-
lions of voters, through the channels of the mass media, that you are the wor-
thiest candidate to represent the party. The changes in the rules for delegate
selection contributed very powerfully to the further disintegration of party
organisation, and the lessening of the influence of professional politicians.
As a reaction to the disintegrative effects of the new rules the Hunt
Commission was established to make recommendations for the selection of
delegates to the Democratic Party’s national convention in 1984. The Hunt
Commission did not change the basic thrust of the principles underlying the
McGovern–Fraser reforms, but it moderated their effects, and changed the
balance of the 1984 convention back towards a greater reliance on the profes-
sionals in the party. A greater role in the convention was given to ‘superdel-
egates’ – party officials, Senators, and Congressmen not formally committed
to a candidate before the meeting of the convention. In addition a threshold
was introduced to prevent candidates with only a very small percentage of the
primary vote from securing delegates. As a result of the changes made by the
Hunt Commission, fewer presidential primary elections were held in 1984,
and the number of delegates committed to a candidate before the opening
of the convention fell back to just over 50 per cent. The successful candidate
for the Democratic nomination, Walter Mondale, was more of an old-line
politician, not a candidate created by the media. His defeat in the 1984 presi-
dential election led yet again to the appointment of a commission, ‘the Fair-
ness Commission’, to review the rules for delegate selection. However, the
only significant change that they recommended for the national convention
to be held in 1988 was an increase in the proportion of superdelegates, thus
leaving the Democratic Party, in the words of the New Republic, with a ‘caucus
mentality – Democrats as gays, women, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, unionists,
anything but just Democrats – (that) still holds the party in thrall’. This per-
ception of the party as simply a conglomeration of pressure groups remains
one of its greatest problems in the battle for political office.
When an incumbent president is seeking the nomination he is usually in
a very powerful position, for to replace him would be to repudiate the party’s
leader while he was still president of the United States, and to condemn the
party’s record over the previous years. But it is possible for a challenge to
be made to an incumbent president, forcing the convention to hold a ballot.
Contested ballots were held when President Truman sought the nomination
in 1948 and when President Roosevelt asked for his fourth term in 1944. But
even in 1948, when the President’s prestige was at a very low ebb, the chal-