Part of the reason is also that caucuses reward participation, and as someone who both has strong opinions about politics and believes that we liberals need to do a lot more "doing" in politics and a lot less complaining about it on the internet, wasting a Tuesday night, or even a whole Saturday, in some school gym has a sort of stoic appeal. As my Methodist grandmother might have said, "Suffering in caucuses is good, it builds character."
The case against caucuses is well known and you can expect to see it trotted out the closer we get to Iowa in 2020. To summarize about a gazillion op-eds and blog posts: caucuses are deeply unfair as they are hard for many to access, few people participate in them relative to a given electorate, and they are rarely if ever representative of a given population they are suppose to represent. People making this case some time jazz things up by declaring them "racist" or "classist" or "elitist" or some other "ist" but the arguments are usually pretty similar.
The old me that use to defend this strange system would have replied something like, "That's a fair description but it's also kind of irrelevant." The reason? Political parties are private organizations, not creatures of the state and so how they chose to endorse and nominate candidates should be left up to them. The same way there shouldn't be some law declaring that every registered voter should be able to have a voice in what the Black Lives Matter movement chooses to do, even though that is essentially what "open primaries" allow for political parties.
Moreover there are benefits to the caucus system (in theory). They reward participation so people who are willing to work hard, say by building up good will in a precinct or bringing a bunch of friends to the caucus and having them help make you a delegate to the next level, get that much more say because they are that much more committed to advancing the goals and doing the work of the party. The same way a committed Black Lives Matters activist should have more say in what they chose to do than a random white guy named longwalk who doesn't participate in the movement at all.
In addition, caucusing (again in theory) is cool because it is a rare example in modern life where you, an ordinary citizen can have real power. In a primary you are just yet another random voter who's vote will almost certainly not change the outcome of an election even in a town of thousands. Let alone a state of 5.5 million people. But caucuses are different, in caucuses you have power.
You'll probably never believe me but I really did once have a state representative come to my door to ask for my support because I was a delegate. Likewise I once really did have a member of Congress once ask for my personal support for a candidate at a senate district convention. In a primary system you go to the candidate rally to shake their hand, they don't come to you. If you're a delegate in a caucus system it's different.
Meanwhile supporters of primaries often just ignore that system's very real shortcomings. The biggest example of this can be found in the 45th President of the United States who's take over of the party of Lincoln was caused in no small part by saturation media coverage because he was so "interesting" as a candidate. In most other democracies, and in most of American history, party leaders would never chose a know nothing reality show host to lead their party both for electoral reasons, but also because that person should never be put in charge of the party or the country. But here in the US in our post McGovern–Fraser "better" more "democratic" primary based presidential nomination system the voters, in their infinite fucking wisdom, decided to go with reality show host.
Likewise the fans of primaries arguments about "democracy" often don't hold up under scrutiny. As political scientists Julia Azari and Seth Masket put it in an excellent op-ed in the New York Times "democracy" inside political parties isn't a very helpful standard as parties by definition involve a balancing act between leaders of different sorts and rank and file members:
Part of the problem for parties is our insistence that they be run democratically. That turns out not to be a very realistic concept. Yes, we can hold elections within parties, but party leaders will always have vastly more information about candidates — their strengths and flaws, their ability to govern and work with Congress, their backing among various interest groups and coalitions — than voters and caucusgoers do. That information is useful, even vital, to the task of picking a good nominee. As the political scientist E. E. Schattschneider once said, democracy is to be found between the parties, not within them.More over the anti-caucus "democracy" and "participation" arguments don't really hold up on inspection. After all, most primary elections are pretty low turn out affairs and like caucuses turn out in primaries is often older, whiter, and wealthier of any given electoral constituency. To cite a recent example Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her recent primary win a whopping 15,897 votes, in a district with perhaps 240,000 registered voters. Does that really represent "the will of the people"? Likewise many voters in states with "open" primaries often vote in another parties's primaries than the one they'll vote for in the general election to cause trouble, or just because they think it's more fun.
So if caucusing is so great, why am I writing this post? Well, that's the thing. After participating in Minnesota's caucus process for the last 10 years I've come to see that the arguments for caucuses just don't hold up. This isn't because primaries are better, I'd argue that Donald Trump shows that primaries are actually pretty terrible. Instead what I came to see was the main problem with caucus is that they are dominated by political hobbyism.
"Political hobbyism" is a term coined by the political scientist Eitan Hersh that he laid out not to long ago in a great New York Times op-ed. As he puts it:
For years, political scientists have studied how people vote, petition, donate, protest, align with parties and take in the news, and have asked what motivates these actions. The typical answers are civic duty and self-interest.I'd argue that this is everywhere very much includes the 2018 DFL caucus and endorsement process. Consider my experience this cycle, not from the mindset of a pro-caucus partisan talking about "grassroots democracy" or an anti-caucus person declaring it some diabolical system of "voter suppression" or elites "subverting the will of the people."
But civic duty and self-interest do not capture the ways that middle- and upper-class Americans are engaging in politics. Now it is the Facebooker who argues with friends of friends he does not know; the news consumer who spends hours watching cable; the repeat online petitioner who demands actions like impeaching the president; the news sharer willing to spread misinformation and rumor because it feels good; the data junkie who frantically toggles between horse races in suburban Georgia and horse races in Britain and France and horse races in sports (even literal horse races).
What is really motivating this behavior is hobbyism — the regular use of free time to engage in politics as a leisure activity. Political hobbyism is everywhere.
Here's my story:
- I tramped to a school gym on a cold winter night to go to my local precinct caucus on caucus night, it was pretty good turn out, but then again I live in a very Democratic neighborhood in a very Democratic city so that's to be expected. I voted in a straw poll that wouldn't allocate any delegates and thus only counted for bragging rights. This kind of makes sense from a hobbyist standpoint, straw polls, even if meaningless, are fun.
- Our caucus went relatively well (ie it took 2 hours) but no fist fights broke out and no pistols were drawn so that's a win (we used to have those in Minneapolis caucuses back in the 70's). Delegate allocation was done not by debating the issues or voting but by volunteering. So I got to be a delegate for my precinct to my senate district convention because I raised my hand and didn't demure when the convener asked for some to step aside as we had too many men in our delegation (we have rules about gender balance among delegations). This could be seen as a failure of the caucus idea, or just hobbyism. Some kids would hang out with us when I was on the Quiz Bowl team in high school to have fun, but wouldn't necessarily want to go to any meets on the weekend.
- And a meet on the weekend is kind of what a senate district convention is! Basically I went to a day long convention of all those people elected as delegates from the numerous precincts in my state senate district to be elected delegates to go to the state convention. When I say "day long" I mean it took 12 hours, but it could have been worse, one convention in Minneapolis got kicked out of the building after their 14 hours ran up and had to reconvene another weekend for eight more hours. From a party standpoint this is an idiotic fiasco that needs to be addressed. But these sorts of crazy conventions are pretty regular, believe me, and from a hobbyist lens they make sense. Like your insane 18 hour Dungeons and Dragons game or LAN party in high school, the fact that it's goes on forever kind of ads to the mystique. "I survived my 12 hour convention", you could put it on a t-shirt. In fact the DFL party put something like that after the record turn out in 2008 that devolved into chaos in many parts of the state. Ah, memories.
- I left my convention after 8 hours (before delegates had been elected to go to the state convention) because I had other things I had to do. In other words the day was effectively a waste. Also because of having a sort of "I don't like this process, I hate this process" moment that Hersh's piece would later help me understand. But there were great moments of hobbyism. For example, an old lady at the microphone screaming at us that it wasn't okay to leave early due to her commitment to racial justice. This is a strange way to approach party politics (maybe some people only budgeted six hours for the convention?) but it makes sense as hobbyism. To put it in Dungeons and Dragons terms "You can't go home now! Your dwarven cleric is crucial to our plans to confront Theronorax is his lair!" If that's too much insert a golf metaphor about someone bailing of your own choosing.
Nah, the reality was more like "hobbyism, hobbyism, hobbyism."
I wasn't there, and there are many media accounts you can read, but here's my general impression of a hobbyist fiasco. Once upon a time (ie in June) Attorney General Lori Swanson was well liked and seen as a rising star in state politics. She was on the short list for replacements for Al Franken after he resigned.
But at the convention the DFL delegates decided to endorse a 37 year old progressive activist (who full disclosure I've met and is a good guy in a lot of ways) for reasons that have never become clear. According to some I've talked to the "buzz on the floor" of the convention was something like, "Vote for Matt Pelikan (the insurgent) to send Lori a message. We'll endorse her on the second ballot." The problem of course is he won the endorsement on the second ballot! From a party standpoint this and what followed is something of an epic disaster, but from a hobbyist standpoint it's great: we rooted for the underdog and they won, hooray.
But from a party standpoint though this was a disaster. Swanson, for reasons that remain unclear, decided to run for governor after this rebuke and after her campaign was engulfed in scandals came in third in the August primary. Meanwhile Representative Keith Ellison (my member of congress and full disclosure I worked on his 2010 campaign) jumped in to run for AG himself, leaving the DFL endorsed candidate with 10.6% of the vote for AG in the recent primary election. Meanwhile the endorsed DFL candidate for governor Erin Murphy had trouble gaining traction with voters, who remember are pretty disconnected from liberal hobbyist types like me, resulting in Congressman Tim Walz, who lost the endorsement at the state convention, wining with 41.6% of the vote compared to Murphy and Swanson.
The hobbyism though seemed to reach a peak, at least for me. When Senator Tina Smith's name came up for endorsement. Tina is an amazing person (full disclosure I've worked for her) and when you think of a older white Boomer feminist Democrat in politics her face should pop up in your mind. She worked on a number of campaigns in the 90's, she managed Walter Mondale's crazy "Fritz Blitz" campaign in 2002 for the Senate seat that opened after then Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash less that two weeks before the 2002 election, she then worked for Planned Parenthood. In government she became chief of staff to then Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak in 2006 and after that she was Governor Mark Dayton's chief of staff for four years and was then elected Lieutenant Governor in 2014.
From a party perspective she's about as good as they come. As a DFL delegate you know she's committed to your party and knows she must value what you value right? That's how I see it it, but not to some DFL state delegates, who gave her a big victory with 74.5% of the vote for endorsement, but one out of four decided to go with someone else. Many instead went with with Richard Painter, a former member of George W. Bush's administration and a contributor with the Federalist Society who was a talking head on CNN as well. The fact that such a person could still win a significant chunk of the vote of people supposedly deeply part of the party due to advancement through the difficult caucus process seems like a indictment of the whole process in and of itself. But from a hobbyist standpoint its a great way to spend the weekend. Fight for the little guy. Let's make things interesting. Etc etc.
I recite this story because Hersh spells out the consequences of political hobbyism in this piece so well.
....all the way down to the everyday armchair quarterback who professes that the path to political victory is through ideological purity. (In the face of a diverse and moderate country, the demand for ideological purity itself can be a symptom of hobbyism: If politics is a sport and the stakes are no higher, why not demand ideological purity if it feels good?)That seems like the epitaph of the 2018 DFL State Convention. Especially considering how the endorsed candidates largely would lose.
I guess the question here is what is my alternative, and to be honest my answer is I don't really have one. Caucuses may no longer work but if you care about politics remaining engaged makes sense. Likewise primaries may be awful, but that's the world we are living in.
I don't really have an answer here, other than to say that to improve our politics we need more that fights over process reform. We need to engage with politics, as messy as that is, in ways we've shied away from for a while.
