Kamala Harris and Democrats in Array

Over two pivotal weeks, Harris completely reset the presidential race. The DNC has now been masterful. What lessons can we learn from the trailblazing, joyful candidate who didn't win any primaries?

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Well, I’ll take this over that Hulk Hogan freakshow.

Democrats have gathered in Chicago this week, a joyful, exuberant bear hug embrace of American political identity, patriotism, and above all, optimism. It has been a stark contrast with the American Carnage-style anger simmering at the Republican National Convention.

Reports of the political death of the Democratic party have been greatly exaggerated. Democrats are in array.

Kamala Harris takes the stage tonight as the final flourish for an event that has been, in a word, masterful. From Lil Jon electrifying the state roll call to Barack Obama pondering why Trump is obsessed with his (crowd) size, it has been quite the spectacle. Michelle Obama’s speech, which solidifies her place as one of the greatest political communicators of her generation, coined a hauntingly memorable phrase, powerfully critiquing “the affirmative action of generational wealth.” And Tim Walz made me even prouder to be a Minnesotan.¹

Lurking behind the near-flawless execution of political pageantry in Chicago was a little remarked truth that’s obvious once you consider it: Hey, the Democratic party elites are actually pretty good at this stuff! The people behind this convention are no idiots. They know what they’re doing. And they’re doing it exceptionally well.

That prompted me to consider a larger question. It’s a puzzle that is particularly important for this convention, because Kamala Harris arrives on stage tonight through an unusual pathway that saw her win zero primaries or caucuses. As we contemplate Harris’s unique path to her historic campaign for the White House, what is the proper role for party elites in a democracy?

I: A Contradiction on the Streets of New England

In the bustling streets of early 18th century colonial New England, a political contradiction emerged that would define much of American political history.

On the one hand, a new institution had emerged—the Town Meeting—which provided a forum for ordinary citizens to voice grievances, organize, and work for change, a hallmark of a fledgling democratic ideal. On the other hand, colonial Boston was also the origin story for “smoke-filled rooms,” the secretive chambers of power in which party elites have long exerted an outsized influence on selecting—and electing—the politicians who would rule.

More than three centuries later, this tension—between party elites and the voting masses—would shape one of the key storylines of the 2024 presidential election and raise fresh questions about how a political party should decide who ends up on the ballot.

The central paradox of this year’s presidential race, with all its twists and turns, is this: the primary system, which was open to all voters, initially produced a Trump/Biden rematch that most voters didn’t want. Poll after poll showed that the vast majority of Americans wanted different candidates from those that voters selected in party primaries.

Meanwhile, the carefully managed internal Democratic party switch from Biden to Harris, driven largely by voter unease about his age translated into elite pressure, has been magisterial and seamless, drastically spiking enthusiasm levels among the Democratic base. In an April poll, just 36 percent of Democrats said they were enthusiastic about the presidential race. Heading into the Democratic convention, 81 percent of Democrats said they were fired up.

How is it possible that voters were producing outcomes that voters didn’t want, while party elites have coalesced around Biden’s replacement in a way that has Democrats arguably feeling more inspired than at any point since 2008? How much of a role should party elites play in deciding who governs? And how can we reform the primary system so that we get the best possible politicians competing for the top jobs?

To understand these dynamics—how we got here and why our normal candidate selection systems are broken—we need to first go back to the very beginning.

II: Cooke’s Cuckoo Caucuses and Smoke-Filled Rooms

In 1719, a man named Elisha Cooke Jr.—physician, early Harvard graduate, heavy drinker, and owner of the delightfully named Goat Tavern—founded the Boston Caucus.

This newfangled caucus was an informal meeting of colonial-era bigwigs who would basically get together, drink, smoke, and decide on important questions about public policy—and who should rule. They would then rev up a rudimentary incarnation of political party-style machinery to ensure that their wishes were enacted, often by bribing voters with booze. (They further sweetened the deal by promising to loosen restrictions on alcohol, which also made for a more pliant public).

It is fitting that one of the leading theories about the etymological origins of caucus comes from associations between early American politics and alcohol. Perhaps it was referencing cocues, which were inns where one could drink “cuckoo liquor,” a fashionable term for gin. Or, maybe it was a reference to “kaukos,” a Greek term for a wine bowl. One scholar notes that one Peter Oxenbridge Thacher—what a marvelous appellation!—spelled it “corkus,” suggestive of the link between corks, alcohol bottles, and the decisions being made as the liquor flowed. (There are also etymological theories unrelated to alcohol, including one suggestion that caucus is a bastardization of “Cooke’s House,” since Elisha Cooke Jr. kicked the whole thing off).

But it wasn’t just drinking. They smoked too, as this 1763 account from John Adams describes the Boston Caucus:

“...selectmen, assessors, collectors, fire-wards and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town…there they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other”

A little over 150 years later, Raymond Clapper of United Press reincarnated this image, coining the term “smoke-filled rooms” to describe how Warren G. Harding, an obscure junior senator from Ohio, was selected as the Republican Party nominee for the 1920 presidential election. That time, the bigwigs gathered at the Blackstone Hotel, scheming and puffing away, their mouths variously stuffed with a wide array of unhealthy flammable objects.

“This man Harding is no world beater,” they proclaimed, a touch apologetically, as the smoke swirled around them. “But we think he is the best of the bunch.” To obscure the role they played in hand-picking the nominee, they conspired to have Harding emerge as the victor on the fourth ballot, so it looked like there was still some real competition. Ultimately, in showcasing the limitations of even the smokiest rooms brimming with harrumphing elites, Harding did prevail as they intended—but only on the tenth ballot.²

III: The Party Decides?

A little less than a century later, presidential primaries and caucuses had been reformed, expanded, and turned over formal decision-making power on who should run for high office to [gasp!] the voters. But more recently, there was a growing consensus among political scientists that in the United States, as the 2008 book about the theory was titled, “the party decides.”

The core argument of this theory is that “unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.” There are many ways elites might influence the process, but part of the scramble for power involves the invisible primary, which is the period between when major candidates start showing interest in running for president and the time when voters cast ballots. There’s a lot of jockeying for endorsements and cash, and voters have only an indirect effect on this period, through early polling.

So, here was a neat and tidy scholarly story, the kind of thing where political scientists could claim some sort of specialized knowledge beyond the ignorant public. “You just think that primary voters decide,” they could tut while adjusting their spectacles and rubbing their elbow patches. “We know that only the elites matter.”

Then came Donald Trump.

In 2015, Nate Cohn of the New York Times wrote a forecast about the 2016 Republican Primary that can only be described, with the benefit of hindsight, as comically, obscenely wrong—a blast from a forgotten, naive past. Consider these various excerpts:

Many of the candidates who have received the most news media attention have little or no chance of winning the nomination. Instead, two figures — Jeb Bush and Mr. [Scott] Walker — have quickly moved to the head of the pack. Perhaps only Mr. [Marco] Rubio has a good chance to join them at the top…

It may seem far too early to make such bold pronouncements, with nine months to go until the Iowa caucuses and with only two candidates formally in the race. But presidential primaries, like presidential general elections, have a set of underlying fundamentals that help determine from the very start which candidate will win the nomination.

“Candidates without party support have never won,” said John Zaller, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of four authors of “The Party Decides,” an influential 2008 book on the role of parties in the nominating process…

The entire point of Cohn’s analysis is to make clear that outsiders never win and that it’s impossible to secure the nomination if party elites favor someone else.

Trump obliterated that argument.

IV: Trump Decides

A June 2024 study by political scientists Rachel Blum, Mike Cowburn, and

Seth Masket

examined the 2022 Senate and Gubernatorial Republican primaries. They found that that four M’s—“Fox News appearances (media), Trump’s endorsements (MAGA), campaign fundraising (money), and Twitter engagement (mentions)” each mattered in terms of getting the most votes.

But perhaps most striking ]was their research showing that Trump’s endorsement “was associated with a thirteen percentage point increase in both fundraising share and polling which lasted through to the primary.” Thirteen percentage points!

By 2024 Trump had contorted “the party decides” thesis in the weirdest way yet. He has become the kingmaker in the modern Republican party, such that the GOP party elite is on his side, but only because they know that it would be political suicide to defy him.

In other words, many of the people who have coalesced around Trump have done so for opportunistic reasons.³ It’s a bit of an inversion from the original hypothesis, in which the elites independently call the shots. Instead, because Trump’s grip on the voting base is so devoted and cult-like, the party elites must follow because they don’t dare to defy his disciples.

Against this confusing backdrop—of elites sometimes mattering a lot and sometimes mattering not at all—how can we make sense of the right balance to strike? And what are the political lessons we can learn from the masterful transition from Biden to Harris?