I’ve posted a predictably mostly unpopular piece here on DK a while ago — “This Is Addressed to All Those DKers Who Want Joe Biden to Remain Our Champion to Defeat Trump” — in response to which one commentator wrote:
You admit that the future is notoriously hard to predict. Well, nobody has explained, except with handwaving “open convention”, how this transition to the future is supposed to occur. There will be weeks of turmoil at minimum that would be better spent attacking Trump.
Since all of us know how important it is that we win, are we really supposed to believe ourselves incapable of devising a path forward that strengthens us for defeating Trump rather than weakening us?
If I believed the process of coming up with an alternative to Biden would inevitably involve some sort of destructive “turmoil,” I’d probably agree that we’ve got to stick with him and hope for the best.
But I don’t believe that.
- I believe that the Democratic Party, led by Biden, could come up with a finite number of appropriate possibilities (including Harris, Whitmer, Newsom, Shapiro...). I don’t think the method needs to be perfect to be considered appropriately fair and democratic.
- I believe that between the emergence of that list, and the beginning of the Democratic National Convention in the second half of August, a good means of showcasing the potential nominees can be found. In order to both avoid turmoil and get national attention to the dangers of Trump and the Trump Party, I propose that the nominees try out not by debating each other — we want the eventual nominee to emerge unbruised by attacks from rivals for the nomination — but by delivering a 15-20 minute pitch to the nation in general, and to the delegates to the convention in particular, that shows how they’d appeal to the American people to vote reject Donald Trump and vote for them. (Each can choose whatever combination of positive vision for America and warning against the would-be Fascist dictator and convicted criminal the Republicans are offering.)
- Then there’s having the delegates choose the nominee at the convention. Perhaps the convention would feature one more round of speeches from the handful of candidates. And then — when the delegates vote — it is pretty straight-forward how to devise a process that would be clean and efficient. We don’t want multiple ballots, which would not help the party and the nominee to look like what the people will want to turn to do rescue the country. We want something that maintains and pleases a national audience, showing the Democratic Party quickly unifying for the all-important task of defeating Donald Trump. The “Open Convention” can achieve that by utilizing a ranked-choice voting method. Ranked choice voting inevitably (mathematically guaranteed) leads to someone getting a majority in one ballot. That could be used on the first ballot— one and done. Or, if we want to add the dimension of candidates who drop out throwing their support another candidate, the ranked choice could be delayed to the second or the third ballot. And voila, the convention has chosen. (I’m assuming a computer program can be devised that can quickly run tally the ranked choice voting and arrive at a winner after all the second, third, etc. choices are switched from losing candidates to the voters’ subsequent preferences. A winner emerges, with majority support.)
In other words, I think we can speedily get to having some 3000 good Democrats come to a consensus choice among a half-dozen or so good candidates — candidates who will have vied for their support by showing the delegates, and the nation, why they are the right choice to defeat Donald Trump and why the nation should reject him to preserve American Democracy.
So it isn’t instead of running against Donald Trump. It would be a way of running against Donald Trump that is sure to attract the attention of a large swath of the American audience (meaning also, electorate).
Epilogue: I’ve heard it declared that election laws limit access to the campaign chest that’s been raised by the Biden/Harris campaign. I don’t know how true — how inescapably true — that is. It would be a shame if such laws got in the way of our fielding the strongest possible candidate.