You Don't Fix Parties by Platforming Cranks
Why Julián Castro is wrong about RFK Jr.
This Substack is mainly about the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but allow me to briefly discuss what’s going on over on the Democratic side. Joe Biden is heading toward what is likely an easy and non-controversial re-nomination. But at least a few people would like that contest to be more competitive.
One of these folks is Robert Kennedy, Jr., a quirky conspiracy theorist and fabulist with a prominent family name and wealth. Kennedy is currently polling at around 15% in a potential matchup with Biden. Marianne Williamson, who ran in 2020, is also in the mix, polling just under 10%. These polling numbers probably aren’t closely reflective of what an actual primary election would look like, but they’re not nothing.
Sitting presidents generally sail to an easy re-nomination, mostly because their party largely rallies behind them and discourages any serious candidates from running. The only time you see substantial voting against an incumbent in the primaries is when it looks like the incumbent may be heading for a general election loss (as with George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Jimmy Carter in 1980). The reason RFK Jr. and Williamson are the focus of the Biden opposition is because more credible candidates like Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris are not in this race.
What’s more, the president’s party often protects him in a number of important ways. There are basically never debates between an incumbent president and people within his party. The president usually participates in primaries and caucuses but almost no one credible seriously challenges him. And it’s not unusual for state parties to simply cancel their primaries altogether to prevent their incumbent from facing a credible challenger. The Republicans did this in 2020 even though Trump was facing primary challenges from several prominent former elected officials.
Okay, but what should the Democratic Party be doing right now? I want to mention a recent conversation on the New York Times’ “Run-Up” podcast, in which former HUD Secretary and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro was interviewed.
Castro notes that, despite an impressive governing track record, there are a number of concerns being raised about Biden — especially his age — and that Democrats just generally aren’t all that enthusiastic about another Biden run, even though the vast majority would still vote for him. What’s more, there are some semi-famous people running against him. Maybe, Castro says, the Democrats should be more open to allowing a real intra-party contest, and having some debates with Kennedy and Biden:
What I do think the DNC should consider is probably think about opening up the primary to some debates. I think that would probably benefit the party. I think it would benefit Joe Biden, and it would help ensure that there’s a victory in November of 2024.
Why is that? Well, number one, I believe that there’s still some lingering sort of bitterness out there or lack of trust from the 2016 race, where you had a whole crowd — the Bernie crowd — and look, I supported Hillary Clinton, but I acknowledge that the Bernie crowd — a lot of them felt that the scales were tipped against Bernie.
And I don’t know that that’s completely ever gone away, that feeling toward the DNC.
Okay, I’m going to jump in here and call horse hockey. A few points here:
Is there some linger bitterness among Sanders voters about the 2016 nomination? Sure. Is it because “the scales were tipped against Bernie”? No, because the scales were not tipped against Bernie. To the extent people believe they were, it’s because Sanders and his allies kept repeating that. But Hillary Clinton had no rigged advantage.
Did Clinton have some advantage? Yes — the vast majority of Democratic elected officials publicly endorsed her. That was huge and it delivered her the nomination. But to call that rigging is to render that term meaningless. Notably, the party came out swinging for Joe Biden in February of 2020 to keep Sanders from winning the nomination. Why isn’t there more lingering bitterness about that? Because Sanders didn’t make much of an issue of it once he lost. Maybe that’s because he and Biden were old friends, or because Biden was better at reaching out to a defeated Sanders than Clinton was, or because Covid shut down the nomination contest before it really got heated, or something else. But insiders backed Biden in 2020 just like they backed Clinton in 2016 (if a bit later in the cycle).
Would giving RFK Jr. a bigger platform to air conspiratorial grievances mollify his supporters when he ultimately loses the nomination contest to Biden? Most likely the opposite. They would claim that he beat Biden in a debate but only lost the nomination because the establishment illegitimately put its thumb on the scale and protected Biden, reality be damned. It would likely promote resentment rather than mitigate it. (Oh and he’ll spread some lies about vaccines while he’s at it.)
Castro goes on to suggest that maybe Cornel West, currently running as a Green candidate, be given a bigger platform as well. His argument is that the 2024 general election will likely come down to just a few close states and that the 10,000 or so people on the left who feel left out of the system because their candidate didn’t get a fair shake in the primaries may stay home.
Again, I must disagree. A way to make those few thousand voters resentful is to build up their long shot candidates only to watch them lose. They will believe the contest was rigged if their favorite candidate tells them it was rigged; what actually happened will be of little consequence.
I’m generally an advocate for political parties that have the power to make decisions about whom they nominate. We can argue over whether our current parties are too deferential to their incumbents, and it might be a better system if parties actually dumped an incumbent once in a while. But it is a call parties get to make, and giving a platform to cranks will not make people trust parties more.
Some people see things as they are and ask "Why?" Others see batshit crazy stuff that never was and never will be - no way, no how, not in a million years - and ask "Where are the cameras?"
There was only less backlash from the Sanders faction in 2020 because the COVID crisis sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and there was none for anything else. What the DNC (through ex-President Obama and others) did may have been legal and within the rules of politics; but there will be no way of healing that divide between them and the left for a very long time. RFK will not be a factor in that, beyond his receding name he's got no credibility with the growing, younger-skewing left; nor does Williamson.