The rise of Donald Trump has offered many “teachable moments” for us. Another moment for many voters will soon emerge and that is: Voters only play a very small role in nominating presidential candidates.
As uber-political wonks understand (I only consider myself a political wonk, so I may get a fine point or two wrong without spending hours searching Google), the % of primary votes a candidate gets in a particular Congressional District, dictates the % of party delegates the candidate gets to send to the convention. So if MA Congressional District X is allocated 10 delegates and Trump got 49% of the vote in that Congressional District, then Trump is awarded 5 of those delegates.
That’s pretty straight forward, but of course it is not. Exactly WHO those five delegates are is determined by another vote of a caucus of registered GOP voters in that Congressional District. The GOP caucus elections are scheduled for April 30th in Massachusetts. And that is where things get interesting, as Politico reported yesterday:
Perhaps the most glaring warning sign for Trump is the looming battle for delegates in Massachusetts. Trump scored 49 percent of the vote there, 31 points ahead of second-place Kasich. Cruz finished a distant fourth with 9.6 percent. Yet, it’s Cruz who seems to have the momentum as the state GOP prepares to hold congressional district conventions and a state party meeting that will elect 39 national delegates.
“The Trump campaign hasn’t really gotten out of first gear, but the Cruz campaign is starting to accelerate,” said Brad Wyatt, a longtime party activist who’s not aligned with either the Cruz or Trump camps. Another top Massachusetts Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity said that at best, Trump will find himself in a dogfight for delegates in the state, despite his dominance in the polls.
So as you read this, the Cruz campaign is recruiting “Trump delegates” who will be elected and be obligated to vote for Trump on ONLY the first ballot of the convention. If Trump has not reached the magic number of 1,237 delegates, those MA “Trump delegates” get to vote for whoever they want. If the Cruz (and Kasich) people do their job between now and April 30th, they will be Cruz (or Kasich) votes on a second ballot.
In the rough and tumble world of politics, the Trump campaign (and, gasp, The Donald himself) will only have themselves to blame. These are the rules of the game and you have to play by those rules. Of course the vain and self-centered Trump will profess to be the victim, which will only throw gas onto his already volatile base.
Which brings us to the most unfortunate of consequences, the outrage of people–including everyday Democrats and moderates–who do not grasp the arcane process that exists. Most people understandably assume (because the media has never taken the time to educate their audience) that the primary dictated how the nominating process plays out. But it doesn’t and when Americans see that months of voting didn’t amount to a hill of beans, they will become even more disillusioned with our political process.
As a footnote, I got an email this morning from the Trump MA campaign asking me to sign up to attend am April 30th caucus to support a realdonaldtrump delegate.
As I described elsewhere, I watched state reps and DA’s lose to passionate Paul supporters who showed up on Saturday morning. Now, they should know they have no automatic status.
Among my acquaintance there is a weird dynamic. The Liberty people are coalescing around Cruz, and the establishment lifers around Kasich. I say wrird, in that they are largely libertarians and I don’t get the attraction to a social authoritarian, other than that the Establishment hates him. Bona fide Trump voters may not be there at all, as many are unenrolled and may not even be aware of the caucus process.
If, as I suspect, there will be a brokered convention, Kasich may have some stealth power, which is why he’s still in the race despite numerical impossibility.
Establishment Republicans–those who caucus, put up signs, and know state people. They have been for Kasich. Right now, there’s one sign in a field where everyone puts up signs. It’s for Kasich. I had a long talk with a lady who’s an active citizen and Republican. She was standing at the polls in February and supporting delegates. We talked for a long time about the Holyoke Soldier’s Home, and I think she mentioned Kasich.
These Establishment Republicans would, I think, be happier with a more moderate GOP. I don’t mean that they don’t hold conservative positions, but they are not ideological purists. The guy who chairs our RTC–a friend of mine–is anti-immigration and belongs to GOAL, but he likes to tell me about working with issues with Democrats concerning the towing industry.
From my perspective, Kasich comes across as rational and competent, whereas the other candidates often don’t. A lot of Republicans, like a lot of Democrats and voters in general- are not ideologues.
One of my suspicions about libertarians is that they are authoritarian by different means and that they are strong on resentment–a driving feature of many the GOP’s social authoritarians.
but it ain’t democratic.
Whether or not it should be democratic is, in fact, a different debate.
…and we live in a republic. So why would it be?
We at least don’t have special category appointees capable of wiping out votes cast.
Sure you do. Three delegates from most states / territories are not a function of the primary or caucus at all. Courtesy of ballotpedia:
It’s not as high a percentage of free agent delegates (6.8%) as the Dems have, but it is, in fact, a “special category [of] appointees capable of wiping out votes cast.”
20 distinguished party leaders (DPL), consisting of current and former presidents, vice-presidents, congressional leaders, and DNC chairs
21 Democratic governors (including territorial governors and the Mayor of the District of Columbia)
46 Democratic members of the United States Senate (including Washington, DC shadow senators)
193 Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives (including non-voting delegates)
434 elected members of the Democratic National Committee (including the chairs and vice-chairs of each state’s Democratic Party)
714 vs. 168. I would suggest a difference of 546 can wipe out a lot of votes cast.
At that, your DNC national members alone are 434, vs. 168.
In MA, Baker is not a superdelegate, although he would be if a Democrat. Same with the DA’s. Same with the State Senators and Reps. Etc.
Our process is a hell of a lot more democratic than yours.
…are not Democratic superdelegates either, though they could be elected as part of the PLEO slate, pledged in proportion to the primary vote.
We should remember the actual results of the Massachusetts primary. Well over a million voters pulled ballots in the Massachusetts Democratic Primary (1,204,927). The participation in the GOP primary was about half that (631,395).
As I observed elsewhere here, only about SEVENTEEN PERCENT of Massachusetts primary voters actually voted for Donald Trump.
Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders each got nearly twice as many primary votes in Massachusetts as Mr. Trump. Mr. Kasich and Mr. Kruz together collected 174,256 votes — a drop in the bucket compared to either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Sanders.
I don’t know about “outrage”, at least in Massachusetts. What I do know is that Massachusetts GOP is increasingly a fringe party that attracts fringe voters. I don’t doubt that the MA GOP may somehow arrange things so that when the dust settles, Mr. Kasich or Mr. Cruz is the party’s nominee, even though Mr. Trump got twice as many GOP votes as either. That’s what fringe parties do. The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders will dominate the Massachusetts vote in the general election.
The question now is whether the national GOP will, like the Massachusetts GOP, continue its spiral into irrelevance and then obscurity.
The post is in fact about how little the value of votes have in the presidential primary system. If there was the prospect for an brokered convention involving the Dems, these kinds of tactics would be used.
Also, the “outrage” I speak about will be from casual voters around the country who are not aware of how the nominating system works. They’ll be seen more disillusioned about the way politics works, even if they hate Trump.
I guess I commented here because I think a significant cause for the reality you describe is the near-death state of the GOP, here and nationally.
It is always dangerous to attempt to compare subsets taken from the fringe of any population (a common example is attempting to draw conclusions about students based on bins determined by SAT results). The GOP has become a fringe of the larger electorate. The internal politics, including the mechanisms you describer here, are bizarre because there are so few people actually participating.
As you say, the prospects of a brokered convention involving the Democrats are vanishingly small. I suggest that this is, at least in part, because the Democrats — especially at the national level — appeal to a significantly larger portion of the general electorate.
…why do we have 31 governorships? If I mention the legislatures controlled, you will whine gerrymandering (which is rich in Massachusetts, where the Democrat Speaker routinely disembowels the districts of popular Republicans) so I am only citing statewide officials. And, of course, the GOP controlled Senate and House.
Can you not comprehend that you live in the epicenter of a progressive outlier? Most of the nation is very little like Somerville.
Discussing GOP problems. What I find most amusing are the suggested course of action to fix the so-called problems- become more progressive. Charlie Baker has moved as far left as most Dems in MA, yet most here still don’t like him (or would vote for him) so not sure what’s the point.
The way I see it is the worst case scenario is the the Presidential election blows up the Senate majority. We’ll have to see how that plays out.
That email you got – was it from anyone you know?
ARE you a registered Republican?
I can’t help wondering what will happen if these unenrolled voters show up, assuming they can vote in a caucus just like they can pull a ballot. I am pre-registered and recommend it to anyone attending so they don’t wind up behind some non-qualified voter screaming about cheating and the establishment. People who pride themselves on not knowing the rules are often the most resentful when they find out they are on the wrong side of them.
But this could get ugly.
…and had no mention of Dean or Trump for MA…
I am a Dem, but went to a couple of Trump events and registered thru eventbrite, so they have my email.
The Paul folks were punching above their weight. The Cruz folks are in the same boat as the Paul folks this year. When Brad Wyatt is being quoted, he’s not being objective (Paul/Cruz supporter) and also doesn’t know or want to know the situation.
So long as Trump is able to get a slate of candidates together then it shouldn’t be too hard to get people out to the caucuses to vote for them. I know plenty of people who are not normally political, but if they received an email explaining the necessity of going to the caucus to vote for Trump then they would do so. That’s all it would take is just an email.
The idea that Trump supporters are largely unenrolled voters is very dubious. It’s much more likely that this is a problem for Cruz and whatever support he gained from Paul.
And Trump voters are especially NOT part of the party establishment, which may extend to membership.
I remember Dombrowski telling me that he intended to don the ‘cold, dead, husk’ of the Republican Party to run for office. It is arguable this extends to those who enrolled are actually Republicans beyond this cycle.
It’s hard for me to see how Cruz pulls it off at the convention. Right now he and his supporters are acting as the useful idiots of the establishment.
And then there’s the establishment folks who have whipped up this #NeverTrump stuff. They aren’t going to hand the nomination to Cruz which means it is going to be someone who either never entered the presidential race as a candidate (Romney?) or who did so and failed (Kasich/Rubio?).
Are the Trump folks going to accept such a #NeverTrump nominee? Why on earth would they?
I almost wish Cruz and the establishment success for the eye opener they would achieve.
The caucus system almost got ditched.
http://redmassgroup.com/2015/10/state-committee-adopts-minority-report-keeps-the-caucus-system-for-2016-delegate-selection/
The party still has the ability to nullify caucus results like was seen in 2012.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/08/17/massachusetts-gop-prevails-effort-disqualify-ron-paul-delegates/eEW8gG9siP5axzTX8yJKnK/story.html