Nevada Democrats move to end presidential caucuses

[The Mikado]

I wonder if that might undercut a good chunk of NH's economy these next 3 years? Imagine all of the hopeful Republicans having to eat shrimp cocktail at a casino instead of eggs & hash browns at diners.

To be clear, however early Nevada moves up, New Hampshire will presumably just move even earlier.  But aside from that, who says the Republicans are going to participate in this?  The current RNC rules would eliminate almost all of Nevada's delegates if they move into January:

https://twitter.com/FHQ/status/1361442093470785538

So wouldn't the result be for the NV GOP to declare the new primary a beauty contest and say they're still holding a caucus as their delegate allocation contest on their side?

There's already a ton of divergences between the Dem and GOP calendars, and the Dem and GOP caucuses in NV are already not even on the same day. Why wouldn't the GOP just keep its caucuses while the Dems opt into a new state primary?

[The Mikado]

Can the DNC force New Hampshire to change their law so that they aren't the first primary in the nation anymore?

They can say any contest held outside of the rules will have a 50% or 100% delegate penalty or whatever. Of course, NH was never about the delegates anyway. NH could just go ahead and hold a First in the Nation primary with zero delegates at stake and hope that media attention and fear of looking like losers will drag candidates to compete anyway.

This would especially work if the RNC accepts the NH primary as is. If the Republican candidates and the press will be going to NH anyway, and coverage of the GOP primary that night is baked in, even a nonbinding Dem primary's results will be covered that night, so you can't bank on people ignoring NH. If all the reporters are in NH for the GOP primary and candidates want to be covered, they'd need to go to NH.

TL;DR if the RNC is going along with NH, there's no reason for NH to move even under threat of losing 100% of its DNC delegates and just bet that Dem candidates will show up anyway.

[The Mikado]

I wonder if that might undercut a good chunk of NH's economy these next 3 years? Imagine all of the hopeful Republicans having to eat shrimp cocktail at a casino instead of eggs & hash browns at diners.

Worrisome. Nevada being one of the first will "filter" the Republican field, giving an advantage to the more Latino-friendly candidates. As we saw in Florida and south Texas...that could be a future problem for the Democratic Party. Better to keep the Republicans as white as possible.

The exitpoll of the 2016 GOP NV caucus said it was 85% white, fwiw.

[The Mikado]

Caucuses should be abolished because they violate the core principle of the secret ballot.

[The Mikado]

Anyway, my ideal primary setup would be a two round national primary, once in the first week of March and the second in the third week of May. If a candidate breaks 50% in the first round, they're the nominee. If no one does, the top two have two and a half more months of primaries until the runoff, with the choice very clear. One on one debates and everything.



I really hate the argument that staggered primaries give a bigger advantage to retail politics, mainly because I see no rationale for retail politics being relevant in the modern era. Unless you live in NH or IA, you're never going to see the future President wandering around your diner, you're going to be interacting through Internet/television/big rallies. That's the authentic presidential campaign experience, why pretend this other thing is still relevant other than nostalgia? It's not like this hurts "upstart" candidates either. Andrew Yang was a completely unheard of person who raised an insane amount of money and name recognition campaigning online and now might be the next Mayor of NYC. Bernie Sanders built a national following through huge rallies, as did Donald Trump. I really fail to see how a national primary would hurt "insurgent" candidates vs this weird "compete in two minor states, then ramp up to a Super Tuesday that's all over in states you probably haven't invested in at all outside of the last week" structure.

In the setup I envision, if you're an insurgent GOP or Dem candidate, your goal is just to A. drag the frontrunner below 50, and B. make sure you're in first or second, and then you're one on one with an obligatorily large share of the spotlight. If you're a "frontrunner," your strategy is to just push your hardest to be 50%+1 in the first round and just wrap it up early. It's a very fair system. It'd also probably do wonders for making GOP primaries less messy and more understandable.

That said, this is basically a pipe dream.

[The Mikado]

Pointlessly complicated? You stand in one corner of an elementary school gymnasium that represents the candidate you want to vote for, and if that candidate doesn't make up a large enough part of a room, you go to a different corner. It doesn't take a doctorate to understand that concept, dude.

Undemocratic? In what way? You still get to vote for your favorite candidate, with the added benefit that uninformed voters are able to learn about other candidates and what their goals are.

Imagine you're a supporter of underdog candidate Jackie Johnson, running against establishment favorite Johnny Jackson.

You show up at the caucus (because luckily you had the evening off work), and there you find you are one of thirty voters in your precinct.

It turns out that you are one of only three voters for Jackie Johnson.  The other 27 are all for Johnny Jackson.

Your next door neighbor, Brenda, is standing in the Jackson group, and is looking over at you with her arms folded and a smirk on her face.  Last week she had reminded you to take your trash cans back in the same day they get picked up, not the next day or the day after.  Brenda is a bitch.

A caucus worker approaches your small group and tells you all that unfortunately, Jackie Johnson has not reached viability in your precinct.  The three of you will either need to realign, or go home.  You really don't want to vote for Johnny Jackson, at least not in the primaries.  You have your reasons.

Worst of all, you can see across the other side of the gymnasium another neighbor (a friend of yours) who lives a couple streets away.  His house must be in a different precinct.  You can see that he is also in the Jackie Johnson group, and they actually appear to have won the precinct!  Good for them, but sucks for you!  You may as well have not shown up at all.

You hope not to bump into Brenda tomorrow.

Thanks for the nice example of why an election without secret ballot (like any caucus) is inherently undemocratic.

[The Mikado]

I'll repeat what I said earlier, if you don't care enough about what you believe in to stand up for it, then you're probably not the kind of person who should vote anyways.

You know the entire reason we have a secret ballot in this country is voter intimidation, right? Like your boss saying "If you don't vote the way I want on Tuesday, don't come in on Wednesday" was a real thing in the late 19th century until the secret ballot. I see zero protection in a system like the Iowa Caucus against that.

[The Mikado]

Not really about Nevada, but:

https://twitter.com/DavidMDrucker/status/1377231196753702913

If Dems get rid of IA and the GOP doesn't, it'll be a fascinating divergence in the early calendar. We've had differences in the early calendar in previous cycles (Wyoming going before NH on the R side in 2008 stands out), but not a MAJOR divergence.

Also, the GOP should probably have even more reason to get rid of Iowa than the Dems do.

GOP Iowa Caucuses, significant candidates:

2016: Cruz 28, Trump 24, Rubio 23, Carson 9
2012: Santorum 25, Romney 25, Paul 21, Gingrich 13, Perry 10
2008: Huckabee 34, Romney 25, Thompson 13, McCain 13, Paul 10
2000: W 41, Forbes 31, Keyes 14, Bauer 9
1996: Dole 26, Buchanan 23, Lamar! 18, Forbes 10, Gramm 9
1988: Dole 37, Pat Robertson(!) 25, HW 19, Kemp 11

The religious right has a TON of say in the Iowa Caucuses and it's massively disproportionate to the rest of the GOP. The GOP would probably benefit way more from abolishing the Iowa Caucuses than the Dems would.

[The Mikado]

BIIIIIIG Bump:

https://mynews4.com/news/local/lawmakers-pass-bill-making-nevada-1st-presidential-nominating-state

Nevada lawmakers passed a bill on Sunday that aims to make the state the first to weigh in on the 2024 presidential primary contests.

The move upends decades of political tradition and is likely to prompt pushback from other early states that want to retain their places in the calendar.

The bill that passed in the state’s Assembly on Wednesday and the Senate on Sunday still must be approved by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak to become law. It would also need the backing of the national political parties to eventually make the change for the 2024 calendar.

Read the rest of the article for more.

Want comment from Joe Republic, but thoughts:

A. NV wants first Tuesday in February, which will drive Iowa and New Hampshire crazy and should lead to an amazing argument.

B. NV wants this primary date for both parties, and the RNC's and DNC's incentives might differ here. The RNC has been balls deep on "WE HAVE TO KEEP IOWA FIRST" while the DNC's been a bit more open to changing up the order. Could we see a divergent Dem and Rep calendar this time?

C. Would the RNC be willing to sanction NV and strip it of delegates given that NV is a top tier swing state???

[The Mikado]

The GOP had came out strongly against it (even though they supported ending the caucus in 2012), but in the end it earned 5 of 16 Republican votes in the Assembly, and 3 of 9 votes in the Senate.  I guess that makes it count as bipartisan?

During the bill hearings, the question was asked about how it would conflict with New Hampshire.  Speaker Jason Frierson, who sponsored the bill, responded that he's not trying to interfere with or supersede legislation in another state.  What this bill does is simply "make the case" for Nevada to go first.

It's worth noting that this bill specifies a date for the Nevada primary (the first Tuesday in February).  New Hampshire's law does not specify a date, only that it must take place a week before any other state has their primary.  So both national parties don't really have to say or do anything at all, and the traditional order resets itself automatically.  Remember that the 2008 NH primary took place on January 8th!

Honestly I don't much care about the "me first! me first!" horse race.  I'm just happy that the dumb caucus system is dead here.

It's possible with IA now literally only one of two Dem side caucuses (shout out to Wyoming) the Dems just bite the bullet on the "only primaries count" rule, and IA's GOP state government isn't moving their June primary so Dem side IA goes from first to last. GOP isn't messing with their caucuses, so IA will stay first over there.

Could be the early states end up IA-NH-NV-SC on the GOP and NH-NV-SC on the Dem side.