Some More News - SMN: Democrats: Maybe Hold A Primary Perhaps Possibly?

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep'm your loyal info wad, Cody Johnston. And today in wad, hi. Hey. Question. Should somebody primary Joe Brandon? You know, the guy who's president right now. You know the guy. He's the one that's president.

Right now. Don't worry. I threw a ball earlier, so Warmbo won't be popping up to derail us. So, it's Joe time. And like, yeah, bro, primaries for the incumbent have been for the most part a formality, going through the motions,

like your retired parents doing hand stuff. Because it's not like it, quote, matters. Biden will get the nomination, just like your parents will never actually go to that sex party they kept a flyer for. But, you know, what if they did go to the sex party? Or rather, what if primaries actually mattered?

And perhaps in this episode, knowing full well that it won't have any bearing or influence on the outcome of the topic at hand, we could examine the arguments for and against actually having real primary challengers and debates against an incumbent president, both when it comes to Biden specifically, but also in general for all the guys and gals,

even though there hasn't been a gal yet. I feel like this might be Hillary's year. Democrats, maybe hold a primary, perhaps, possibly? Well, okay. Obviously, the title has already tipped my hand a bit, just like your mom did last night, because of the good sex stuff that I did, and I deserve to tip. But my hand here is that I think holding actual rigorous primaries and debates generally, and specifically for Joe Biden, is probably good and healthy for a democracy. Even though the first primary is less than a week after this episode airs,

and Biden's obviously gonna win the nomination, this whole question is moot. Give us a break, it's a new year, and we're getting back into the swing of things. Speaking of swing, swing states, which we'll talk about later. But yeah, at the very least, we should probably reform our electoral system

so it's not always between two guys, one who sucks and the other who's threatening to become an authoritarian ruler hooked up to some kind of machine that keeps him alive forever. Not to mention that no one can actually agree on who is actually the authoritarian ruler, despite one of them clearly being that thing.

He says it out loud a lot. He's constantly telling you that he is that thing. Anyway, there are a lot of potential reforms we could make to our elections and have in fact already made a video about that. But in this episode, we're focusing on the primaries, the big P's. What are they?

What did they used to be like? What's an open primary? What about ranked choice? Who's a super delegate? Am I one? Where am I? Why am I? Can I? And finally, how dare I? And of course, questioning the function of a primary is particularly relevant when the current president doesn't completely jive with the people they represent, even the people on their ideological side when it comes to say, supporting a genocide in Gaza. While we'd be making this episode no matter what Biden's policies were,

that's probably worth bringing up at the top of this. We're also obviously gonna make a whole episode about Gaza. Also, we've been talking about it on the podcast or, you know, for like a long time. Did you know we have a podcast? It seems neat. You can check it out. We talk about current events instead of past events now.

Anyway, as of late last year, 66% of voters and 80% of Democrats wanted to cease fire. So considering that, it may have been a tad unwise for the White House press secretary to label calls for a ceasefire as wrong, repugnant, and disgraceful. Well, there have been some members of Congress who have called for a ceasefire

and they have not gone as far as backing the administration's call for support for Israel. So look, I've seen some of those statements this weekend, and we're going to continue to be very clear. We believe they're wrong. We believe they're repugnant, and we believe they're disgraceful. I'm not a political expert, despite my smell, but it seems like possibly a miscalculation to alienate your own base like this.

Like beyond the clear ethical issues with framing anyone sympathetic to Palestinians as repugnant, that attitude might, for instance, make Arab Americans less likely to vote for you in swing state Michigan, where they represent a huge population of voters. Speaking of polls, yikes, have you seen them? They aren't great for Mr. B. According to a poll conducted by the New York Times

and Siena College, Biden is behind Trump in five out of six swing states. Obviously, this type of low polling is common for an incumbent president at this point because they've already gone through a gauntlet of negative media attention during their term. But from the limited data we have, Biden is doing far worse than the last three presidents

were at this same point in their first term. Again, limited data. But also, bad data if you're horny for Biden. Or perhaps you're not horny for Biden, but super not horny for Trump. For you, hypothetical non-horny human, it is perhaps frustrating to see the Democrats function so poorly considering what's at stake. Of course, there are a lot of concerns about Biden that go beyond horniness or Gaza or the fact that he's not polling well. For example, he's sure up there in them years, you know?

It's like, oh, he's pushing it. In fact, 47% of registered voters strongly agree Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective president, compared to only 18% of voters when asked the same question about Donald Trump, which must be frustrating for Biden because Trump is only four years younger than Biden. Also, Trump is, you know. He said, you know, nobody's ever asked that question. I said, if I'm going down in a boat and there's a shark 10 yards away, or I'm going to get electrocuted, could that question. I said, if I'm going down in a boat and there's a shark 10 yards away or I'm gonna get electrocuted,

could that happen? He said it could. I said, well, you know what? If it's true, I think I'll take the electrocution because I'm not going near that shark. But they are talking about things like that. These people are crazy. Okay, to be fair, he's not wrong.

He's not, he's not wrong. You disagree, leave in the comment why you disagree. Seems reasonable. Okay, look, I's not wrong. You disagree, leave in the comment why you disagree. Seems reasonable. Okay, look, I don't want to be ageist here, but we do have to acknowledge the human condition of being mortals. It seems reasonable to list, is my candidate going to, you know,

make it among your concerns? I'm not saying that we should absolutely boot the olds from the office of the presidency, but the primary process might be healthy in terms of establishing some new voices and leaders, if only for the next election. Remember when Joe Biden was running for president and while not outright pledging to be a one-term president,

he and his team signaled several times that he would likely only be a one-term president to guide and then pass it off to the newer generations. And now I guess he's running again specifically because Trump is running? Because of course Trump is running, right? Just... Right now, the Democrats' only backup

seems to be Kamala Harris. And are people excited for her? I don't really know, but I know one way to find out, a primary, or rather an actual primary. After all, I know technically there is a Democratic primary, but counterpoint, is there? As of filming this, Marianne Williamson

is the biggest challenger to Biden, and her run is met with what could be interpreted as either dismissal or outright derision by liberal outlets like Politico with headlines like, Marianne Williamson is polling at 9%. Is she for real? And copies such as, Marianne Williamson doesn't care that almost no one takes her seriously.

I'm not saying we have to specifically take Marianne Williamson seriously, but there's an underlying idea here that any primary challenger is silly if their polling isn't high enough or their chance of actually posing a challenge is low. It's as if there's no value to a primary process unless someone can actually beat Biden.

But we're also not giving anybody the chance to try. The DNC is not sanctioning any debates against Biden for the 2024 primaries. This isn't unique to the DNC. Neither party has had its incumbent president debate during primary since 1948. That's why while we're focusing on Biden and the Dems, this is actually about the election process as a whole,

because perhaps you're not affiliated with any political party and are simply frustrated at the entire process. Or heck, perhaps you're not affiliated with any political party and are simply frustrated at the entire process. Or heck, perhaps you're a Republican and are frustrated that you're stuck with the smelly shark guy. There are just so many reasons to be bummed about the next election.

The last guy versus the previous last guy's vice president. Exciting stuff. We're really doing a fucking rematch between these old goats. And all of that would be at least mitigated by a stronger primary system, in my bearded opinion. And I know Joe Biden isn't at Reagan levels of brain mush. He can get through speeches.

Sometimes he can't quite. But he'd already lost a bit of a step or two in 2020. And wouldn't it be nice to dust the old cobwebs off, see how he debates, see how he is in conversation with people challenging him on the ideas he believes in. You know, president stuff. And so after our first break, we're gonna take you through the history.

Where did primaries come from? What were they invented for? Should they be to the death? Probably, right? Probably to the death. Okay, but first, get all up inside of these ads. Hello there, pants enthusiasts or haters. It's me, Cody, here to be fair and balanced about pants.

In a way, I'm the Ground News of pants, which is a very strange way to tell you that Ground News is an online tool for seeing how any given news story is covered from a wide range of media outlets. For example, House Democrat, Dean Phillips announced that he was going to challenge Biden in the primaries. On Ground News, I can see that 138 sources

are reporting on this. They also give you a political bias rating for the various outlets. These ratings are based on analysis from three different news monitoring organizations, including editorial reviews, blind bias surveys, and third-party research. It's not a perfect science,

but they do give you a general idea of how the media landscape is covering this topic. Scrolling down, you can see all the articles written about this and compare headlines to see what details are emphasized or exaggerated or left out depending on the political leaning of that source. For example, both the left-leaning and right-leaning sources go after Phillips for different reasons. Except this one article that appears to be focused

on his wife for some reason. That's weird. Anyway, pants, we love them. Or do we? Yes. And so you can see what a useful tool ground news can be, especially with the upcoming election that will hopefully include some light pants talk

if we're lucky, which we rarely are. Go to https://ground.news.smn to get some more news from every perspective. Subscribe to the pro plan for less than $1 a month, or get 30% off the Vantage subscription this month only. And furthermore, pants. You like those tasty little ads? Yeah, you did. I'm not even gonna wait for you to answer. You loved them. You gulped those ads down like a seagull. It's disgusting. What a bloodbath. Okay, so it's time to talk about where primaries came from. As in the act of voters picking

who their presidential candidates should be, or rather each party awarding a series of representatives or delegates to a candidate based on how many votes they get or in a few states, the result of a caucus, which is like a primary if less people were allowed to vote for some reason. It seems bad, whatever. Anyway, those delegates then get together in a big room

and vote based on who they've been selected to represent. Also, sometimes Kid Rock performs. It's complicated. It's also a pretty new process. Voters selecting presidential candidates wasn't really a thing until the 20th century. Historically, presidential candidates were chosen either by political party bosses,

elites selected by localities or delegates. Also that one year when they got horses drunk and wrote the names on apples, which weirdly enough is how we got Calvin Coolidge. That's why they call him and only him, the Big Apple. Anyway, this kind of backroom politics could get a little kinky, like your parents, with delegates being unable to agree on a candidate

and deadlocking, resulting in weird compromise candidates like James K. Polk in 1844. Look at that freak. Disgusting. Go be in a They Might Be be giants song, you disgusting freak. In the 1900s, progressives wanted to reform the political process to make it more transparent and democratic.

But as is the custom, this process was a patchwork of states slowly deciding to change the electoral system on their own terms. The first state to allow voters to select who they wanted to be their candidate was hippy dippy Oregon in 1910. And in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt, former president, tried to get in on that Democratic primary action. Democratic small D, he was a Republican.

He primaried incumbent Taft and won nine of the primary states. However, only 42% of states were decided by the popular vote in the primary, whereas the others were chosen by, you guessed it, party bosses. So Taft won the primary, Roosevelt started his progressive or Bull Moose Party,

odd that, what was then called a Republican, started a new party called the Progressive Party. Is there something that happened, like politically with the parties? There's no need to look into that. But the election continued, where Republican started a new party called the Progressive Party. Is there something that happened politically with the parties? There's no need to look into that. But the election continued, Roosevelt and Taft both lost, along with the then socialist party's Eugene Debs,

leading to a Woodrow Wilson victory. Now, one could argue that Roosevelt's third party runs split the vote and helped Wilson win. One could also argue that Roosevelt's move here led to further democratic approaches to the primary system. Although while more states followed, primaries were still more like loose suggestions than deciding factors.

For example, the 1952 race between Republican Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, aka a Democrat you have never heard of because he lost. Despite not running in any of the state primaries, Stevenson still won the nomination at the primary convention, supposedly because he gave a good speech. While Eisenhower also didn't win the popular primary vote,

he at least was in the running and polled well, which probably explains why he won with 83% of the electoral vote and 54% of the popular. Gee, maybe there's something to these primaries. Later in 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson backed out of a second term, both over his health and likely his understanding that the Vietnam War was a horrific boondoggle. LBJ is an interesting example

of how the American government's imagination is seldom capable of thinking outside the war box. He went into a deeply unpopular war despite his misgivings about it being a quagmire. The war was advertised as a way to help allies, but was in truth done mostly to quote, contain China. It was full of heinous war crimes committed by US troops and remains a scar on the soul of America

that I'm sure has no relevance to today. Anywho, because Johnson backed out, Democratic Party leaders had to come up with a candidate to oppose Nixon. At the time, the party was divided between the anti-war progressives and the pro-war establishment. Still not seeing any relevance to today, but anyway, faced with, let's call it chaotic primary,

Democratic Party leaders were forced to ignore voters and nominate LBJ's vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Or as we know him, Hubert Humphrey? Get it? Because we don't really know about him. He lost the election. Seems like a pattern is forming. Again, just to be clear, this was a weird primary.

The popular Democratic candidate was Robert F. Kennedy, and well, you can Bing how well his run went. It went bad. So they needed a last minute replacement. However, because Hubert didn't even enter any primary elections and was simply handpicked by the establishment, Democratic voters were pissed,

which led to the 68 DNC mass protests, which led to reforms that required states to have official procedures for electing delegates who promised to select a candidate, rather than party leaders being able to pick whom they wanted at the convention. Jimmy Carter was elected as the nominee under these new rules in 1976 and won the presidency.

But after he lost in a landslide to Reagan four years later, Democratic leaders thought that the lesson was that giving voters more power was bad. Nevermind, of course, all the candidates that had lost after being handpicked in undemocratic selections by party leaders. It's weird how losses are only the fault of progressives or the people, and wins are credited to not that.

As a response, superdelegates were created to override some of the power of the popular vote. Superdelegates are party leaders who, before 2018, got to vote for whichever primary candidate they would like regardless of how their state's popular vote went. A recent example would be the 2016 Democratic primary election in which Hillary Clinton won against Bernie Sanders.

I don't know if you remember this since that was like 20 years ago or something, but voters were upset over the DNC seeming to be rigged in Clinton's favor. This is not without reason. Former DNC chairwoman, Donna Brazile, revealed that the Clinton campaign had outsized influence over the DNC by controlling their finances.

In Brazil's book, Hacks, she claims, quote, "'The Agreement,' signed by Amy Dacey, "'the former CEO of the DNC, and Robbie Mook, "'with a copy to Mark Elias, "'specified that in exchange for raising money "'and investing in the DNC and Robbie Mook with a copy to Mark Elias specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy and all the money raised.

So the fact that the superdelegates in 2016 clinched the nomination for Clinton made Bernie voters a little upset. I say with no personal knowledge of how that might feel. I'm just reading blank pages. After mass outrage against the super delegate system by Sanders supporters, the DNC finally revised the super delegate system in 2018,

barring them from voting in the first ballot of the primary process. Also, I think something happened in 2017 that perhaps made them think twice, something to do with the pattern of ignoring the wishes of the voters coinciding with embarrassing losses for Democrats, I think. But again, I was reading blank paper.

Anyway, this means that superdelegates would only be able to vote in contested primaries. Interestingly, the RNC had already curtailed superdelegate powers by the 2016 primary. By this point, there were fewer RNC superdelegates and they were obligated to vote for whom their state had voted for. Seems like a way better system

and it's kind of embarrassing that the GOP did it first. Of course, despite that, they've amazingly managed to screw up their system by having an additional winner takes all rule where the candidate who gets the majority vote automatically wins every delegate in many states. Compare that to Democrats who give delegates proportionally to the percentages of their votes.

In other words, everyone has found a fun and unique way to suck. Not to mention that the states themselves are free to decide how the primaries will go. For example, voter ID rules or whether or not felons can vote are left to the states and therefore can be manipulated. And that's all on top of the fact that the primary process is still subject to the influence of money and power.

There's the invisible primary theory, which posits that on both sides, high profile members and party insiders are able to gather behind their preferred candidate early on empowering them with donations, connections, and volunteers to help them win the nomination. Between 1980 and 2004, early party endorsements were able to predict eight out of 10 winners

in presidential primary contests. One could argue this is due to the party insiders and voters independently coming to the same conclusion over who is the best choice, which is kind of an adorable thing to believe. So from these examples, it seems like ignoring the primaries results or not having them at all

can tend to backfire for the party. But this is also anecdotal. So we're gonna dig into the data as well as talk about the next election. But first I need money so I can live and eat snacks, video games, gas, you get it, the stuff we need. So please let me put these paid for words into your ears and make sure you keep them there.

Keep them there. Then we will be back with more exciting words that will jam in there, will take out those words, will jam in these words that are about fucking primary elections. Woo! Did you hear that? It's our new wacky character, Ghosty the Invisible Cash Register!

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Like Ghosty, they're omnipotent and benevolent. But it's not just the sales side. Nope. Shopify's plug-and-play tools will help you build entire marketing campaigns on social media. You know social media. You know social media. We love social media. Anyway, saw Shopify's got it all, baby. Maybe even a way to finally defeat the phantom cash register that curses us all,

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I hope you're doing well. I'm fine. If you even care. If you recall, we were just talking about the history of primaries, or rather the history of politicians ignoring primaries and losing elections because of it. That brings us to now. Also, now. And currently, the DNC isn't planning a debate for the Democratic primary. But to be fair, that's not the same

as ignoring primary results. It's also following the tradition of no incumbent president participating in a primary debate in the modern era. There will technically be a vote, but Biden is the presumptive nominee. Why? Because as I already mentioned,

there are no challengers beyond those with very little support. Currently, Biden is facing down Democratic nominees Marianne Williamson, polling at 12% of the vote, and Dean Phillips, polling at 4% of the prospective vote. Here's Phillips at a recent people-less event that he wanted people to be at.

Dean. This is technically a primary, but one with no challengers who seem to pose a threat. You could argue that the low polling reflects the will of the voters, but that's assuming that those low numbers wouldn't grow for those candidates if they actually got to debate and that other contenders wouldn't emerge

if we actually took incumbent primary seriously. Because currently anyone who wants to challenge Biden is seen as being a rogue agent opposing the DNC and would risk upsetting the establishment as well as their donors. Big name politicians don't want to become a political black sheep and thus there are no

serious challengers to Biden. But if having robust primaries against incumbents were a matter of routine and challengers were simply seen as going along with a normal process, you might actually see a stronger field of candidates. Of course, that would depend on what kind of primaries we want to have. For starters, do we want to have open or closed primaries? An open primary is one that allows everyone, regardless of party affiliation, to participate in the primary election. This is not unlike your parents' open marriage. And it would, in theory, allow candidates who have a wide cross-party appeal to be elected and to reduce the chance of people having to vote

along party lines for the lesser of two evils in the general election. Also, as of 2014, 40% of the electorate were independent voters. Closed primaries meant a sizable chunk of voters aren't able to participate in primaries. States with open primaries have a roughly 10% greater voter turnout

than those with closed primaries, according to University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald. And so this could be due to independent voter turnout in the primaries. There's also the option of allowing independents to vote in primaries by simply selecting which party's primary they'd like to vote in that year

or through same day party switch voter registration. It seems like a good idea, which is probably why a bunch of states are trying to do it right now. Open those primaries, get kinky with it. Just like your slut parents. Now the obvious concern about open primaries is rat fucking.

For our European viewers or another continent, here in America, we call dirty political schemes and chicanery rat fucking. For our European viewers, or another continent, here in America, we call dirty political schemes and chicanery rat fucking, a word with potential origins from Charles Entertainment Cheese, who is both a sexual icon and known for ruthless break-your-kneecaps politics. So if primaries are open,

voters of one party could try to sabotage, or as we say in Americano, rat fuck the other party by voting in someone they think would be unelectable in the general election. That said, there's a potential way to protect against rat fucking through ranked choice voting. We've talked about this in the past, but basically ranked choice is exactly what it sounds like.

Voters rank the candidates by favorability. If somebody wins more than 50% of the number one slot, we go with them. But if nobody gets a majority, we then tally some of the second choices and so on. And we are being reductive and it's complicated and it varies from state to state. But the immediate benefit is that you never have to feel bad

about voting for a third party because it won't hurt your second choice. It also mitigates the fucking of rats. This is actually happening in some states, by the way. Alaska just had a ranked choice open primary and a Democrat took over the historically Republican House seat. So naturally, Alaskan Republicans are looking

to restrict open primaries and ranked choice because that's what sad losers do. Fun coincidence, the GOP seems generally opposed to ranked choice. I wonder what that's about. Weird! So there are reforms to make primaries more effective and fair.

But what of this current primary? There's a notion that a primary challenge to an incumbent would weaken them in the general election, but there's limited data on if that's true. There are only a few examples of actual prominent primary challengers giving the incumbent a run for their money, including primary challenger Ronald Reagan

competing with Gerald Ford in 1976, Ted Kennedy winning primaries in several states against Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Pat Buchanan challenging Bush in 1992. Not that, the other guy. Obviously, 1992, get it together. All three incumbents lost their reelection. So one could argue the primary challenger

hurt their reelection chances. Or maybe they were just, you know, unpopular. Perhaps this is one of those correlation versus causation dillies. Again, there's not much research about this. However, a 1998 paper in the American Journal of Political Science found basically no effect of primary divisiveness on the outcomes

of general presidential elections. More recently, however, University of Chicago researcher Alexander Fornaes found mixed results of divisive primaries on general elections outcomes. Not exclusively primarying the incumbent, mind you. Specifically, that while divisive primaries are good for the party on a state level, they're bad on a federal level,

as in presidential elections. Quote, if we start with the results at the federal level, we find that it on average harms the party in the general election. We observe a drop in the vote share of six to nine percentage points. So it's quite a substantial harm to the party potentially. These researchers make a lot of effort

to avoid speculating about why that is. Fornaz suggests that state level elections are less publicized, so giving more attention to it through longer primaries actually motivates people to vote for their party. They also point out that it might be due to campaign financing, meaning that if a presidential candidate has to spend a lot of effort on the primaries,

it might drain their funding for the general election. They point out that primary debates can be both good and bad. After all, it's a chance for a candidate to shine just as much as it is for them to fail. So it's wrong to say that primaries broadly hurt the reputation of the candidate. And again, this is all correlation versus causation, right?

Maybe a divisive primary is a sign that the main candidate is just, you know, bad. Primary challengers might be more of a symptom of a struggling campaign as opposed to a cause. And ultimately, we'd know more about the data if primaries were just a regular thing that we did. And that brings us back to the question of the episode. Should we have an actual primary?

Let me check. It's blank, but yes. Yeah, the answer is always yes. In fact, all of the data I just gave you is completely irrelevant to the answer. No matter what, we should have an official primary, including debates and campaigns every time, especially for incumbent presidents, and especially for Democrats, and especially when one of the candidates is saying shit like this. You would never abuse power as retribution against anybody. Except for day one. Except for? Except for day one. Meaning? I want to close the border,

and I want to drill, drill, drill. That's not retribution. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be, you know, he keeps, we love this guy. He says, you're not gonna be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no, other than day one. It's easy to watch that clip and think that we have to defeat that man at all costs.

I'm doing it right now. All costs. I'm doing it right now. All costs. But it's important to remember that when the GOP is drifting further and further away from democracy, the response can't be for the Democrats to do the same. After all, their entire shtick is that they are the party of democracy. It's right there in the name.

Whereas the GOP is labeled as authoritarian while actively attacking the voting process. Which is why I think Democrats should embrace being the pro-democracy party. And to do that, they should make their own primary processes more democratic. Prove that the Democratic Party is serious about countering the Republican threat to democracy

by making pro-democracy reforms within their own party. They've already started, for example, neutering superdelegates after the 2016 fiasco. Democrats also voted to change the order of voting in states for the 2024 presidential primary, putting South Carolina before Iowa, which is supposed to give more primary representation to black voters and undercuts the disproportionate power

that Iowa historically has. Now one could argue that this stems from Biden in 2020 losing the usual first state caucus in Iowa and first state primary in New Hampshire and winning South Carolina. You're running for president. You want to win the first state? You gotta get that Joe-mentum moving.

To this change requested by the Biden campaign, New Hampshire said, actually, nah, been the first primary for a long time and we're not going to change our schedule. So in response, Biden removed himself from the ballot in New Hampshire, as it's not really a sanctioned primary anymore. There is a write-in campaign for him,

but it's a little odd, sort of taking your ball and going home, you know, not super democratic. On the other side of the spectrum, Florida only has Joe Biden on the ballot, despite candidates like Williamson being on the ballot in 2020 and apparently doing everything right again. There are other states that only have Biden on the ballot as well, but it's hard to find out why. And everybody seems to say something different. So I don't know, it's just weird. So that's a little, you know, snag in the whole democracy thing, right?

It's very Dems in disarray coded. It also means Biden's probably not going to campaign as much in those states. But regardless of this stuff, which order is the right order and which state should go first, et cetera, regardless of this stuff, which order is the right order and which state should go first, et cetera, regardless of that, actually, maybe it's more democratic to do all of them on the same day. So the later states actually feel a part of it and the earlier ones don't have

outsized power at all. Like it's weird that we go state by state and make it a long drawn out horse race where each successive state can recalibrate based on the results of previous states. You're working towards a national general election where every state votes on the same day. Maybe do that for your primaries too. But yeah, obviously there's so much more to do. But even if we keep the primaries exactly as they are now,

even if we accept that Biden is obviously the guy and there's no changing that, we still need to do a primary or like maybe should have done one. After all, we keep pointing out that one of the issues is that Democrats don't really have a lot of contenders. We're not the only people to say that, and that's not going to change

unless they hold events designed to feature new faces. After all, we just listed Reagan as someone who primary Gerald Ford in 1976. You remember what happened with that guy, yeah? He kept running and eventually fulfilled his political dream to just completely fuck up our country. Good for him. It's important to follow your dreams.

My point is that it doesn't matter if they don't stand a chance this year. We need to think of this like opening bans before the headliner. Opportunities for new people who have new ideas, who perhaps push back on the current incumbent in a way that represents the frustrations of the American people.

So then they can respond and recalibrate all this stuff. Because right now, this system, it's kind of bad. Have you noticed that? That it's bad right now? Surprise face emoji. One of the problems of our two party winner take all system is the constant appeal to vote the lesser of two evils. And while in the past, we've had candidates run on hope

and progress, right now it seems like the main message that both parties are putting out is simply that the other guy is worse. And that really sucks because I would argue that it doesn't change any minds and creates an election run completely on spite and fear. And as a result allows the leaders of both parties to do just about whatever the fuck they want.

So say Biden does something voters don't like, for instance, his material support for Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza. If anyone points out how fucked up that is, they are immediately accused of quote, "'Wanting Trump to win.'" And while I totally get that a lot of people think Trump would be way worse for Gaza than Biden,

that doesn't mean we can't want more from Biden, right? Is democracy really alive and well if you are not allowed to demand anything from your leader? Because you basically have a fascism gun to your head if you don't pinky swear to vote for Biden no matter what he does. And you gotta pinky swear like a year and a half before the election too.

It's just, if you are not allowed to criticize your guy without it being perceived as an endorsement for the other guy, is that good? Or to criticize your guy without it being framed as an attack that will cost them the election. There are reasons we have terms for president. If you vote for someone in your party, you're voting them into a term in office.

But we have this system where actually in practice, you're voting for the next eight years because you're not allowed to explore other options, even with consistently low approval ratings and bad polling. I'm not saying polling is always correct or that the ratings won't improve or that primaries or open primaries or ranked choice voting would solve this problem completely.

But it helps. Even if there are no serious contenders during the primary, it serves the purpose to force candidates to actually listen to what the voters want. It puts actual pressure on them, not us, which is how it should be. They work for us, remember? I know that's naive to say,

but maybe we need to be naive considering what cynicism has gotten us. Specifically, this extremely cynical political system based on picking which less bad guy we like the least worst, as opposed to running our elections based on the belief that good things are possible and attainable. Your parents love each other is what I'm trying to say, okay? They'll be fine. I know you were worried about that. And now, for the credits!

Wow, Mr. Cody! Your criticism of the Mr. Joe Biden in the primary system has me intrigued! Perhaps Mr. Now the President isn't the best man for the job! Wait, what? But from the way you said it, that only leaves Mr. Trump. Okay. But he's a big meanie and he says the bad things. But you say bad things about Joe Biden and the Democrats. Yeah, it just kind of sucks. What do you mean? Should I vote for Mr. Badman?

Warm vote. Vote for Mr. Batman? Wormboat, one of the points here is that we need to be able to talk about this stuff and criticize and want better without jumping to, oh, so you want Trump to win. Maybe now I do want Trump to win. What? Or Pete Buttigieg, or Randy Sanchez, or Nikki Haley, or Kyrsten Sinema, or Elizabeth Warren, or Joe Biden, or Donald Trump Jr.

There are so many people who could be the president. You're right. The point here wasn't that there are lots many people who could be the president. You're right. The point here wasn't that there are lots of people who exist. But there are. Wormbo don't. Or maybe even Wormbo one day could be president. Wormbo!

Wormbo 2024, that's right. Hey, hey, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, go get it. Don't worry, he'll forget about this in like four minutes. He's got a, yeah, he'll forget about this in like four minutes He's gotta Yeah, he'll forget about it I Think he'll forget about it I I hope I hope he'll forget about it. I... I hope... I hope... I hope he'll forget about this. He's gonna...

What... what just happened? What... what did we do? What did we just do? It's fine! Hey everybody, like and subscribe! i'm so sorry if this like snowballs into something i didn't i we were just talking we're just talking about democracy is good and stuff it's gonna be fine check out our podcast even more news where all the podcasts are and you can listen to this show as a podcast it's called some more news it's also where the podcasts are. And you can listen to this show as a podcast. It's called Some More News. It's also where the podcasts are. We got a patreon.com slash some more news. We got merch with Wormbo,

who's gonna be fine, on it. He's on the merch and it's... We're still worried here, but we're not freaking out yet. We're not freaking out, folks. We're not freaking out. Leave a comment.. Like and subscribe. I already said that, but said it again, though. I guess I'll say the whole thing again. Like and subscribe! Make sure to check

out our pot no-