Tangle - Democrats change their primary calendar.
Episode Date: February 9, 2023On Saturday, the Democratic National Committee approved President Biden's proposed changes to the primary calendar for 2024, making South Carolina the first state to vote in Democratic primary electio...ns while moving Iowa back . In the new plan, New Hampshire would follow South Carolina, then Nevada, and then primaries would be held in Georgia and Michigan.You can read today's podcast here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. From our Blindspot Report, a story that the left missed and one that the right missed. Plus, a poll: What should we cover next week? Let us know.Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (2:16), Today’s Story (4:16), Left’s Take (8:38), Right’s Take (13:36), Isaac’s Take (18:05), Your Questions Answered (21:23), Blindspot Report (23:27), Numbers (24:07), Extras (24:45), Have A Nice Day (25:17).You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis
Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond
Chinatown.
When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal
web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.
The flu remains a serious disease.
Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.
From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast,
the place we get views from across the political spectrum.
Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's
episode, we are going to be talking about the new DNC primary calendar, which is a major change to
how Democrats are going to pick their presidential nominees. A lot of big news there, lots of
commentary. And before we jump in, I want to do two things. First
of all, I want to let you know that tomorrow I'm going to be releasing a Friday edition in the
newsletter for paid subscribers only that is about Donald Trump and Russia. No, it is not 2016,
but this is one of the biggest asks I get from readers is a composium of opinions on what
actually happened with Trump and Russia, kind of closing the books on it. Tomorrow, I am going to
try and deliver on that because there's been some excellent reporting recently about both Trump's
interactions, I guess you could say, with Russia and also the media's fumbled coverage of those interactions.
And I think it's really, really important. Also, we have to issue a correction. It was not an error
that was made in the podcast, but it was an error that was made in the newsletter. We used the wrong
abbreviation for Tom Cotton State as AK for Alaska instead of AR for Arkansas. I think we've made this mistake before, actually,
which makes it really frustrating. Either way, it counts because it showed up in the newsletter. So
it's our 77th correction in our 185-week history and our first correction since January 23rd.
I placed these corrections at the top of the podcast to maximize transparency with readers.
All right, with that out of the way, we'll kick things off with our
quick hits for the day. First up, four former Twitter executives testified before the House
Oversight Committee on their role in suppressing the New York Post articles about Hunter Biden in 2020. Number two, Russian President
Vladimir Putin was implicated by Dutch prosecutors for signing off on a decision to supply anti-aircraft
missiles to pro-Russia separatists who ended up shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014,
which killed 298 passengers and crew. Number three, several European leaders said they were
open to sending fighter jets to Ukraine yesterday. Number four, President Biden's State of the Union
address drew just 27.3 million viewers, a 29% drop from 2022 and the smallest audience for
State of the Union in 30 years. Number five, the United States may have paid out $191 billion of improper pandemic
unemployment benefits, according to a Labor Department watchdog.
The Democratic National Committee will vote Saturday on a potential overhaul to the presidential primary calendar.
The proposed changes would make South Carolina the first state to vote, replacing Iowa.
Nevada and New Hampshire would be next, followed by Georgia and later Michigan.
While it is official this was expected to happen, they officially passed this, which means South Carolina will hold the first primary. Now, as we've mentioned, this has been something that
there was active dissent from when it comes to DNC members from the states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Listen, this calendar looks like the Democratic Party and it reflects the diversity of America.
When you look at it, we start off with three small states. We start with South Carolina that has chosen the Democratic
nominee every time since 1992. On Saturday, the Democratic National Committee approved
President Biden's proposed changes to the primary calendar for 2024, making South Carolina the first
state to vote in Democratic primary elections while
moving Iowa back. In the new plan, New Hampshire would follow South Carolina, then Nevada, and then
primaries would be held in Georgia and Michigan. The change is the biggest shakeup to the primary
calendar in recent memory and could reshape the way candidates strategize across the Democratic
Party. For decades, Iowa has been famous for its unique
caucuses, town hall-style meetings where residents debate and sort out who they want to vote for.
Iowa has also created an opening for upstart candidates like Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter,
and Bernie Sanders, whose early success in the state gave them national attention that led to
more success later in their campaigns. One immediate impact of placing South Carolina
first on the calendar is that it is likely to improve Biden's odds of running unopposed
and winning re-election if he decides to stay on the ballot for 2024. It would also give Black
voters an earlier and more impactful voice on the direction of the party, as Black Democrats
comprise much of the party's base in states like South Carolina and Georgia,
which will also be bumped up in the calendar.
This is a significant effort to make a presidential primary nominating process more reflective of the diversity of this country,
and to have issues that will determine the outcome of the November election,
part of the early process, Representative Debbie Dingell,
the Democrat from Michigan who supports the change, said.
While the vote for the DNC makes the party's decision final, it does not entirely cement
the changes. Democratic and Republican leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire are both strongly opposed,
and some have vowed to defy the new schedule and hold elections first anyway. Changing the
calendar in New Hampshire, which is currently the first primary after the Iowa caucuses, would require a new law in the Republican-controlled state, which currently looks
unlikely. The DNC has asked New Hampshire to work the new calendar requirements in by June. However,
many powerful Democrats in the state, like former Governor John Lynch, appear unflinching in their
opposition. They could say June, they could say next week, they could say in five years, but it's not going to matter, Lynch said. It's like asking New York to move
the Statue of Liberty from New York to Florida. I mean, that's not going to happen, and it's not
going to happen that we're going to change state law. While Biden could risk upsetting local
politicians in Iowa and New Hampshire and potentially drawing out a primary challenger,
there are risks for the states too. DNC rules say that any states disobeying the party-approved timeline could
lose delegates in the nomination process, removing their voice entirely. If Biden runs again, the
issue would largely be moot as he is expected to run uncontested, but it would set Democrats up for
an intra-party brawl in 2028. In 2020, President Biden performed poorly in both
Iowa and New Hampshire. The Iowa caucuses were also mired in a logistical meltdown, with so many
things going wrong that many party leaders were calling to remove Iowa from the early slate of
states before the election even ended. Weeks later, Biden's campaign turned it around in South Carolina,
riding a wave of support from Black Democrats that would ultimately carry him to the White House. Today, we're going to take a look at
some reactions from the left and the right to these potential changes, and then my take.
First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many on the left support removing Iowa from first in the schedule, but are divided about South Carolina replacing them. Some argue Democrats
should prioritize a swing state. Others say South Carolina is the right move to have a small market state and give
Black voters a stronger voice. In Politico, Howard Dean, another dark horse candidate who got traction
in Iowa, made the case for bumping it back on the calendar. There is a long-standing tradition in
the Democratic Party's presidential primary process of creating space for every type of
campaign to compete during the first month, Dean wrote. This tradition is
critical, not just to our party, but to our democracy. It means that any candidate, no matter
where they're from, their name ID, or how much money they have can compete. And that is why I
support the 2024 primary calendar developed by the Democratic National Committee's Rules and
Bylaws Committee, because it preserves that critical part of the process while correcting longtime issues with diversity in the early electorate. The first month of the presidential
primary is about two things, momentum and money, he said. By putting three small states up front,
this calendar gives smaller campaigns an opportunity to compete on smaller battlegrounds
and build momentum before they hit the larger contests at the end of the month.
Money is a critical resource for any campaign, but especially so for smaller campaigns.
Once again, this calendar addresses that issue by starting candidates off in small media markets.
This calendar also accomplishes another critical goal that is long overdue.
It demonstrates our values and makes the primary process look more like our country.
In the New York Times,
former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faya Shakir expressed support for punishing Iowa
and moving battleground states to the front, but said the plan has a fatal flaw.
Our party's lineup of states that nominate our presidential candidates every four years needs
to change badly. The 2020 caucuses in Iowa, the state that has been first on the calendar for decades,
were a disaster, he said. But the Biden nomination calendar contains a fundamental,
dooming flaw, the replacement of Iowa with South Carolina as the first state.
The change would be comical if it weren't tragic. We all know why South Carolina got the nod.
President Biden, Representative Jim Clyburn, and many of his top supporters were buoyed by their campaign's comeback in February 2020 when the state delivered Biden his first victory of
the season, and a big one at that. The media attention from that victory and the consolidation
of the Democratic field that it yielded helped catapult him to winning a majority of the following
Super Tuesday states. South Carolina is not a battleground state. Mr. Trump carried
it by double digits in 2020. It is way more ideologically and culturally conservative than
our party and our nation, and the state is not trending in any way toward the Democratic Party.
Just two years ago, we witnessed Jamie Harris, and now the chair of the Democratic National
Committee, spend the eye-popping sum of $130 million to try and defeat Senator Lindsey
Graham. After outraising and outspending Mr. Graham, Mr. Harrison still lost the 2020 Senate
race decisively, he said. Let's not compel all other Democratic campaigns to waste more money
that could be better spent elsewhere. If we really want to pick a diverse primary electorate, look to
South Carolina's neighbor to the north, an actual battleground state. In The Hill, Rick C. Wade said the new plan empowers all Black voters.
Black voters in South Carolina account for more than 60% of the state's Democratic turnout and
nationally have been the backbone of the Democratic Party. Yet they've had to wait too long to have a
say in the primary process, Wade said. As President Biden said ahead of the South Carolina
primary, 99% of Black voters had not had the chance to vote at that point. This calendar puts
the national spotlight on South Carolina, which translates to everything from strengthening party
infrastructure to stimulating the state economy and ensuring that the concerns of Black voters
across South Carolina and America are heard and top of the national agenda.
I've seen this benefit firsthand and know what the impact of South Carolina being first in the
nation can mean. While serving as a national senior advisor and director of African American
vote for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, I spent significant time on the
ground in both Iowa and South Carolina, Wade said. Being first defines how presidential
candidates run their campaigns, the promises they make, the voters they talk to, and the issues they
focus on. It means that Black voters will be driving the conversation, and issues that impact
them will be at the forefront of candidates' platforms. Those issues may include increasing
capital for Black business owners and helping them access the global marketplace,
addressing health disparities, modernizing local infrastructures, ensuring equitable educational funding, and advocating for second-chance hiring for the formerly incarcerated.
All right, that is it for the leftist saying, which brings us to the right's take.
Many on the right are critical of the move, saying Biden is making the change for his own benefit.
Some argue it's an effort to tee up Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden in 2028.
Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,
a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond
Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel
a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.
The flu remains a serious disease.
Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,
which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.
What can you do this flu season?
Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.
Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.
It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada
for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects
and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at
flucellvax.ca. Others say removing Iowa makes sense, but South Carolina is a poor choice for
first. In The Federalist, Tristan Justice said Biden is teeing up Harris for a 2028 run.
Kamala Harris knows she would never win a presidential primary in the Democratic Party
with last cycle's nominating calendar. So, at the behest of the White House,
party leaders changed it, he wrote. Harris remains even less popular than her predecessors.
According to an outline of national opinion polls by the LA Times last month, Harris's net favorability is 14 points below Mike
Pence, 17 points below then-Vice President Biden, 44 points below Dick Cheney, and 41 points below
Al Gore at the same point in their tenures. Of course, the move highlights the Democratic
Party's embrace of coastal elitism. Not one member of the Democrats' House leadership team is from the Midwest,
and now the region will lose its influence in the presidential nominating contest, Justice said.
The calendar switches not only an insurance policy for Biden to avoid an embarrassing
primary defeat should he choose to run again, but it's a favor to Harris for a bid in 2028,
if not next year. South Carolina is home
to a majority Black electorate in the Democratic Party, a key constituency for the first Black
woman to serve as vice president. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it rigging the
primaries for Biden. Imagine if the Republican Party rigged its presidential nominating calendar
to help Donald Trump slide past states where he's politically weak. Would that go down easily with the GOP or the press? That's essentially what Democrats are
doing to help President Biden, to little protests or even much media notice, they said.
All of this is being done at the request, please don't say orders, of the Biden White House.
Mr. Biden finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, where retail campaigning
in restaurants and school auditoriums counts for as much as TV advertising. The last thing the
White House wants is Mr. Biden at age 81 unscripted on the hustings. This insider political play isn't
going down well in the Granite State, which has a law stating that it must be the first primary,
they said. The state's Democrats aren't happy, and perhaps GOP Governor Chris Sununu and
the legislature will respond by moving the primary ahead of February 3rd, though maybe the DNC will
then kill its primary. The main benefit of the early New Hampshire and Iowa contest is that they
give voters a chance at close-up vetting, and they give long-shot candidates a chance to elevate an
issue or emerge from obscurity. The risk for Democrats is that by
greasing the wheels for Mr. Biden, they will miss such a signal from the electorate. In the American
Enterprise Institute, Nate Moore, Carolyn Bowman, and Roy Teixeira argued that South Carolina was
the wrong pick to go first. The early states are meant to produce a primary frontrunner and select
strong general election candidates, they said. In the five contested New Hampshire Democratic primaries since 1992,
Granite Staters have voted for the eventual nominee just once, John Kerry in 2004.
With neither demographic diversity nor kingmaker prowess, there is a strong case to replace the
first in the nation pair. But South Carolina, the Biden administration's hand-placed replacement,
presents different
challenges. The president's motivations are obvious. After lackluster finishes in Iowa and
New Hampshire, a convincing win in South Carolina revives his candidacy. Its politics and demographics
do make for a strange first primary, they said. The central black belt, a swath of majority black
counties, has hemorrhaged population in the last decade.
As the Black Belt has suffered, coastal South Carolina has boomed. Horry County, Myrtle Beach,
and Berkeley County, Charleston suburbs, both approached 30% growth over the past decade.
Each is solidly Republican, which, when combined with a stagnant Black population,
offers little hope for South Carolina Democrats. The Democratic plan to reduce the influence of Iowa and, to a lesser extent, New Hampshire is a smart one. Party coalitions and presidential
battlegrounds have changed. The primary schedule should change with them. South Carolina, however,
offers little to Democrats. Places like Michigan or Georgia appeal to more factions of the party
and, most importantly, would help produce strong general election nominees.
All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take.
So in my opinion, this is the right move at the wrong time. I've always loved the spirit and style of the Iowa caucuses.
There is something about starting there that feels just very old school American. A group of folks in gymnasiums across the state arguing about who to pick, candidates in diners and at gas stations
whipping votes, a media frenzy in towns that are often ignored by the elite and the press.
But Iowa dropped the ball in 2020 in a way that did
irreparable damage. Candidates who staked their whole campaigns on the state didn't even get
results until New Hampshire votes were being counted, which essentially made them moot.
It's also no longer a good temperature of the Democratic electorate. Not only is John Kerry
the only candidate in decades that has won Iowa and gone on to win the Democratic nomination, but South Carolina has performed very well. Every Democratic candidate that has won South Carolina
since 1992, with the exception of Kerry, has become the party's nominee. Iowa simply doesn't
represent the party's base anymore, and the goal should be putting forward a state that does.
Fortunately, replacing Iowa with other small market states preserves some of what
makes the Iowa caucuses great. It leaves the field open since smaller campaigns with less money and
name recognition can compete in places like South Carolina and New Hampshire without a war chest.
That's part of the magic of Iowa, and it's a critical element of making sure primaries aren't
simply bought year after year. The issue, of course, is the self-dealing. Biden could have
pushed for any number of states to go first, but he picked the one that made him president.
It is, as many of the commentators noted above, also a state that does not make a whole lot of
sense for the party outside of this fact. It's overwhelmingly Republican, getting more so,
and the base of Black voters it's meant to serve is shrinking. How could anyone read this as anything other than a play for Biden to run unopposed in 2024? Nevada, New Hampshire,
Georgia, Michigan, or North Carolina all should have gotten priority. Not only are they true
swing states where Democrats can stake out voters and media relationships early on in the process,
several of those states, like Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina, also have large Black
populations that check off the party's goal of giving their base a bigger voice early on,
which is admirable. Instead, Biden pushed for the state everyone knows he has a personal
connection to, the same state he bet his entire campaign on in 2020, and the state that most
assures his success if he runs in 2024. It's a brazen political move, and one that should have gotten
more resistance from party leaders. Not just that, but it's being received just how one would expect
from the factions of the party who already felt spurned after the DNC colluded to keep Bernie
Sanders out in 2016. Pushing Iowa out was the right move, one the state earned with incompetence
and irrelevance, to Democrats at least. But replacing it with South Carolina
is a mistake, one that reeks of exactly the kind of establishment self-dealing that has
long plagued the Democratic Party. All right, that is it for my take. A quick note, we are
getting close to 9,000 paying subscribers to Tangle. It's a major milestone we are trying
to drive toward. Please, if you are not yet a Tangle subscriber, go to readtangle.com
slash membership and consider getting a subscription. Thank you.
All right, next up is our reader question. This one is from Michael in Wiley, Texas.
Michael said, do you really consider 12 Republicans voting for the Respect for Marriage
Act to be bipartisan? This is typical of the bipartisan bills that have passed under Biden. A very small number of rhinos vote for a leftist bill and leftists call it bipartisan.
generally has a hard time wrestling with. Presumably any major bill that gets passed is bipartisan since it would have had to get 10 votes in the Senate. Many in the media called the
January 6th committee bipartisan because it included two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam
Kinzinger, even though both would soon be voted out and were clearly on one side of the issue.
To me, I look for a few things when I call a piece of legislation bipartisan. Some support
from Republicans and Democrats, not just in the Senate, where most big legislation needs 10 votes
to pass, but also the House. Multiple sponsors who are both Democrats and Republicans, i.e. the
people crafting and whipping votes for a bill come from both sides of the aisle. And of course,
some support for the bill from the voters whose representatives are supposed to be representing. Biden boasted 300 bipartisan bills. I sincerely doubt all of them or even most
meet the above criteria. He's probably counting anything that got a few Republican votes in one
chamber of Congress. But I would count bills like the Respect for Marriage Act. That bill picked up
39 Republican votes in the House and initially had 47. In the Senate, it had 12 Republican votes and some Republican sponsors.
It was limited in scope, and I suspect it would be supported by most of the 71% of Americans
who support same-sex marriage if they were told what it did.
The infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act, support for Ukraine's defenses, the Violence Against
Women Act, and the reforms to the Postal Service are other big-ticket
items of legislation I would consider bipartisan. Without seeing Biden's purported list of 300
others, it's hard to comment, but those are the ones that I do think qualify.
All right, next up is our Blindspot report. A quick reminder, Blindspot is presented by
our partners over at Ground News, an app
that tells you the bias of news coverage and what stories people on each side are missing.
Many on the left last week missed Democrats' vote denouncing socialism, which split the
caucus.
Many on the right missed a story about the ways poverty and other toxic stress negatively
impact the brains of Black children.
All right, that is it for what the right and the left are missing. Next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Biden's general election electorate that is white was 54%. The percentage
of Biden's general election electorate that is black was 22%.
The percentage of Iowa primary electorate that is white was 91%.
The percentage of the Iowa primary electorate that is black is 3%.
The percentage of the South Carolina primary electorate that is white is 40%.
And the percentage of the South Carolina primary electorate that is black is 56%. The margin of Donald Trump's
victory over Joe Biden in South Carolina in the 2020 election was 55 to 33.
All right, next up is our extra section. One year ago today, we were covering the beginning
of the Olympics. The most clicked link in yesterday's newsletter was about the
Mitt Romney-George Santos confrontation. 53% of Tangle readers said they did not watch any part
of the State of the Union address. Today's nothing to do with politics story is the drug-sniffing
squirrels who are joining China's police force. Yes, there is a link to that in today's episode
description. There's also a link to today's poll, which is
about what you think we should cover next week. All right, and last but not least, our have a
nice day story. Preparatory work has finally begun to restore the sharp spire atop the Cathedral of
Notre Dame that was destroyed during a fire four years ago. Scaffolding has been set up and custom
cut stones for the spire were delivered,
increasing hope that the construction could be completed by the end of 2024.
The stone was delivered for the spire by barge alongside the River Seine, just as it would have
been in the 19th century when it was first constructed. Once completed, the new spire
will be 100 meters tall. Good News Network has the story. There's a link to it in today's episode
description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our
work, please go to retangle.com slash membership. Like I said, we are currently on a big subscription
drive to get to 9,000. We'd love it if you helped us get there. I hope you have a good weekend and
we'll see you guys on Monday. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea.
Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul.
Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager,
Magdalena Bokova, who created our podcast logo.
Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.
For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.repandled.com.
We'll see you next time. becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming
November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season,
over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic
average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor
about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCilvax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about
getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first
cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available
for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection
is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.