There are three scenarios facing Democrats in the presidential election. I have nothing to add to the question, Which should we pick? But the discussions so far about the third are hopelessly thin. These few hundred words point to an essential complement that regardless of which you favor, we should be considering in earnest.
The President could remain in the race; he would become the Party’s nominee. That’s scenario 1. Or the President could step aside in favor of his Vice President. That’s scenario 2. Or the President could step aside, and ask an open convention to pick a nominee. That’s scenario 3, the one I explore here.
Regardless of the scenario, and criticially: it will be the delegates at the Chicago Convention who will pick the nominee. That is their power, and talk that suggests they don’t have that power legally is just flat out wrong. Whatever the scenario, it will be their choice. Whoever they choose will be on every ballot in November.
The weakness in scenario 3, however, is democratic legitimacy. There’s been a primary; Joe Biden won that primary. And though, legally, if Biden withdraws, it is perfectly legitimate for the Convention to pick his replacement, the strongest argument against that replacement will be, Who voted for you?
To answer that question, many have proposed modifications to the rules of the convention — adding ranked choice voting, for example—or mini-primaries in advance. Yet no one could believe there is time anymore for any meaningful, in-person primary process. And while tweaks to how votes at the Convention are counted are just fine, they won’t alone address the legitimacy problem.
Yet there is something that could — and that could be done before the convention.
On August 10, the DNC could host a Democratic Deliberation Day, inviting major candidates to a televised town hall, and asking two groups of citizens to listen to that discussion online, and then deliberate online in small groups with each other to answer the question, Which candidate would make the best President of the United States?
One group would be a large, random and representative sample of voters, who would use one virtual platform to deliberate on the question. That group could be as large as 2,000 voters.
The second group, on a different virtual deliberation platform, would have no limit to the number who could participate. They too would listen to the same town hall; they too would then meet in small groups to discuss what they heard, and determine on an ideal candidate. Yet the capacity of this second platform is unlimited. Literally, a million voters could be participating at the same time, offering insight into the strengths — and weaknesses—of the various candidates.
At the beginning of this process, both groups would be polled about their attitudes. At the end, they’d be polled again. And while the final numbers in each would be interesting, most interesting would be the shift from the beginning to the end. That shift would signal how a candidacy could develop over the time between the Convention and the election.
I’ve detailed this process in this memo. The important point just now is this:
This dual track, virtual deliberation process is currently reserved and in place now, and could be used on August 10, if there were a commitment to secure the option by July 25.
Thus, a complementing process that could actually happen — if the DNC chose to use it.
No one should presume that the outcome of this process would displace the right of delegates at the Convention to vote as they wish. That’s not the point. The objective of this complementing process would be to strengthen, at least potentially, the choice of the Convention by adding an ability for an unlimited number to participate as well, and in a manner that would reveal more about voters’ attitudes than any poll or mini-primary ever could. This would be a better democratic process than the process of primaries, but offered simply as a tool to the Convention to help it choose the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump.
Speaking conditionally — not whether scenario 3, but if scenario 3—this complementing process could strengthen the nominee enormously. Its insights — including those drawn from the transcripts of the deliberations—could help the Convention make its choice. It would be the most democratic response to the crisis of the moment — if indeed, the President and the Party determine that some alternative is necessary. It is a process that is reserved and in place now.
I get why this is not likely to happen. I won’t burden this essay with those reasons, but will offer them later. Separately. With sadness.
