NBC: Why the Dem primary could become ‘Lord of the Flies’


Democrats have a bunch of candidates eager to take on Donald Trump. So many in fact that there’s some concern the vote will be too spread out to reflect a clear early winner during the primaries. If that happens, the remaining candidates will begin fighting tooth-and-nail and, possibly, causing real damage to one another.

“Free for all,” “Thunderdome,” and “Lord of the Flies” are among the analogies…

If several candidates run deep into the race, the competition for cash and delegates could turn brutal, according to Jeff Berman, who devised delegate strategies for Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and helped rewrite the party’s nominating rules.

“It could be like ‘Lord of the Flies,’” Berman said.

The likelihood of that happening in the 2020 election is greater than it was in the 2016 election because of a change Democrats made to the way superdelegate votes are counted:

Under the new rules, the universe of delegates has been changed to exclude the superdelegates unless no candidate wins a majority of the delegates on the first ballot at the national convention. Candidates still win regular delegates based on their proportion of the vote in congressional districts and across states (with the exception of a handful of states that use state legislative districts rather than congressional districts for boundaries).

You may recall that in 2016 there were a lot of complaints that superdelegates were effectively handing Clinton a win even though she didn’t seem to have as much enthusiasm (certainly young people’s enthusiasm) as Bernie Sanders. So the plan was to limit the influence of the superdelegates by preventing their early endorsements from shaping the outcome. But that could backfire if the result is that two or more candidates make it through the primaries with the backing of different factions within the party. That might put the superdelegates in the position of choosing the winner. Obviously, whoever they choose will agree with the outcome, but supporters of the person or people they don’t choose probably won’t feel as good about the selection.

“With up to 15 or 20 viable candidates, there is a real chance no one gets a majority on the first ballot — or, worse, that three or four candidates could make the case that they should be the nominee,” said Chris Kofinis, a longtime Democratic strategist and public opinion researcher. “In that case, it’s Thunderdome politics at its worst, with superdelegates playing king- or queen-maker.”

Another Democratic strategist, Scott Mulhauser, tells NBC News, “This is a free-for-all like the Democratic Party, and perhaps national politics, has never seen.”  Of course that’s all just a possibility at this point. It’s also possible Democrats will quickly settle on a single, strong candidate and intra-party squabbles will be kept to a minimum…

Okay, are you laughing at that thought? So am I. It seems much more likely that the divide between Clinton and Sanders supporters, which has never gone away, will be even more obvious this time around. Kamala Harris seems to have the backing of the Clinton machine but she’s already disliked by a lot of far-left people in the party. So expect someone to make a solid run to her left. Maybe that’s Elizabeth Warren or Beto or someone else. But this is not likely to be a kind-and-gentle primary.

via Hot Air

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