Just like a packet of the well known epoxy resin Araldite, this post comes in two parts.
Part I:
I watch politics like many people watch sport. There are big football teams in various leagues, a few star players, lots of yelling and shouting from the sidelines, and scores, and swings, and polls, and gains, and losses. There are political pundits and commentators, and even entire television networks who act as de facto cheer squads to make the general public rally behind their preferred football team.
Most sporting contests at least start with the possibility that there will be some kind of competition but in 2024, the two 'races' to get enough delegates to become the nominees of the big political parties in the United States, are simply non-events and non-contests. As I write this in March of 2024, the presumptive nominees of the big political parties in the United States, are as good as decided; with only the interference of Grimaldi Reaper who walks at 1mph as the possibility that one of the old men will not get to be President in November.
Following a series of riots at both the Democratic National Convention and to a lesser degree the Republican National Convention in 1968, the big political parties in the United States instead of having party members across the country decide who their nominees for President are, have had what is known as open primaries. This would be as if in Australia, the political parties opened up their pre-selection processes. The primaries are treated as if they were part of the normal democratic process, when in reality they are actually bonkers crazy-making and do not really exist in any other nation; with good reason. Political Parties are private entities and the fact that even allow the general public to have any say at all on their internal decision making process is just accepted in America.
Before 1972, there were no real open primaries and the only time that the general public got a say was in the General Election; which makes sense as that is what it it. In Australia an election cycle is about six weeks long and that should be true in America but because there are fixed dates and it makes for good television, a lot of words can be breathed out, in a long winded process, where everyone is full of hot air.
So called 'Super Tuesday' which which massive amounts of delegates are decided across more than half of the states in the union, proved to be one giant snooze fest in 2024. Everyone knew who was going to win and this was so incredibly likely that betting companies weren't taking bets on this. You could get bets against but that really was like money for old rope for betting companies; with any and all outsiders running at worse than 1000:1. Because data is delicious (and in this case dull), here are the important numbers.
The Democratic Party sends 3,934 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The votes of 1,968 votes are needed to win. As of 14th March 2024, Current President Joseph R Biden has 2,107 bound votes of delegates. That is already 53% of the total number of delegates and already an unassailable lead.
The Republican Party sends 2,429 delegates (2,272 pledged and 157 unpledged) to the Republican National Convention. The votes of 1,215 votes are needed to win. As of 14th March 2024, Former President Donald J Trump has 1,249 bound votes of delegates. That is already 51% of the total number of delegates and already an unassailable lead.
The 2024 Presidential Election will come down to Joe Biden as incumbent and Donald Trump as the challenger. What this actually means is that with about 20 million registered voters already having decided the fates of who will appear on the ballot papers in November, it matters not an iota, not a jot, not a tiddle, not a zak, what the voters in 22 states have to say. This is democracy manifest. Someone long forgotten in the mists of political lore once said that "Democrats fall in love, while Republicans fall in line" when talking about respective candidates for the general election. Well this time around, nobody is falling in love or line; instead they are all falling asleep.
If you are in one of the 22 states yet have to say, then don't bother. The results are already known, your votes count for literally nothing.
Part II:
Having run out of any and all political excitement as far as the ballot goes, all that is left is to scour history to see where this fit into the grand story of American politics and it appears that as with everything else about Donald Trump, this is unusual.
The last time that an incumbent president ran against a former president in a General Election was all the way back in 1912. In the 1912 Presidential Election, incumbent president William Taft against Theodore Roosevelt. Owing to the way that the Electoral College works, the number of delegates that these two gentlemen got was as follows:
Taft - 8
Roosevelt - 88
Back in 1912 there were 531 delegates who were sent to the Electoral College which meant that a candidate needed 266 of them to win.
So who won?
Woodrow Wilson - 435
Wilson winning with 435 delegates looks on the face of it to be a landslide but if you drill down into the data even just a little bit, what reveals itself is the utter stupidity of the American electoral system.
Taft as the Republican Party candidate got 23.2% of the vote. Roosevelt as his own Progressive Party candidate got 27.4% of the vote. There was also a Socialist Party candidate called Eugene Debs who got 6% of the vote; so he appears as an interesting but irrelevant appendix to this story. Wilson as the Democrat candidate got 41.8% of the votes; which given that states then bound 100% of their delegates to whomever won the state election, meant that as he won 40 of 48 states, he was entitled to 81% of the delegates.
Here's the problem. A Most Votes wins system coupled with a bound delegate system, meant that Wilson won via unpopular vote in every state, as well as the unpopular vote for the overall vote in the Union. Together Taft and Roosevelt won 50.6% of the vote and given that Roosevelt only formed the Progressive Party after he had lost the nomination process to become Republican Party candidate, then what he did was very effectively split what would have been the Republican Party vote in not quite twain. 50.6% of the vote would have been enough to secure 100% of the delegates.
This might very well be instructive.
There is a small but not improbable chance that faced with the choice of either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, that some wedge portion of the electorate who are faced with more gerontocracy, will simply not bother to show up at the polls in November. Some people, especially if they are disgusted at the way that Trump handled his presidency (including sparking an insurrection on Jan 6th 2021) may actively not bother to show up at the polls, or vote for some wingnut in protest because they know their vote is wasted.
As America runs a Most Votes Wins system, coupled with a bonkers hat-stand Electoral College which also operates on a Most Votes Wins system, then there is reason to quietly sigh in despair as Joe Biden wins the Presidency for a second time; due to securing a landslide of delegates, because the system itself is monumentally stupid. The system invented by Alexander Hamilton, I think purely to install George Washington as a hemi-semi-demi-god-king-President, was fit that and only that purpose.
The difference between Trump and Roosevelt is that Trump made use of the fact that the Republican Party runs open primaries and he very effectively gamed and subverted the system. Now that he is on the inside, he has sucked all of the oxygen out of the Republican Party. Trump might very well win the Presidency in 2024 again, in the same way that Wilson did in 1912 and he himself did in 2016; by being an unpopular candidate.
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