Invisible Primary: Visible -- Trump and Evangelicals in 2024

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Tim Alberta had a nice piece up over at The Atlantic over the weekend about Donald Trump's current relationship with the broader evangelical movement. [Always read Alberta.] The takeaway? The former president seemingly burned some bridges with some Christian leaders after he cast blame on pro-life supporters for Republicans' (mis)fortunes in the 2022 midterm elections. It is a deeply reported story and it makes some sense in a climate in which others in the Republican presidential primary electorate are looking around at their options more than they did in 2019 when Trump was up for reelection. 

But there were a couple of interrelated things that kept coming to mind as FHQ read through the story. First, the folks who were quoted in the piece were almost exclusively elites within the evangelical movement (and if not elites, then leaders in some capacity). And second, there was a divide in that segment of the Republican primary electorate in 2016. As Pew showed then, regular church attendees who identified as evangelical gravitated more toward Ted Cruz. Those who carried the same identity but who were less involved in congregations were more likely to side with Trump. While FHQ is not fond of the 2024 comparisons to the 2016 Republican nomination race, it is worth asking whether this same relationship among evangelicals exists in this current invisible primary. 

In other words, does that 2016 divide persist? Is it being animated anew as the Republican presidential field takes shape for 2024? While church leaders and their most committed adherents may be looking around, put out with Trump after eight years, there may be a sizable pocket of evangelicals who are just as evangelical in their identities but less attuned (or not attuned at all) to leaders in the church who are looking to move on from Trump in the primary phase. It is those folks who may miss a unified(-ish) signal from elites in the evangelical movement. This is another one of those "is Trump closer to 2015 than to 2019" questions worth keeping an eye on as 2023 moves forward. [And it merits mention that evangelical leaders were not exactly breaking down the door to back Trump in 2015 and early 2016. But once the primary phase yielded to the general election campaign, the ties grew stronger.]

...

It is not as if there had been a lot of chatter about Brian Kemp jumping into the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. There had been some, but the talk had seemingly never risen above the "plausible challenger, not seriously considering it" stage. Kemp has some of the conventional characteristics of a presidential aspirant: he's a twice-elected governor (in a swing state, no less), he is a proven fundraiser, and (in the eyes of handicappers in and out of the political media) he fits into the anti-Trump "lane" after his tussle with the former president over the 2020 election results. But, as local media had recently pointed out, while the door was not closed, Kemp was not doing the things that prospective presidential candidates do. There were no trips to Iowa, no national speeches, no new books to hawk.

That door now appears closed. Kemp on Friday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal was quick to dismiss any chances of a run for 2024. So scratch Kemp's name from the list. The field, real or imagined, winnows.

...

Despite some of the "Desantis is doomed" talk last week (and it entered the vocal doubt phase over the weekend), the broader effort to support the Florida governor's nascent bid for the Republican nomination added to its ranks. Having already brought on Jeff Roe as an adviser last week, Never Back Down, the super PAC aligned with the DeSantis effort hired a former communications hand from the Trump 2020 campaign. And Erin Perrine was already spinning polls over the weekend. 

At first blush, it may look as if Perrine's move to DeSantis is a defection from Trump. But when one considers that Republican campaign operatives had few choices at the presidential level in 2020, and that the party as a whole was firmly behind the former president in the last cycle, the story becomes one more about this cycle than a departure from the last. After all, Perrine, like Jeff Roe, has been aligned with Ted Cruz in the past. And their collective move to Never Back Down and DeSantis may tell us a lot more about a candidate not running this cycle (Cruz) than a former president who is. Regardless, these are important signals in the staff primary as the hiring wars continue. 

...

On this date...

...in 1984, Gary Hart won the Connecticut primary completing his sweep of states in the northeast..

...in 1988, Michael Dukakis won the North Dakota Democratic caucuses.

...in 2019, Utah joined Super Tuesday for 2020.

...in 2020, the Ohio primary shifted because of covid to a vote-by-mail primary that would conclude in April. Hawaii Democrats did the same in their party-run primary process. And the Pennsylvania primary was moved to June 2, also because of the pandemic.

--

Recent posts:

California Bill to Change Primary Date Amended

Bill Eliminating Idaho Presidential Primary Ready for Governor

Kansas Committee OKs Amended Presidential Primary Bill

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Pence's Predicament

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

McCay Coppins at The Atlantic peeks into some recent focus groups looking at Pence 2024:

Organized by the political consultant Sarah Longwell, the groups consisted of Republican voters who supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The participants were all over the country—suburban Atlanta, rural Illinois, San Diego—and they varied in their current opinions of Trump. In some cases, Longwell filtered for voters who should be in Pence’s target demographic. One group consisted entirely of two-time Trump voters who didn’t want him to run again; another was made up of conservative evangelicals, who might presumably appreciate Pence’s roots in the religious right.

Look, one should never put too much trust in focus groups -- especially a handful of them at one snapshot in time -- but when they are chosen to test a candidate out with groups that should be favorable to the candidate, well, the results should be okay. These were not. And they confirm some priors for those who may be skeptical of a Pence run for the 2024 Republican nomination. It is revealing, then, even if not generalizable (pending future data). The association with Trump and the perceived failings of Pence to act in accordance with the former president's wishes on January 6 is to Pence what imminent death syndrome was to characters in that old Mr. Show bit. It puts him in an awkward position. And that is not the place to be with Republican primary voters at this time. 

...

Donald Trump will likely be an interesting test of a number of hypotheses as the invisible primary continues and ultimately yields to primary season next year. Among those hypotheses will be whether actions and not words carry the day for Republican primary voters. FHQ is quick to preach actions during the invisible primary, but when rubber meets road and voters are pulling (or not pulling) the lever for Trump in 2024, the actions of four years in the White House may mean less. In the context of abortion, more happened on the former president's watch than under any Republican administration, yet Trump's comments about how the issue hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterms, not to mention his general avoidance of the issue, weigh on the minds of evangelicals in and outside of Iowa. But that segment of those caucusing early next year in the first contest in Iowa will not be insignificant. Nor, however, are they monolithic.

...

FHQ has not said much about announced Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, and that probably says a lot. However, in the month since the entrepreneur formally declared, he has raised nearly $500,000 from 10,000 donors, many of them first-timers, across all 50 states. That is nothing to sneeze at, but by comparison, Trump hauled in ten times as much at the tail end of 2024, and DeSantis is sitting on a fortune left over from his gubernatorial reelection bid last year (in addition to what he continues to bring in). Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has yet to report any figures. Longshot though he may be, Ramaswamy demonstrates how effective the online fundraising infrastructure combined with a steady stream media hits can be. 

...

On this date...

...in 1972, Edmund Muskie won the Democratic primary in Illinois, the Maine senator's final primary win of the cycle. Muskie also won the earlier New Hampshire primary.

...in 2019, SB 445 was signed into law, moving the Arkansas presidential primary back to March.

...in 2020, New York cancelled its Republican presidential primary after President Trump was the only candidate to qualify.

--

Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- It's Trump's until it's not

Primary or Caucus in 2024? For Michigan Republicans, it's still up in the air

The Fix is in for the Idaho Presidential Primary Bill

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Invisible Primary: Visible -- It's Trump's until it's not

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Strategizing about the when, where and how to best defeat Donald Trump is not a new thing. In fact, it has not always been a particularly partisan thing. After all, just seven years and a day ago, the New York Times ran a story about Republican efforts to chart a course forward toward an alternative. That was not the first such story and it certainly was not the last. There are likely more on the way.

With the former president mounting his third bid for the Republican presidential nomination, the strategizing Trump's downfall industry his whirred back to life. And that is not without reason. It is spurred on by the relatively weaker hand Trump has in 2023 minus the incumbency advantage the then-president carried with him four years ago. And there are possible indictments looming over Trump in Manhattan, Georgia and the nation's capital. The terrain is both more different than it has been during the Trump era and all too familiar (at least in the ways that various actors, including Trump, are reacting and how the race is being covered).

Those weaknesses -- real or perceived -- are a lens through which the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is being viewed. But the underlying mindset is akin to giving folks a hammer: They are going to go looking for nails and probably "find" them. For example, Trip Gabriel of the New York Times had a recent dispatch from Des Moines, where all eyes -- Trump's and his rivals' -- are on the first nominating contest of 2024. And understandably so: the caucuses in Iowa are the first contest.

“I don’t see a formula where Trump loses Iowa and it doesn’t really wound him and his chances as a candidate,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Or maybe New Hampshire will be Trump's demise. Republican strategist Susan Del Percio sees unaffiliated voters, who are allowed to participate in the presidential primary in the Granite state, as a key potential buffer against extremists lining up behind Trump. 

[As an aside, a Trump loss in Iowa would be less a signal about Iowa specifically and more one stemming from the fact that it is a caucus state. If Trump is losing among low turnout caucus electorates then that will say much about his institutional support within the party among a more motivated slice of the overall primary electorate. And that says nothing of the blow that would strike to the former president's organizational strength. As for independents in New Hampshire, maybe 2024 will be different. But Trump ran ahead of his statewide support in New Hampshire among independents in 2016. That may not be what starts the ball rolling against Trump in 2024.]

Of course, both of those visions are a bit more forward-looking into a future that has not accounted for the events that will transpire during the remainder of the invisible primary between now and when votes begin to be cast. Perhaps it will be in the courtrooms across the country where a Trump slide (or a resurgence!) begins. Seth Masket throws some water on that notion:

All this is to say that him being indicted will likely not harm him much in the presidential contest — his supporters will not turn against him — but nor will it help him. “Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters will support him enthusiastically if X happens” has been proven true time and again for eight years but doesn’t really tell us very much.

In the end, there are at least nine months left in the invisible primary. Things will happen. Needles will move. Candidates' fortunes will rise and fall. But right now, Trump is very much in the same position Jeb Bush was in 2015. That is not to suggest that the outcome will be the same for Trump as it was for Bush nor that the signals are not pointing more forcefully in Trump's direction now than they ever did for Bush then. But the majority of the invisible primary signals one looks at -- polls, fundraising, hiring, endorsements, organizational strength, etc. -- point in Trump's direction at this time. That may not continue to be the case as the invisible primary progresses, but it is the case now. 

That is why FHQ has been saying a variation on something in recent days that we often said back in 2015. Then it was "it [the 2016 Republican nomination] is Jeb's until it's not." Now, it is "it [the 2024 Republican nomination] is Trump's until it's not." In other words, the signals one relies on to tell one anything about the state of the race are pointing toward Trump. But that may not continue to be the case once indictments come down, or DeSantis enters the race, or a poor fundraising quarter is reported, or well on down the line, once votes begin to be cast in Iowa and New Hampshire. For now, however, it is Trump's until it's not.

...

How will public opinion react to a possible Trump indictment? Natalie Jackson says to look at the polling on January 6.

...

Harry Enten digs into recent CNN and Quinnipiac polls and finds that support among voters of color is part of what sets Trump apart from his competition for the Republican presidential nomination. 

...

Michigan Republicans are still "in a pickle" over whether to go the primary or caucus route in 2024.

...

On this date...

...in 1984, Walter Mondale edged Gary Hart in the Illinois primary, winning a small plurality victory on his way to the Democratic nomination. The Illinois primary ended up fairly closely resembling the popular vote breakdown in the contest nationwide at its conclusion.

...in 2012, Mitt Romney scored a double digit win over Rick Santorum in the Illinois primary, but dominated the former Pennsylvania senator in the congressional district delegates directly elected by a more than three to one rate.

...in 2020, the Indiana presidential primary was pushed back from May to June because of the coronavirus pandemic.

--

Recent posts:

Primary or Caucus in 2024? For Michigan Republicans, it's still up in the air

The Fix is in for the Idaho Presidential Primary Bill

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Karl Rove's Faux Certainty on 2024 Unknowns

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Blue States Matter in the Republican Nomination Process, but so do Blue Districts

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Alan Greenblatt has a good reminder up at Governing about the role blue states play in the Republican presidential nomination process. But while there are also delegates to chase in Democratic states, the underlying math offers some interesting twists. 

Take California. The Golden state, as Greenblatt notes, is a solidly blue state but remains the largest delegate prize in the Republican process. Yet, how California Republicans decide to divvy up all of those delegates matters. More often than not, California has been a winner-take-all by congressional district state, meaning that, not only do the results statewide matter, but so too do the results in each of the state's 50-plus congressional districts. A candidate would need either a big win statewide or a win fairly evenly dispersed across all of those districts to sweep all or most them.

Of course, one difference between the Republican and Democratic delegate apportionment -- how the national parties distribute delegates to the states -- is in how each treats congressional district delegates. The Republican National Committee (RNC) apportions three delegates to every congressional district while Democrats weight them. The more Democratic a district has been (in terms of past voting), the more delegates it receives. Democratic districts -- where the Democrats are -- mean more in the math for candidates. But that is not true on the Republican side. They are all the same. Overwhelmingly Republican districts are the same as supermajority Democratic districts. As such, the relatively small number of Republicans in those solidly Democratic districts carry a bit more weight than a larger number of them packed into a Republican-leaning district. 

And there is an efficiency to all of this as well. Many of those Democratic districts are clustered in urban areas that can be reached more easily in person and/or on the air. There was some evidence of this in metro Atlanta in the 2016 Republican race. Marco Rubio was able to peel off a few Democratic districts there to gain some delegates. As that example illustrates, however, focusing solely on Democratic districts is no substitute for doing well in Republican areas as well (not unless there are a number of evenly matched candidates). But, as always, the rules matter.

[Incidentally, California Republicans dropped the allocation method described above for the 2020 cycle. An earlier primary forced the state party to abandon the winner-take-all by congressional district method because it would not have been compliant under RNC rules. But the change made minimized the congressional district and at-large delegate distinction. All of the delegates were pooled and all allocated based on the statewide results. If no candidate received a majority of the vote statewide, then the delegates were proportionally allocated. With majority support a candidate would win all of the delegates. But again, the rules matter.]

...

Over at Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein has one on the current time of choosing for Republicans. The possible indictments former President Donald Trump faces means that Republicans are going to have to stake out positions on the matter one way or the other. And that has consequences for the 2024 invisible primary. On one end of the spectrum, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R), who is considering a White House bid of his own, has already suggested that Trump should drop out if he is indicted. And while it is not necessarily indictment-related, Mike Pence continues to break with Trump and more forcefully now. Other candidates will have decisions to make as this story develops.

...

Speaking of Trump, the former president drops in on Iowa today for the first time since announcing his third presidential run.

...

The political science literature tells us that the impact of political advertising is small and short-lived. But that has stopped super PAC spending on ads promoting President Biden's economic accomplishments. Yes, this is more of an attempt to frame the matter than to sway votes still 20 months away. ...but still, it is early.

...

On this date...

...in 1984, it was Super Tuesday, a date that saw Walter Mondale and Gary Hart split contests in the Democratic presidential nomination race. Like 1992, the Super Tuesday of 1984 paled in comparison to the southern-dominated Super Tuesday of 1988. But the break in support in 1984 foreshadowed the pattern that would repeat itself to some degree in 1988. Mondale took contests in the Deep South while Hart took Florida and the two primaries in the northeast. But while Mondale rode those victories in Alabama and Georgia to the nomination, in 1988 Michael Dukakis filled the Hart role while, winning the peripheral South and the northeast as Jesse Jackson and Al Gore split the bulk of the former confederacy.

...in 2012, it was the day of the primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, two contests Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich needed in their longer term efforts to keep Mitt Romney from reaching the magic number of delegates to claim the Republican nomination. Romney was kept out of the winner's circle in each, but the delegate splits among the three candidates did not provide his challengers with the net delegate advantages they needed. This series of contests also garnered some attention because of Romney's "cheesy grits" comments.

...in 2019, Miramar mayor Wayne Messam (D) formed an exploratory committee for a presidential run. Messam formally joined the race later in the month, but withdrew before primary season and ultimately received no votes in the process. 

--

Recent posts:

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Invisible Primary: Visible -- Presidential Primary Runoffs?

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- RNC Neutrality in 2024

One of the parlor games of the moment inside and outside the beltway in DC is the hunt for any break between the Republican Party (in its many forms) and former President Donald Trump. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly has no desire to speak to Trump again, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is headed down to Florida for a fundraiser and will speak with the former president in the process. But again, that is just one facet of the Republican Party, the party-in-government. 

The formal party apparatus itself, the RNC, recently broke with how it dealt with the president in 2019 ahead of the 2020 presidential primaries. Ronna Romney-McDaniel, the recently re-elected chair of the Republican National Committee, told the Associated Press in an interview...

“The party has to stay neutral. I’m not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024. That’s going to be up to those candidates going forward. What I really do want to see him do, though, is help us win back majorities in 2022.” [McDaniel's response when asked whether she wanted to see Trump run again in the next presidential election.]

While that is a formal declaration of the chairwoman and is consistent with the rules regarding the conduct of the RNC in contested presidential nomination cycles, it differs from the national party's approach to 2020. It was, after all, at the RNC winter meeting in 2019 when the party stopped short of formally endorsing the president's renomination and reelection, but passed a resolution lending Trump the party's "undivided support." [The difference between a full endorsement and the symbolic show of unanimous support of the president among the party membership was one rooted in financial support (that an endorsement would have carried). But it should be noted that the RNC and the Trump reelection forces had already united by that point.]

Now, conditions are different in 2021 than they were in 2019. Trump is no longer the sitting president as he was then. Additionally, McDaniel's comments are not a reflection of any formal vote of the RNC membership (but merely a recitation of the party rules on the matter) as opposed to 2019. But in the end, formal or not, they mark a departure from the party's 2019 position and creates some light between the party and its (formal) former standard bearer. 

However, it will likely be Trump moving forward who will freeze the potential field of 2024 Republican candidates and not the Republican National Committee. But this is one to track as the invisible primary lurches forward. 

Recent posts: 

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Hawley and Shermanesque/Sherman-ish Statements

A Presidential Primary in Lieu of Caucuses in Nevada?

Iowa, Democrats and 2024  

Trump and the 2020 Republican Delegate Selection Rules

Rule 40 is back.

Remember all that chatter from last cycle about a potentially crowded field of candidates vying for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and the possibility that the ensuing chaos would lead to a scenario where multiple (or no) candidates would control a majority of delegates from eight states and have all/none of their names placed in nomination at the convention, leading to even more chaos?

It is fine if you do not. But FHQ does. Vividly. It was all the rage from 2014 into 2016, peaking in April  of that year and gathering steam again in the lead up to the July convention.

Now, however, the 2016 chaos narrative is being replaced by a 2020 threat narrative, all with Rule 40 as the predicate.

The short version of the threat narrative is this:
The current RNC rules for the 2020 nomination process set a low bar for a potential challenger to President Trump. At Trump's own nominating convention in 2016, delegates adopted a revision to Rule 40 for 2020. Rather than requiring the control of the majority of delegates from eight states to have one's name placed in nomination, the 2020 process would require the control of a plurality of delegates from only five states. This was a reversion to the threshold from before 2016. By extension, the thinking goes that the lower threshold for 2020 means a greater potential threat to the president and that the threshold should be raised.

Of course, there is a rule for that. Well, rules anyway.

First, Rule 12, added at the 2012 convention for the 2016 cycle and carried over to 2020, allows for amendments to Rules 1-11 and Rules 13-25. Noticeably, that is a list of amendable rules that does not include Rule 40. And even if Rule 40 was among the amendable rules, amendments to the 2020 rules had to be adopted by September 30, 2018.

Second, there was a vehicle put in place to devise recommended amendments to the group of rules that could be changed. Rule 10(a)(10) created the Temporary Committee on the Presidential Nominating Process (TCPNP) whose charge was to make such recommendations by May 31, 2018 in order for them to be considered, adopted and/or rejected by the full Republican National Committee prior to the September deadline laid out in Rule 12. Although their discussions were wide-ranging, all the TCPNP recommended and the RNC adopted was the elimination of the debates sanctioning committee the RNC created for the 2016 cycle.

In other words, the window for making changes to the rules has passed and Rule 40 was not among the rules that could be changed anyway.



None of those realities have stopped some from suggesting that because the RNC is a private organization, it can change its rules at any time. Nor has it dissuaded (at least one) RNC member from raising the idea of a suspension of the rules in order to fix "loopholes" in the 2020 process.

Look, FHQ is skeptical of that. It is not that there are doubts because of some rules technicality that guards against changes. Those are outlined above. Rather, there is reason to be skeptical of a change in the rules at this point because of something I often told folks with respect to the rules discussion ahead of the 2016 Republican National Convention: it is fine to talk about potential changes to any rule that any voting member finds unsavory for whatever reason. Yet, it is another thing altogether to devise an alternative that can win the support of the requisite number of voting members to make that change.

In other words, the devil is in the details.

And if the details include the RNC acting unilaterally to change the nomination rules for 2020 in a way unprecedented in the history of the party, then cobbling together winning coalition to make any change would likely be a very steep climb indeed. Morton Blackwell, the national committeeman from Virginia, spoke against a motion to create this very change during the Convention Rules Committee meeting the week before the party convened in Cleveland in 2016. That motion was withdrawn.

In the end, parties have these rules in place and keep them relatively constant for a reason. They create certainty, or if not that, then prevent chaos. A party that changes rules mid-cycle and outside of the process laid forth for making changes -- typically from the highest authority for both of the major US political parties, the national convention -- is a party with no rules. To make a change now sets the precedent that similarly-timed changes can be made in the future, potentially pitting the party organization against the convention itself (because the convention could change the rules back or to whatever a majority there could agree on). Recognition of constant, stable rules, like constant and stable law, is necessary.

Take the rule in question, Rule 40. The national committeeman from the Virgin Islands, Jevon Williams, suggests that the rules, and Rule 40 in particular, were adopted at a time when there was no thought toward how they may affect an incumbent running for renomination/reelection, creating "loopholes".

[NOTE: That is not the case for anyone who watched the proceedings of the Republican National Convention Rules Committee in the lead up to the convention.]

But even if that was true and there were "loopholes", the plan was to return to the way the Rule 40 looked prior to 2016. George W. Bush was renominated in 2004 under those same rules. Before that in the 1990s, the threshold was even lower, set at a plurality in just three states. And prior to that, there was no threshold in the early equivalent to Rule 40. Past Republican presidents, then, have been renominated and reelected under similar rules.¹

So, it should be noted that the overarching rules of the process are being made the scapegoat here for a problem that is not rules-based. If a given president is popular enough, particularly among his or her primary electorate, then that tends to 1) ward off a primary challenge and by extension, 2) renders the rules-based issues at least nonexistent and at most a minor nuisance.



As a coda to all of this FHQ will say that rules tinkering is nothing new here. What is new in this instance in 2019 is the timing. The cycle is beyond the point at which national rules can be changed. The process is in the midst of another phase now. Yes, most will be paying the primary amount of attention in the coming days and weeks and months to candidate jumping in to the race and what they are up to.

However, behind all of that is a parallel process where past presidents have wielded some influence: the rules on the state level. Typically incumbent presidents are loathe to change the rules that got them the nomination in the first place and in turn the national parties typically hold pat with those overarching rules. Yet, on the state level, there are opportunities to make small scale changes that may benefit a particular candidate. State governments for years have changed the dates of their primaries and often to help out a favorite son or daughter. Illinois, for example, uprooted its traditional March primary for the 2008 cycle to ideally give Barack Obama a leg up on a crowded Super Tuesday.

But presidents do this too. The Carter reelection effort foresaw a 1980 challenge from Ted Kennedy and as a result sought to alter the playing field. Their prescription was not to change the national delegate rules, but to manage things at the state level, lobbying a cadre of southern states to hold a subregional primary early in the primary calendar. That Alabama-Florida-Georgia primary was seen as a potential positive response for Carter to any gains Kennedy might make in the earlier New Hampshire and Massachusetts primaries.

While that specific sort of maneuvering is not yet evident in the actions of those officials in the Trump reelection campaign, there is evidence that delegate slates are being built on the same level. That is far more fertile ground for advantageous changes than altering the national delegate process at this late stage. Don't look for changes to Rule 40. Look to the states and what Team Trump is doing there.


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¹ Actually, the reversion to the pre-2016 threshold was met joyously by the voting members of Convention Rules Committee in 2016. But the change in 2012 -- for the 2016 cycle -- raised the bar to a majority of delegates in eight states with an incumbent President Romney in mind. That is why Ben Ginsberg and Jon Sununu took so much flak coming out of Tampa. But the changes each time were made by the party's highest authority, the national convention.

The Iowa Straw Poll and the Regular Rhythms of the Presidential Nomination Process

FHQ got a sneak peek of Jonathan Bernstein's Friday column on Thursday when we had a chance to chat after my APSA roundtable on the 2020 presidential nomination process. At the time, I agreed with him. Honestly, thoughts of the straw poll that wasn't in Iowa in 2016 had long ago been washed over and displaced with the logjam of events that happened during and since the 2016 cycle. So, sure, perhaps no straw poll meant one fewer winnowing opportunity; one coordination event lost.

But the more I thought about it -- and I had time when I was stuck on the T during an outage on the way home that evening -- the more I thought, well, surely there was some event that filled the void that the Ames Straw Poll absence had left behind. Although they were down in number in 2016 -- just like primary debates -- from the 2012 cycle, there were other straw polls that were conducted during the year leading up the first votes being cast in the caucuses in Iowa.

Initially, FHQ thought of the fall straw poll annually conducted at the Value Voters Summit. That is an event and a straw poll that receives some attention, falls in roughly the same window of time in which the Iowa straw poll occurs, and even could be said to deal with a similar socially conservative constituency.

However, through the lens of Google Trends, there is not much evidence to suggest that the VVS straw poll filled the void left by the Ames straw poll in any meaningful way.¹



The same general trend holds for the other events that peppered the calendar throughout 2015, whether it was the straw poll earlier in the year at CPAC or the one at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Those events could have been stand-ins for the straw poll, but were not. In fact, in the cases of CPAC and the SRLC, those events preceded the mid-June cancelation of the Iowa straw poll in 2015.

And this speaks to something Bernstein raised in his post; what he called the stab(ility) of the rules. FHQ has often evoked the same concept but under a different banner: the regular rhythms of the presidential nomination process. I agree with Bernstein that the silliness factor involved in the Iowa straw poll was quite high. And while that is true, it also served valuable functions in both coordination and winnowing.

Yes, Iowa Republicans ended the practice for the 2016 cycle and that was as much a function of pressure from the national party (because of the Hawkeye state's perceived two bites at the apple), but also because a number of the potential candidates signaled they were not going to participate.

While that is noteworthy, the why the straw poll ended is less important than why there was nothing waiting in the wings to fill the void. After all the RNC did sanction a primary debate -- the first of the cycle -- in the same August time span in which debates had been held in Iowa roughly in conjunction with the straw poll. But that Cleveland debate was a solo event with no attendant straw poll. Count that as a missed opportunity perhaps.

Another miss could be found in the collective wisdom of the aggregated straw poll results for the 2016 cycle. Most pointed in the same directions, often elevating either Ted Cruz or Ben Carson. And just as often Scott Walker finished third.

There were, perhaps, opportunities for coordination and to force some winnowing there, but there was no effort to emphasize those events or the candidates who did well (either positively or negatively). And that was consistent with a cycle that saw some active maneuvering from the national party in the area of the nomination rules (2013-14), but was hands off other than sanctioning debates when 2015 rolled around. That is not to suggest the party and the variety of actors within the broader party coalition were silent when it came to Trump specifically. Rather, it demonstrates a break in the regular rhythms of the process and that there was no active counter to those breaks from a coordination standpoint.

One could say that there were few profiles in courage among Republicans during the 2016 cycle. But just as easily, and likely more accurately, one could also say Republican party actors were trying to maintain a delicate balance between what elites wanted out of the process (winning the White House) and what was valued by a vocal faction of the base of primary voters (ABE -- anything but the establishment). Coordinating in the face of those tensions is difficult at best, and that difficulty can give rise to unexpected results; unintended consequences even.

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¹ The picture looks a bit better when one changes the search terms from "Value Voters Summit straw poll" to simply "Value Voters Summit", but the spikes pale in comparison to the sharp upticks around the Ames straw polls in both 2007 and 2011. The jump was actually smaller in 2015 when there was no straw poll in Iowa than it was in either 2007 or 2011 when there was.

Protecting the President? RNC Eliminates Primary Debates Committee

Just four years after it created the committee to sanction presidential primary debates, the Republican National Committee this past week at its 2018 spring meeting voted to strike the rule from its rulebook.

There are a couple of points that FHQ would raise both in reaction to the rules change and the coverage it has garnered.

On the rules change itself, some context is in order. Often FHQ talks of the national parties fighting the last battle when it comes to fashioning their delegate selection rules for a coming presidential nomination cycle. Indeed, the modus operandi of the national parties has tended to be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," which is necessarily backward looking. The national parties look back to the most recent evidence they have on how well or how poorly the system is working and attempt to make corrections to address any shortcomings for future cycles.

The Democrats' efforts in assembling their rules for the 2020 cycle are littered with examples of this. But it should also be said that the very creation of Rule 10(a)(10) -- the 2014 rule then known as Rule 10(h) that created the Standing Committee on Presidential Primary debates -- also fits this mold.   Coming off a 2012 cycle that saw 20 debates, the Republican National Committee was intent on reining in not only the number of primary debates but also in creating some oversight for state party/media partnerships for those debates. The solution was the creation of a national party entity to sanction official Republican Party debates.

Again, that action fits the pattern. Fixing a perceived 2012 problem for the 2016 cycle.

However, the vote at the 2018 RNC spring meeting to eliminate the debates committee broke with that pattern. Rather than fixing a problem from 2016, the RNC is seeking instead to proactively plan for the 2020 renomination of an incumbent Republican president. And the rationale is simple enough:  Why have a debates-sanctioning committee when the party is lined up behind the current occupant of the White House?

At least that is part of the rationale. Another is that this has been widely viewed as an effort by the Republican National Committee to protect President Trump from would-be 2020 Republican challengers. This, too, is something a break from the norm. The predominant pattern for nomination rules creation in the post-reform era has been for parties out of the White House to attempt to tinker their way back in; to put together a process that ideally will produce a candidate well-equipped to defeat the incumbent president.

That leaves the party in the White House to, more often than not, rest on their laurels when it comes to its nomination rules. The motivation -- the urgency -- just does not exist in the same way that it does for the out-party. First, presidents, in a position over their national parties, tend to like the process that nominated them in the first place. But the typical inactivity or minimal activity from in-parties is also a function of the fact that incumbent presidents do not often see challenges to their renomination.

And when those challenges have materialized, there has not been much evidence of the parties maneuvering to protect their presidents at the rules-making stage of the cycle. Republicans at the 1988 Republican National Convention, for example, were not planning ahead for a future that included a 1992 Pat Buchanan challenge to the presidential candidate they were nominating. The party's concern then was more about lining up behind Vice President Bush. Bear in mind that at that point in time Republicans set their rules for the subsequent cycle at the preceding convention. There was no rules-making infrastructure in place then to amend the Republican rules of the nomination process outside the convention.

Nor do we see much evidence of the Democratic National Committee moving to protect President Carter ahead of the 1980 cycle. That is the only other time in the post-reform era where a sitting president had either persistent chatter about a challenge to his nomination or an actual challenge.

Now, there were rules changes that the Democratic Party made for the 1980 cycle, but the motivation behind those rules changes was not exactly to protect the president from a prospective Kennedy challenge. This was the cycle where the DNC formally added a threshold for candidates to qualify for delegates. Four years early, in 1976, the party had allowed states to add a qualifying threshold of up to 15 percent of the vote in a primary or caucus. Candidates who received less than 15 percent of the vote in those states (and the congressional districts therein) that set thresholds did not qualify for delegates. For 1980, the party made this a requirement. States were mandated to have some threshold, but had some latitude in setting it. Primary states could establish a threshold up to 25 percent, and caucus states could set a threshold as low as 15 percent, but no higher than 20 percent.

On the surface, that looks like an attempt to protect President Carter. Yet, a threshold that low functionally only rewards an incumbent by warding off a minor challenge; nuisance challenges. Such a threshold potentially becomes beneficial to an incumbent in the case of multiple challengers as well. The more candidates who run increases the likelihood of candidates not qualifying for delegates. In the case of one major challenger, the threshold becomes a non-issue. One strong candidate is likely to meet that threshold anyway.

1980 was also the cycle that saw the innovation of the "window rule" in the Democratic nomination process. The intent was geared more toward keeping frontloading at bay and the calendar formation orderly by setting a second Tuesday in March through the second Tuesday in June "window" for states to conduct their primaries and caucuses. While the goal was focused more on state-level actions and protecting exempt Iowa and New Hampshire, a secondary motivation behind the window rule was to tamp down on the resources a prolonged process required the candidates and the party at all levels to expend. This rules change did not clearly benefit Carter in 1980.

Finally, 1980 was also the cycle that witnessed the DNC banning the use of loophole primaries, where delegates are included on the primary ballot and directly elected (as opposed to being selected through caucus/convention processes with candidate input). That cycle stands out as the only exception during the early part of the post-reform era (the first 20 years) when the loophole primary process was permitted. Although insider candidates tend to be the beneficiaries in such systems, their usage at the state level in the early post-reform era was not widespread. It would not have affected things much more than at the margins. Both Carter and Kennedy could lay claim to being insiders in 1980 anyway and went on to basically split those contests.

While the sum total of all of these 1980 cycle Democratic rules moves gives the impression of helping Carter in retrospect, in reality the maneuvering was consistent with those of a party in search of the "ideal" rules in or out of the White House. And during the early post-reform era, the Democrats were out more than they were in.

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Given that context, the focus can shift back to the present and the Republican rules for 2020. FHQ's reaction to the news that the RNC intended to drop the debates committee was less about that than it was to the idea that change was intended to protect the president. In fairness to those reporting on the 2018 spring meeting, there were members of the RNC would provided "protection" as at least part of the rationale for the move.  Randy Evans, the Republican National Committeeman from Georgia, came right out and said, "Obviously this is intended to dissuade a primary challenge to the president."

FHQ will not dispute that. The move certainly continues to send a clear signal that the Republican National Committee remains in lockstep with the president. Reminders of the clarity of that point emerge every time during the Trump era that the RNC has gathered for one of its seasonal meetings.  But whether eliminating this committee protects the president is predicated almost entirely on the premise that President Trump would participate in any hypothetical primary debates. As with many things concerning this president, there is a great deal of uncertainty around that idea. We do not know whether Trump would opt into such a debate. In fact, there is a pretty good argument to be made that he would sit out any such event, not allowing the platform to any would-be challengers.

If one falls on the Trump would not participate in primary debates anyway side of things, then eliminating this primary debates committee does not really accomplish all that much. If anything, it protects the Republican National Committee. It saves this standing committee from the obligation of NOT sanctioning any debates in the event of a challenge to the president.

Imagine a time in 2019 after Republicans have hypothetically lost control of one or both houses of Congress, the Russia investigation has persisted (and Democratic oversight of the administration in that area and others has intensified), and a challenger to Trump's renomination -- let's call him John Kasich -- has emerged. Now imagine that this debates committee still exists, but the president has no interest in debating his hypothetical challenger. That committee is, by rule, supposed to sanction debates with input from the various campaigns. If one campaign wants to debate and another does not, then what is the committee -- the RNC -- to do?

A party in such a position might be inclined to side with the incumbent president in that case and not sanction any debates. But it would have to turn a blind eye to the other campaign(s) and any following/resistance (to the president) both within the RNC and among rank-and-file Republicans to do that. That would be handing to that group the type of structural grievance that Bernie Sanders and his supporters used against the DNC throughout the 2016 process and into the 2020 cycle for that matter.

Instead of going down that road, the RNC opted to get out of the debate-sanctioning business altogether for the time being.¹ Again, that move continues to send a signal that the national party is behind the president, but the elimination of the debates committee is protecting the RNC more than it is the president. It eliminates a potential problem down the road before it materializes. And yes, in fairness, that may never have materialized anyway. But the RNC has that covered now regardless.


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¹ One alternative option the party could have pursued was a minor edit to Rule 10(a)(10). The standing Committee on Presidential Primary Debates could have been left in place but would only be activated in years in which there is no incumbent Republican in the White House (seeking renomination) or little or no competition for the nomination. Of course, those are tricky concepts to define that may end up slippery slopes back to the same sorts of problems the RNC would have in 2020 if the committee had survived. Eliminating the committee with the option of bringing something like it back at the discretion of the RNC chair should conditions change is the cleanest option.

#InvisiblePrimary 2020: Uh oh Biden?

Over at Politico, Charlie Mahtesian has this to say about a prospective Biden candidacy for 2020:

"Joe Biden, who leads the Democratic 2020 presidential field in early polls, has all the markings of a front-runner. He possesses a sterling résumé, access to a donor base, name recognition and eight years of loyal service to a president who’s loved by the party base. There’s just one problem: He’s also a deeply flawed candidate who’s out of step with the mood of his party." [Emphasis is FHQ's]

That is just the opening, but Mahtesian goes on to count off the issues Biden may encounter in the lead up to and during 2020. The usual suspects are in there: age, some pre-#MeToo moment indiscretions that may look different in the current context, and a host of past Senate votes that may again spell trouble now that conditions are different in 2018-20. 

And that all makes sense. Any or all of those things could derail a Biden run before it starts or some time after it is launched. But Mahtesian is potentially overstating the case here by not exactly detailing where it is that Biden could be in trouble. First, he aggregates the potential roadblocks, toggling back and forth between primary phase problems and general election setbacks. This is compounded by imperfect comparisons to 2016 and Hillary Clinton's troubles throughout that cycle (in both phases).

Age, for example, could be a problem for Biden in the primary phase. It is shaping up to be a crowded field with a number of younger alternatives. But millennials did not have trouble supporting an older candidate in 2016. Much of that had to do with the binary choice that most Democratic primary voters and caucusgoers had during the last cycle. Both options were older. That does not appear to be an issue for 2020. And candidate age may not be what is driving the decision-making of younger voters in the Democratic primary electorate. 

During the general election phase, as Mahtesian notes, the age issue would be at least somewhat neutralized compared to another septuagenarian like Trump. 

A similar dynamic exists across election phases when the focus shifts to how pre-#MeToo actions are perceived in a post-#MeToo world. That may affect Biden during a competitive Democratic nomination race, but compared to what? Compared to whom in the Democratic field? Additionally, perception of those actions is something that may resonate with a significant segment of the Democratic primary electorate: women. Female voters may opt for someone other than Biden because of that. They already have more options in 2018 than they did in 2014.

But again, during the general election phase, those perceptions of pre-#MeToo actions look different when compared to Trump, his past behavior, and past and present comments. Does that neutralize the issue? Is it a recipe for potentially depressing turnout to some degree among women (something that is much more likely to disproportionately affect Biden)? 

In those two areas, Biden would potentially suffer more in the nominations phase. However, when Mahtesian shifts gears and begins to focus on Biden's past Senate votes on a number of issues, the exact nature of where -- primary or general -- the pain is felt fades into the ether. Each of those issues -- whether the 2005 bankruptcy bill or the 1994 crime bill -- affects specific constituencies within the Democratic primary electorate. Biden's positions were compared to Clinton's in 2016, but neither stood in the way of the latter claiming the Democratic nomination during the last cycle. Again, however, the field will be different -- more robust -- in 2020 than it was in 2016. Similar positioning by Biden for 2020 may affect his odds of winning the nomination, but, depending on how the large field winnows and who survives, the effects could vary from great to minimal. 

Moreover, the contours of 2020 winnowing extend to the Connor Lamb-like "personally against but politically for" positioning on abortion rights when Mahtesian substitutes Tim Kaine for Hillary Clinton as the point of comparison to Biden. That may or may not be an issue for the former vice president. That depends upon to whom exactly he is compared. Across all of those issues, it may be a problem in the primaries, but less so in the general election. 

Look, based on name recognition alone, Biden is at the top of list of potential 2020 Democratic nominees at the moment. That may change. It may not. Given how relatively early it is in the cycle and that the far too early to be meaningful polls are the most data-rich metric at this time, things are apt to change. Visits will be made to 2018 battlegrounds and 2020 early states. Campaign teams will be built. But any propensity for who is in that pole position to morph hinges on to whom Biden is compared. If one is to carry much of Mahtesian's comparison of between Clinton and Biden to its logical end -- Biden as the 2020 stand-in -- it will not be just Bernie Sanders on the other side this time. There will be others involved who will split the nascent Democratic primary electorate differently than in 2016 and impact the direction of that race through the invisible primary in much different ways. 

That competition may undermine Biden's candidacy. But it may also be that it is too early to cast Biden as this cycle's Jeb Bush. There are warning signs there; similarities, sure. Yet it is not clear just how those "deep flaws" will filter through the patchwork of processes that determine presidential nominees. That gauntlet tends to produce broadly acceptable general election candidates, even ones with flaws. 

But at this stage there are more questions than answers as to how another Biden foray into presidential nomination politics will play out. 

2016 Election Night

11/28/16 3:30pm:
The Michigan results are certified, handing the Great Lakes state to Trump.

11/14/16 5:30pm:
The Trump camp failed to request a recount in New Hampshire before the 5pm deadline. Clinton takes the Granite state's four electoral votes.

11/10/16 7:45pm:
Arizona added to Trump's column.

11/9/16 11:30am:
The AP calls Minnesota for Clinton. That is a narrow hold for Democrats.

11/9/16 2:40am:
Wisconsin puts Trump over the top; another flip for the Republican.

11/9/16 2:15am:
Alaska stays in the Republican column.

11/9/16 2:10am:
And the second congressional district in Nebraska is called for Trump.

11/9/16 2am:
The Maine call is in and we have the second electoral vote split in the Maine/Nebraska era. Maine's second congressional district follows Nebraska's second district in 2008 in going against the statewide result. Clinton wins the state and CD1 while Trump takes CD2.

11/9/16 1:40pm:
Pennsylvania flips to Trump. That 20 electoral votes puts Trump within range of 270 (and with some networks having called Wisconsin for him).

11/9/16 12:25am:
Clinton holds Nevada.

11:35pm:
Trump flips Iowa; something that has been in the cards since at least the conventions. Trump also holds Georgia after a lengthy wait.

11:25pm:
Utah goes for Trump. He will lag behind Romney there, but still take the Beehive state with relative ease.

11:15pm:
North Carolina is a Republican hold for Trump. Oregon is another non-Rust Belt leaner to stay with the Democrats.

11pm:
The next round of closings out west put California, Hawaii and Washington into the Clinton category. Trump takes Idaho. The close night in the Rust Belt extends to the electoral vote count for the time being.

10:55pm:
Florida follows Ohio as a Trump flip. Understatement alert: That is a big one.

10:40pm:
Colorado stays in the blue column. The outside the Rust Belt/midwest leaners are falling into place for Clinton. Those in that region are tighter.

10:25pm:
Ohio goes to Trump and Virginia to Clinton. One of those is bigger symbolically than the other.

10:10pm:
Missouri to Trump and New Mexico to Clinton.

10pm:
Closings in Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, and Utah. No calls. Montana to Trump.

9:30pm:
Arkansas and Louisiana turn red and Connecticut falls into Clinton's column.

9:00pm:
An extended radio hit pulled FHQ away. We will feel in the gaps in time. As for now a big jump for both candidates.

7:30pm:
West Virginia to Trump. North Carolina and Ohio are too close to call as of now.

7:00pm:
Wasting no time, Indiana and Kentucky go Trump and Vermont is added to Clinton's column.

6:00pm:
Let's color this thing in. FHQ will have maps and comments both here and on twitter (@FHQ) all evening.

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Recent Posts:
The Electoral College Map (11/8/16) -- Election Day

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