Vice Presdient Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party tried to convince Americans that “democracy was on the ballot” last week. Their appeals largely fell on deaf ears.
The conclusion most analysts take from that is that Americans don’t care about process, they only care about their narrow self-interest and bread-and-butter issues.
We disagree. It’s more accurate and honest to point out that the Democratic Party has no credibility when it comes to democracy and process.
Consider: They shielded Joe Biden from scrutiny over his mental acuity for months, then ignored Rep. Dean Philips (D-Minn.) and Marianne Williamson, who said “shielding Joe Biden will be a disaster.” They scrapped all primary debates.
The Florida Democratic Party canceled its primary altogether in order to keep Phillips from competing. The Wisconsin Democratic Party tried a similar tactic, only to be forced by the courts to change course. The Democratic National Committee created a “war room” to discredit and derail Robert Kennedy Jr.’s primary challenge. In the end, they succeeded in driving him out of the party.
Meanwhile, in states from Colorado to Michigan, Democratic politicians and lawyers sought to bar Trump from ballots under a novel theory that the 14th Amendment prevented him from running for office because of his “aid and comfort” to an “insurrection or rebellion.”
Once Operation Bubble Wrap could no longer be sustained to protect the fragile Biden, they cast him aside, pivoted and anointed Harris. Having dropped out of the 2020 primary before a single vote was cast because her polling was so bad, Harris had the distinction of never having received a single vote for president.
All this in the name of “saving democracy.”
The Democratic Party’s hostility toward open process was not limited to the presidential race, either. They actively campaigned against ballot referenda in Arizona, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Nevada and South Dakota that would have reformed the system and given independent voters the right to participate in primary elections and given all voters the right to choose from among all the candidates.
And 2024 was not an aberration. The Democratic Party has for years championed efforts to defeat primary election reform across the country. In states where voters overcame their obstructionism, like California and Washington, they advocate for a return to an exclusionary system.
This is not a “Democrats bad, Republicans good” matter. Ever since primary elections became commonly used in the 1960s, both the Democratic and Republican Parties have related to our primary elections as theirs to do with as they wish. They manipulate them and use them to divide, obstruct and exclude. They abide by them when it serves their purpose, then reject them when it doesn’t. That may serve the purpose of some party leaders and special interests, but it isn’t serving the American people.
But it is a bigger problem for the Democratic Party because they claim to be the party concerned with the democratic rights of ordinary Americans. They must face the hypocrisy of wrapping themselves in the mythology of defending democracy while engaged in such a widespread form of voter suppression.
Leaders like Nancy Pelosi are now publicly lamenting the lack of an open process because they lost the election. But they have yet to examine the depths of their opposition to sharing power with regular people.
The way we conduct primary elections in our country is outdated, exclusionary and leads to a Congress and state legislatures that represent smaller and smaller bands of partisans, not the broad electorate. Fifty-one percent of Americans now identify as independents — their voting rights mean nothing to the leaders of either party. But they mean a hell of a lot to an increasing number of Americans across the political spectrum.
Don’t be fooled. Americans care deeply about democracy and about process. But they won’t be lectured to by hypocrites. Let’s hope the Democratic Party takes a good long look at its lack of credibility on democracy as Democrats process the results of this election and plot a path forward.
John Opdycke and Jeremy Gruber are the president and senior vice president of Open Primaries, a national election reform organization.
