Gather round, kids, and listen to Unca Donkey. Once upon a time, political conventions weren’t soporific four-day wastes of time that made you want to stick a fork in your cerebrum (or at least wish they’d outsource the coverage to the FOX NASCAR team and the Sports Junkies). Once, childs, the convention was where they decided WHO WOULD BE THE CANDIDATE.
This process was controlled by political machines, union leaders, big businessmen, etc etc etc. and was not particularly democratic. But because the parties were stronger and more organized, you could sort of follow the chain up and see that the people who represent the people who represent the people who represent the people who represent the people who represent you were making the decision, so in a way – a very very VERY distant way – you sort of had some say-so over the process. This is the sort of thing that led to the thousand-plus Democratic delegates going through 103 ballots in 1924 to pick their candidate – and prompted one wag to suggest that they change the symbol of the party from one donkey to 1,096 jackasses.
By the 1960s, some states had primaries, some had caucuses, some had state conventions – a real mixed bag. Flash forward to 1968, when the assassination of putative front-runner Bobby Kennedy left the Democrats casting about for a candidate in the midst of a riot and a media circus. In a fit of exhaustion, the party handed the delegate-selection process over to a small group of activists for 1972 – who proceeded to require open selection of delegates, set minimum standards of participation by women, youth and minorities, and put themselves in charge of authenticating the credentials of delegates. Flash forward to 1972, where George McGovern – who chaired the commission above – wins the first prominent Iowa caucus, racks up a lot of winner-take-all delegates, and lands in a convention where stalwart union-ethnic types get decertified in favor of six hippies from Madison, etc etc. Practical upshot: McGovern ends up accepting the nomination at jackass o’clock in the morning, has a debacle with his VP selection, and goes on to valiantly lose 49 states.
This is when a couple of things happened on the D’s side. For one, they introduced proportional allocation of delegates, so one candidate who polled 30% couldn’t swipe an entire state’s delegation. And just in case that wasn’t enough to forestall insurgent candidates (like Ted Kennedy in 1980, challenging a sitting President), they created the superdelegate for 1984: a ranking Party figure, usually a member of Congress or governor or something like that, who would remain unselected until the convention, to insure that the right person got the nod instead of somebody who would lead the Dems to another Cannae.
So that’s how we got the process we have now. It didn’t entirely forestall the possibility of an insurgent – Carter got the nod in 1976. Nor did it ensure a competitive candidate – Mondale was the establishment choice in 1984 and managed to repeat McGovern’s frying-pan-in-the-balls feat of losing 49 states. The Democratic process that bedevils us now is a direct linear result of a fiasco 40 years ago.
As for the Republicans, they never had anything that would lead to those kinds of changes in the process. No superdelegates, mostly winner-take-all allocation of delegates. Maybe if the Reagan insurgency had succeeded in 1976, things would be different, but if Goldwater ’64 didn’t change things, I can’t imagine what would have. Besides, the thing that has always bedeviled the GOP is the whole idea of “it’s his turn.” Which is what put Bush on the ticket in 1988, Dole on the ticket in 1996, and arguably, McCain in 2004. McCain has also made out like a bandit with winner-take-all delegates; until Super Tuesday, I don’t think he broke 40% in any primary or caucus. This is obviously part and parcel of having 4 or 5 candidates in the race, but the fact remains that through no fault of their own, the Republicans have inadvertently handed their top spot to a character who is 72 years old and odious to the majority of the party’s activist base.
If you don’t think there are going to be MASSIVE changes to the GOP selection process for 2012…I’ll take that bet.
So practical upshot: nobody designed the system to work like this. Nobody really intended for anything to work out like this; it evolved organically and just sort of flopped up on the beach. And because the mechanism of delegate selection is ultimately controlled at the state level, it’s going to take a hundred changes to make a difference in every state and both parties.