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On the night in January that Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, conceded the New Hampshire primary to Donald Trump, she made a prophecy: “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election.” I quoted her prediction in the Lexington column that week, and then wrote, “She may be right in theory. But she is wrong in practice that there is some coherent entity called a ‘party’ capable of such a rational calculation.”
Well, I got that one wrong, at least partly. I stand by the argument I went on to make: that as formal structures the parties have become passive, twiddling their thumbs until whoever wins the primaries tells them what to think and do. But it turns out that at least the Democrats still have an informal mechanism, a pop-up smoke-filled room, capable of achieving the sort of forced retirement Ms Haley had in mind. As I write in Lexington this week, Ms Harris is the first Democratic nominee since Hubert Humphrey to gain the nomination without a single primary vote.
When Humphrey managed that feat, at the Democrats’ convention in Chicago in 1968, it was so divisive that the party put in place rules meant to stop it from ever happening again. (Those rules, which required candidates to accumulate delegates in the primaries, are a major reason the parties have grown so weak.) But as the Democrats prepare to convene again in Chicago, they are not complaining about the high-handed meddling by party eminences. Our forecast model now suggests Vice-President Kamala Harris is
neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump. Ms Haley’s prophecy may come true. I for one wish the Republicans had created a pop-up smoke-filled room of their own: a Haley-Harris race would have been a thing to behold.
If Mr Trump does lose again, the experience of 2024, I hope, will prompt both parties to consider how to give a little more authority back to the sorts of seasoned pros who once had a heavy hand in choosing candidates. These days, leaving the selection of nominees to the activists who dominate primaries is not producing candidates who command broad majorities.
Or do you think I’m wrong about this, too? Please let me know at jbennet@economist.com.
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