Carolina Bound

Last month, as you will recall, I wrote a letter to former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley asking him to consider running for President in 2024 if President Biden does not.  After nearly a month, I still haven't gotten a reply.  But the political news from the past week has all but made that moot.  Because if there was any doubt about Biden's plans for 2024, that doubt was swiftly quashed with Biden's successful effort to get the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to change the order of the schedule of the presidential primaries and caucuses.

President Biden requested that South Carolina be the first state to hold a primary for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination on February 3, followed by the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucus three days later.  Georgia would hold its primary on February 13, and Michigan would go next on February 27.  All of these dates are Tuesdays except for South Carolina's date, which is on a Saturday; Saturday primaries have been the standard there.  The DNC voted on the change and passed it overwhelmingly. 

Oh, Joe's running, all right.

Biden argues that South Carolina is more demographically representative of the party, with its large black population, and of the country, and thus it makes sense that South Carolina Democrats set the pace with their choice.  (The South Carolina Democratic Party is majority-black.)  It's also no coincidence that Biden won the 2020 South Carolina primary after biting the big one in the previous three contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.  I'm sure that South Carolina's Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn is pleased.  I'm sure that DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, another South Carolinian, is also pleased.

The change poses a great deal of problems, though.  Here's the first one.  No one is going to object to stopping Iowa from going first after it botched the reporting of the results of the 2020 caucus to the point where it hardly mattered that Pete Buttigieg won it.  But refusing to let New Hampshire go first runs afoul of a New Hampshire state law that demands that its presidential primary be first, with no ifs, ands or buts about it.  That could be a sticky wicket.  Second, South Carolina is such a strongly Republican state that it becomes meaningless for Democrats in the general election, as it hasn't voted Democratic for President since 1976.  Third, primaries are run by states, not parties, so South Carolina's Republican governor and Republican legislature would have to sign off on any change - and unless the GOP moves up the South Carolina primary to first-in-the-nation status to help former South Carolina Republican governor Nikki Haley, another possible 2024 presidential candidate, it won't do so (especially when Donald Trump wouldn't want competition from Haley, his former U.N ambassador).  Fourth, despite the fact  that New Hampshire's primary would take place three days after South Carolina's, so much focus would be on the Palmetto State, with its larger area and population and its bigger media market, that it would give the retail politics of New Hampshire, where presidential candidates can meet voters face to face and accumulate supporters one small living room or country inn at a time, short shrift.  The greater expanse of land and people in South Carolina prevents that sort of thing there.  That would mean a tougher time for dark-horse candidates like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton from breaking through.  Joe Biden himself was a dark horse in both his 1988 and 2008 presidential campaigns, but he never made it to New Hampshire in either try and came in fifth there on his third try in 2020, and, again, it's no coincidence that he doesn't want New Hampshire to go before South Carolina. 

The fifth problem is that Democratic presidential hopefuls who have the best interests of black voters at heart but don't necessarily connect well with black voters have no chance of getting momentum out of South Carolina.  After his difficulties with blacks in his hometown of Baltimore over policing when he was mayor, which crippled his 2016 presidential run, I doubt that Martin O'Malley could make a go of it in South Carolina even if he runs in 2028.  Pete Buttigieg would also have problems with black voters in South Carolina after his own policing issues from when he was mayor of South Bend, Indiana.  Both O'Malley and Buttigieg also suffer from being the type of  presidential candidates who look like Presidents out of central casting and appeal to white yuppies, much like Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, or the horrible John Edwards, and black voters have historically resisted such candidates.   

The 2028 presidential hopeful who benefits most from this primary schedule change is Kamala Harris, simply by being black and having a good rapport with the black voters who form the Democratic Party's backbone.  Remember also that Jim Clyburn said she should be Biden's heir apparent.  Aside form the obvious fact that Democratic presidential heirs apparent (Walter Mondale, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton) never pan out, Kamala Harris is extremely unpopular and has never been tested in a presidential campaign.  (Her 2020 run imploded before anyone even cast a ballot or participated in a caucus head count.)  The Democratic Party doesn't just need a candidate who can play well among South Carolina Democrats in 2028; it needs a candidate who can pay well nationally.  Who knows - maybe the 2028 primary will actually produce someone like that.

As for Martin O'Malley . . . I'd better get used to the idea that he will likely never be President, just as we'll likely never send humans to Mars or build a high-speed passenger rail network at home.  O'Malley once said that he believed the the U.S. was capable of doing both at a forum during his 2016 presidential campaign, but his Kennedyesque call to greatness obviously impressed no one in the audience.

Oh yeah, the forum where O'Malley spoke was in South Carolina.