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The Democratic Party recently voted to reorder its 2024 presidential primary, moving Iowa aside in favor of the more diverse South Carolina in the leadoff spot. As Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) said, “This is a significant effort to make the presidential primary nominating process more reflective of the diversity of this country and to have issues that will determine the outcome of the November election part of the early process.”
Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman agrees with some who argue the change favors a potential President Biden presidential run. Pakman also believes replacing Iowa makes complete sense.
Democrats have decided to change the order of the Democratic primaries in 2024 in a way that I have been advocating for for years, but it has now become controversial because it also seems to be designed to help Joe Biden. And some are saying this is not about doing what’s right, it’s about doing what’s good for Joe Biden.
So let’s discuss it. For a very long time now, the Democratic primaries start with caucuses in Iowa. This has been controversial for a couple of different reasons. One is the caucus process is not, ‘you show up, you spend a minute filling out your ballot, and you leave.’ The caucus process is sort of, ‘people gather at tables, and they talk about candidates and support moves around and consolidates one way or the other.’ So it’s a longer process and that can be a disincentive for people to participate.
It also has been sort of controversial because Iowa isn’t really representative of anything about the Democratic electorate nationally. Iowa is like 90% white even though the country is nowhere near 90% white at this point in time. Iowa is disproportionately rural, whereas Democrats in particular — but many Americans, tens of millions of Americans — actually live in urban and suburban settings, which are very much lacking in Iowa. And generally speaking, in terms of you can say income or education or whatever, Iowa is not really representative of anything. So why does Iowa get this privileged spot at the beginning of the primary process? That’s been one of the criticisms and I think that that is a fair criticism.
A lot of different solutions have been proposed. This includes randomly changing the order of primaries every election cycle so that every state gets an opportunity to go first or sort of early, or specifically selecting some states that are more representative of the Democratic electorate nationally, and saying they get to go first. Well, the decision that Democrats have made for 2024 is that South Carolina is going to get to go first.
