PITTSBURGH — “There should have been a primary.”
Jo Jo Burgess was a delegate at the Democratic National Committee and a full-throated supporter of former Vice President Kamala Harris in the general election. He’s the mayor of Washington, Pennsylvania, a Democrat-leaning town in the middle of very Republican Washington County, in southwestern Pennsylvania.
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When asked why Democrats are suffering so much in his part of the state, Burgess quickly jumped to the undemocratic way Harris took the nomination last summer.
More than 53,000 registered Democrats live in Washington County, but Harris got fewer than 45,000 votes there in 2024. Where were all those Democrats on Election Day?
“We lost the trust of them in the way that we nominated Kamala,” Burgess argued in an interview with the Washington Examiner at a Texas Roadhouse bar on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. “We, as the Democratic Party, basically … did things that made our people question us and show that we weren’t totally on the up and up.”
That is, party leadership basically skipped the primary process by running a very elderly former President Joe Biden, then pushing him out and replacing him with Harris. It was a totally undemocratic process, and establishment liberals thought it was brilliant.
“A primary is a good opportunity for the left to ask Democratic Party politicians to make electorally toxic public commitments … Alternatively, if the candidates refuse to make these commitments, it gives them something to complain about,” wrote Matthew Yglesias, a liberal blogger who puts a lot of weight on pragmatism. “By skipping the primary, Democrats have gotten themselves a nominee that rank-and-file Democrats are enthusiastic about without her needing to do that. This is good for the cause of beating Trump, which is good for the cause of progressive policy …”
The technocratic liberal mindset has never blended well with democracy because its operating premise is that the smart people already know the right answer.
“We know what works,” former President Barack Obama used to proclaim, impatiently. “We know what we have to do. We’ve just got to put aside the stale and outmoded debates.”
Letting the rank-and-file debate who to nominate? Stale and outmoded!
Handpicking Harris, outside of a contentious primary, was “smart,” declared historian Alan Lichtman. Picking Harris without democracy maintained the incumbent advantage because there was “no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.”
Burgess holds the opposite view. He argued that denying the voters a nomination contest harmed Harris.
“Basically, there was no primary for all people to decide who we wanted to run … I can show you tons of messages I had from friends of mine that were like, ‘Why are we forcing this lady down our throat?'” he said.
“I tell you what happens if you have a primary,” Burgess continued, “You may have a different result come November of that year, because there’s more of a way to get on board … At least you show the fairness in the process.”
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Burgess is right. When more people have a say in the process, you may make a better choice (that is, pick a better candidate than Harris), but also you get the participants more on board. Supporters of other candidates might have accepted Harris more if they felt their guy had had a fair chance.
This cuts against the technocratic, central-planning, and hyperpragmatic mindset. It’s almost a conservative insight. One wonders if the Democrats, with their declared love of democracy, can figure it out soon.