You have questions about the future of the democratic ticket, and Civics 101's favorite explainer, Dan Cassino, has the answers. What happens to Biden's fundraising money? What will the delegates at the DNC do? Will there be any legal challenges? And finally, what does it mean for a party when they nominate a candidate different than the one that won the primary?
Dan Cassino is a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Archival: Just a stunning announcement from President Joe Biden that he intends to step down as a candidate in the 2024 election.
Archival: After the president announced that he was going to step aside in this race. Was who exactly was going to step in, Rachel? The president, in a tweet just announcing that he is offering his full support and endorsement for Kamala Harris to be the nominee of the party.
Nick Capodice: You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: And today we [00:00:30] are talking about, well, this last weekend, what are the systems and processes and the historical precedents for when a presidential candidate steps down a scant few months before the election.
Hannah McCarthy: And just for a super quick catch up in case anyone threw their phone into the ocean on Sunday. Uh, Nick. What happened?
Dan Cassino: So yesterday afternoon, uh, President Biden announced that he would not be running for reelection. He would not seek reelection.
Nick Capodice: This is Dan Cassino, professor of political science [00:01:00] at Fairleigh Dickinson University and guest on our show. Maybe 19 times over, I called Dan Monday, July 22nd. And because the world of politics moves so fast these days, we are recording these words on Tuesday, July 23rd.
Dan Cassino: And shortly afterwards he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination for president. We then saw a tidal wave of endorsements for Kamala Harris, and it looks like today, a day later, looks like it's [00:01:30] almost sewn up. In addition to all the elected officials who have, you know, either endorsed her or at least not endorsed anyone else. We've also seen that none of the other people who are thought to be the major challengers for the Democratic nomination have thrown their hat in the ring. In fact, several of them have actually endorsed Kamala Harris. So if they were going to have some sort of open contest, it's not clear who that contest would be between because nobody seems to want to run. Add on top of that is that Kamala Harris seems to have had the best fundraising day in the history of the Democratic Party over the last [00:02:00] 24 hours, which are kind of just getting over now.
Archival: Jeff, what did we learn in this first full day of the Harris campaign?
Archival: Well, we learned that she can raise a lot of money in a very short amount of time.
Nick Capodice: Quick update to that. At the end of that first 24 hours, the total was $81 million raised for Kamala Harris's campaign, which is the most money ever raised by a presidential campaign in 24 hours, not to mention another $90 million [00:02:30] in donations to Actblue, which is a website for donations to members of the Democratic Party. Up and down the ballot. Okay.
Hannah McCarthy: And is this in addition to the millions of dollars that the Biden-Harris campaign had already raised, the the money that's in the quote unquote, war chest?
Nick Capodice: Yeah. And I'm going to get more into the war chest a little bit later. Uh, but prior to Sunday's announcement, the Biden-Harris campaign had already raised $96 million.
Hannah McCarthy: That is, it's just remarkable [00:03:00] that they had raised $96 million. And then in one day they raised like, I know we're talking about millions of dollars, so it's whatever another 81, like almost as much. They practically doubled. It's just that's really interesting. Okay. So I want to know the history of this, Nick and the systems of delegates and the convention and the nomination. But first, what does this mean? Like what does this tell us about the parties? If a candidate is chosen after the primary,
Dan Cassino: This sort of [00:03:30]thing is very much what we call the party deciding. So this is actually one of the big debates in political science is do parties still really matter at all? And, you know, we've got all these primary elections. So if it's just primary elections, it doesn't matter what the party wants. The party can't dictate things to the to the electorate. And we've seen some cases, the electorate dictating things to the party.
Hannah McCarthy: I imagine you're going to come back to it a few times. Primaries are relatively new. They started in the late 1960s to prevent backroom [00:04:00] deals and allow the people, not the party, ostensibly, to choose a candidate. Did Dan have an example of a time that the party and the people split?
Nick Capodice: He sure did.
Dan Cassino: So our best example of this is in 2016, when the Republican electorate very much wanted Donald Trump. The leaders in the Republican Party did not want Donald Trump. But it didn't matter. The party wasn't able to coalesce. Now, on the flip side of that, we have what happened with Joe Biden in 2020. Joe Biden was [00:04:30] basically nobody's first choice in the 2020 Democratic nomination race, but he was pretty much everyone's second or third choice, thought to be a pretty safe choice. And what happened was over basically one weekend around the South Carolina primary, the entire Democratic Party got behind him and said, this is our guy, pressured some other candidates to drop out and endorse him, and he became the guy almost overnight. So the party, at least the Democratic Party, has still shown some capacity to unite and to push their candidate forward. And that's basically what we saw over the last 24 hours. [00:05:00]
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, so now I just have to know, uh, has this happened before? Has a party's candidate ever switched so close to the election?
Nick Capodice: Not like this exactly. We are in rather uncharted waters here, but there are two examples in modern history.
Dan Cassino: So we all talk about 1960 with Richard Nixon or even 68. 68 is actually a similar election to this, in that the sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, who was like a term and a half into because he took over after [00:05:30] Kennedy was shot, decided not to run for reelection. Now, Johnson decided not to run for reelection very early on. It was, in fact, after the New Hampshire primary, where he didn't lose. He actually won the New Hampshire primary, but only won it by 10 or 15 points. And he said, oh my God, if I'm only winning New Hampshire by 10 or 15 points as an incumbent president, I'm out.
Archival: I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
Nick Capodice: Now the 1968 Democratic National Convention [00:06:00] was bonkers.
Archival: That's Wisconsin is not recognized for that purpose. I did not listen to Wisconsin.
Archival: Is the call of the role of the state or balloting on candidates?
Nick Capodice: We've talked about it in several episodes, but the important thing for today is that Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race in March of 1968. Now, if we're going to contrast this to President Biden, this is four months earlier than he did [00:06:30] the same. However, we do have an example that's just a little bit closer to what happened this week.
Dan Cassino: The closest we have to this is in 1972. So this is Richard Nixon running for reelection, and he's running against George McGovern. And George McGovern, uh, he's well behind in all the polling, right? Nobody thinks he has much of a chance of winning. And so he decides he's going to at the convention, he's got to pick his VP candidate so he doesn't vet any of these VP candidates beforehand. He just going, well, these are [00:07:00] all senators or governors. They're all people he trusts, all people that are well known. He's not worried about them. So it goes in the last minute. He picks Thomas Eagleton, right. Eagleton center. Okay, this guy is going to be fine. We're not worried about him. And they ask Eagleton. Oh, is there anything we need to know? Any reason we shouldn't be picking you? He says no, no, no, it's all fine. There's nothing you need to worry about. And of course, we find out over the course of the next two weeks is not only had Eagleton suffer from depression, which in 1972 was considered to be somewhat disqualifying, but he'd also had electroshock [00:07:30] treatment to treat his depression.
Hannah McCarthy: The fact that someone had suffered from depression and was treated for it was enough to make a candidate unelectable. Yeah, it.
Nick Capodice: Was like this was before the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was made. But the book by Ken Kesey and the very successful Broadway play based on it painted a very dark picture of electroshock therapy
Dan Cassino: And worse it just kind of dribbled out over the course of weeks. Now, how did it dribble out? Well, the [00:08:00] there's a strong suspicion that the Nixon campaign actually was doing some of their dirty tricks. The Nixon campaign had a different term for it that we will not say on the air.
Archival: Rat fink, rat fink. Yay yay.
Dan Cassino: Nixon campaign dirty tricks that they might have been leaking this out. And so Eagleton first is denying it, then saying, well, it's not that bad ahead depression. But nothing else happened. And then said, well, I didn't get electroshock, but then admitted they did. And then after two weeks, two weeks after the convention, he was forced to drop out. So even after he'd been formally nominated, he was forced [00:08:30] to drop out and was replaced by the new Guy McGovern pick, Sergeant Shriver, who is up there with the name that sounds most like a G.I. Joe character in American political history. And the DNC just said, okay, cool. Sergeant Shriver's our guy. We're going for it.
Hannah McCarthy: And McGovern lost in a landslide, didn't he?
Nick Capodice: Oh he did did, uh, one of the biggest landslides in US history. McGovern won one state and one state only. Not even his home state, the grand state of Massachusetts.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, that's my home state.
Dan Cassino: So that's similar in that it's [00:09:00] a last minute pick and it's actually worse than the snare we have right now for the Democrats in that the convention had already happened. And the difference there is the convention was much earlier. So this year the Democrats have gotten themselves into a spot of trouble because they pushed their convention back. Now, if they had good reason to push their convention back, the reason they pushed the convention back, the convention this year is going to be what it's going to be August 19th through 22nd. The reason they pushed it back is because of the Olympics. You know how like if you're [00:09:30] watching a show on Fox, it always gets pushed back because the World Series, it's the same thing. Like nobody's going to pay attention to the DNC as long as the Olympics are on, because I've got, I don't know, judo or the four by 100 to watch. So they said, we're going to do it after that. And again, for political perspective, this makes some sense because there's generally a convention bounce right after convention you do a little better. And so if I'm going to get a bounce, I'd rather have a bounce closer to the election day rather than after the election day. So Democrats push their convention all [00:10:00] the way back. So they weren't going to officially nominate someone until August 21st. The problem with that is that a bunch of states have deadlines for who's going to be on the ballot in the beginning of August.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, the Democratic National Convention is in Chicago. And as Dan said, it starts on August 19th. Can we just do a little refresher on conventions and delegates and how it all works?
Dan Cassino: All right, so let's talk a little about delegates of the convention. So this is a lot like the Electoral College. [00:10:30] And remember the Electoral College we vote for president. You are not really voting for the president. You are voting for a list of people that you've never heard of, many of whom are local used car dealers, and they are people who are pledged to vote for the candidate. You say. So if you go into the election booth and you vote, you know, it was 1980 and darn it, you're voting for Ronald Reagan. You're not actually voting for Ronald Reagan. Depending on which state you're in, you're voting for a list of delegates of people who pledge that electoral college they will vote for Ronald Reagan. All right. At the convention, Republican [00:11:00] National Convention, we are doing approximately the same thing. It'll say Joe Biden or Donald Trump on the ballot in the primary, but you're not actually voting for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. You're actually voting for a list of names of people who pledge that they will vote for that candidate at the convention on the first ballot. So hasn't happened in a long time, But in theory, if nobody gets a majority on that first ballot, then you have a second ballot. You vote again. And in most states after the first [00:11:30] ballot, those delegates can vote for whoever the heck they want again. Hasn't happened a long time. Political observers are desperate for it to happen just once in their lifetimes. They just really want to see this, and right now they're actually a little upset.
Hannah McCarthy: When was the last time that we had a contested convention?
Nick Capodice: Not for a long time. Like we sort of had 1 in 1984, but not really. Walter Mondale was a few dozen delegates short before the convention, but by the first vote he had the clear majority. [00:12:00] But the longest and most brutal convention was the DNC in 1924, where John Davis was finally, after days picked as a nominee.
Hannah McCarthy: How many ballots did it take? 103 whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, and he lost. He lost to Coolidge real bad.
Hannah McCarthy: So how many delegates are going to be at the upcoming DNC in August?
Nick Capodice: 4600.
Hannah McCarthy: And some of them are super delegates, right. Can we just break that down real quick?
Nick Capodice: Absolutely.
Dan Cassino: So of those 4600 [00:12:30] delegates, about 3900 delegates are pledged and 700 are we call unpledged or super delegates. So 3900 delegates are people who have picked in primaries or by some other nominating process, and they're pledged to vote for one candidate or the other. 700 of them are not pledged to vote for anybody. They're mostly elected officials who kind of get an automatic seat. Right. So Bill Clinton is a super delegate, right? Because he doesn't have to run for any particular state. He's Bill Clinton. We're just going to let him do it. The Republicans have this, too, but in smaller numbers, right. Republican, the RNC are going to have about 2300 delegates, and only about 100 of them are [00:13:00] superdelegates. So on the first ballot, 3900 delegates after 2016, those superdelegates don't get to vote in the first round.
Hannah McCarthy: Why don't the superdelegates get to vote in the first round?
Nick Capodice: Because it can really throw a wrench into the works. For example, in 2016, the Democratic Party had put their support behind Hillary Clinton like, hey, we're doing this. And they were terrified of what would happen if the superdelegates who hadn't pledged their support to her picked Bernie Sanders. So the Democratic Party changed the rules to prevent [00:13:30] that.
Hannah McCarthy: But this year, all of those pledged delegates vowed to cast their vote for Joe Biden.
Nick Capodice: They did.
Dan Cassino: Now, do those delegates actually have to vote for Joe Biden because they've already been pledged for Joe Biden? But Joe Biden is not running now. So what is supposed to happen in the when this happens? The Electoral College, almost every time we get at least one person who says, I'm going to vote for somebody else, we don't normally get that in the parties. The reason you don't get that is because, well, how do you pick the people who are going to be your delegates? And the answer is you pick the most [00:14:00] loyal party members, you have the people who are going to follow orders. So you're not going to pick someone who's going to be faithless. You pick the most loyal guy you've got. The people are most excited about the candidate, and so they generally do what they're supposed to do. Also, it's exciting to say, I'm going to cast our votes for this guy, the next president of United States, not say, I'm going to cast my vote for this other guy over here who's not going to win. Nobody wants that. You don't get any. Cheers. That guy doesn't have any balloons at all. Why would you do that?
Nick Capodice: And last night, Monday, the 22nd, Kamala Harris [00:14:30] announced she had secured more than enough delegates to win the nomination on first vote at the convention.
Hannah McCarthy: Uh, can I can I just read to you something from the New York Times that, like, describes how Kamala Harris secured those delegates? Yeah, because it's, like, really interesting. Miss Harris's most immediate task had been to secure the support of enough Democratic delegates to lock down the nomination. A Google form asking delegates to endorse her had circulated among those key Democrats who include party [00:15:00] officials, lawmakers, local activists and volunteers.
Nick Capodice: This is like, are you going to nominate me? Yes. No, maybe is what it sounds like. Well, that Google form worked. She is the presumptive nominee. And all those political scientists who want to see a knock down, drag out, contested convention are probably going to have to wait.
Hannah McCarthy: This brings me to a talking point I have heard in the past 48 hours, what are the various state rules when it comes to who the delegates vote for, or who gets [00:15:30] put on the ballot? Will there be any legal challenges?
Nick Capodice: There might be some legal challenges have been threatened, and I'm going to get into all that right after the break.
Hannah McCarthy: But before that break, Civics 101 is listener supported and we don't even have a Google form. Make a gift at our website civics101podcast.org and we will keep making episodes with a 48 hour turnaround.
Nick Capodice: Sometimes
Hannah McCarthy: Which is fast because we have a small team.
Nick Capodice: I know it is fast sometimes. Not all the time.
Hannah McCarthy: We're [00:16:00] back. We're talking about President Joe Biden stepping out of the race and endorsing Kamala Harris as the potential Democratic nominee for the 2024 election. And, Nick, you were going to talk about how this shakes out on a state by state level.
Nick Capodice: I was indeed speaker of the House Mike Johnson said on Monday that he foresees legal difficulties to the candidate change in.
Archival: Accordance to some of these states [00:16:30] rules. For a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they don't like the candidate any longer. That's not how this is supposed to work. So I think they would run into some legal impediments in at least a few of these jurisdictions.
Dan Cassino: There's only five states and maybe six depending. I read the law where those delegates look like they're still going to have to vote for Joe Biden.
Nick Capodice: Again. This is Dan Cassino, professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Dan Cassino: Right. Where the law in the state says the delegates have to vote for the person who won the primary. There's 14 [00:17:00] states that say they have to do it, but nine of those 14 states, there's a little waiver says if the person dies or drops out, you don't have to vote for them. It's only in five states, and maybe six that the state law says you still have to vote for the person basically, no matter what. Uh, that's Virginia, Tennessee, Oregon, New Mexico, Indiana, right? You have to vote for that person on least the first ballot. So unless they change the law, which is still possible in some of these states, I suppose, uh, those delegates would still have to vote for Joe Biden, even though Kamala Harris [00:17:30] is the presumptive nominee. The one maybe is Florida because Florida says they have to vote. I'm going to quote here, uh, in a way that reasonably reflects the results of the primary. Does that mean that they have to vote for Biden even though he's dropping out? The answer is, I don't know, and neither do you. Do we know if he's ever found out? Uh, Connecticut actually also says they have to vote for Joe Biden unless Joe Biden sends a note home.
Hannah McCarthy: Sends a note home? Like mom says, I can go on this field trip kind of thing. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: And [00:18:00] part of the reason that Dan says this litigation likely won't go anywhere is because while Kamala Harris has pledged delegates, she is not yet the nominee.
Dan Cassino: Someone becomes the nominee of the party after the convention, right? We do the roll call and then the person on the floor gavels in and says, we are officially announcing that this person is the winner. Up until then, the Democrats and Republicans don't have a nominee. So there are people. This is mostly the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a right wing think tank, and the Heritage Foundation has already said [00:18:30] we're going to file lawsuits. We think there's 31 states where there could be some sort of, you know, some sort of thing where we could challenge it. And maybe the judge will throw Kamala Harris off the ballot or say, Joe Biden has to be on the ballot. And then they narrow it down and say, well, okay, really realistically, there's like three that are swing states that we're going to spend. They promise to spend millions of dollars challenging any change. Now note they announce they're going to do this well before the shift. So they were basically assuming that any shift from [00:19:00] Joe Biden was going to happen after the convention. So if it's after the convention, yeah, changing the changing it is tough because remember, these states have these deadlines in the middle of August. So if you have a deadline in August and you're changing your thing after that, that could run afoul of state laws. However, the DNC didn't happen yet. They didn't officially nominate anybody yet. And so Joe Biden was not the official nominee. And so there's really not much of a place, uh, to have anyone challenge saying, well, Kamala Harris can't be on there because in theory, [00:19:30] the DNC can nominate whoever they want. It's according to their own rules.
Hannah McCarthy: What about on the ballot, though? Is this late enough in the process that some states could argue that there is not enough time to put a new candidate on the paper or on the screen?
Nick Capodice: That is a very good question, Hannah, and it is one that was answered quite recently by the Supreme Court.
Archival: The Colorado Supreme Court held that President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from serving as president under section three of the 14th Amendment. [00:20:00] The Colorado Supreme Court's decision is wrong...
Dan Cassino: You might have remembered this decision from Colorado, where we had a judge in Colorado say former President Trump can't appear on the ballot in Colorado because he is an insurrectionist. Well, the US Supreme Court took that up and said, you can't just have a difference in state rules that say that a major party candidates on the ballot in some states and not on the ballot in others, that would be awful. That would be a derogation of democracy. So there's not really there's not really a legal leg to stand on here. Uh, however, this is politically there's a play [00:20:30] here, which is to basically claim that Kamala Harris is an illegitimate candidate. Uh, you've already seen former President Trump saying this on his social medias, saying that, you know, she's illegitimate. They shouldn't be allowed to switch her out. And so to make the case, we're suing to keep her off the ballot. Illegitimate also for the Heritage Foundation. This is nice for fundraising, right? We are doing our best to do this. So it's a political move. It's a fundraising move. I don't think anyone takes this seriously as a legal move.
Hannah McCarthy: All right. I want to go back to the quote unquote war chest for a second. This is another thing [00:21:00] that has come up. The Republican chairman of the Federal Elections Commission, Sean Cooksey, has stated that Harris does not have access to the money raised for the Biden-Harris campaign. So how does this work?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, I asked Dan, uh, you know, for folks out there who don't know how campaign contributions work, can you just break it down for them? And here's what he said.
Dan Cassino: Oh, uh, you know who else doesn't know? The FEC doesn't know exactly how this is supposed to work. Um, nobody knows how this is supposed to work. Imagine. [00:21:30] This is not imagine that Joe Biden drops out and instead he endorses, I don't know, uh, Hunter Biden. He says, no, Hunter Biden's going to take over for me. All right. Seems unlikely, but let's roll with it. Right at that point, he wants to turn over his campaign chest to Hunter Biden. Can he do that? And the answer is we don't know because you can't just give $100 million to another candidate. There are strict limits on how much one campaign can give another campaign. This is why we have leadership PACs, right? Because you can't give that much near the campaign. Are you allowed [00:22:00] to do it? We don't know. I guess he could try and transfer the money to the DNC, and the DNC could try and transfer it over. It'd be tricky. And I wouldn't to worry too much about the FEC, because the FEC is basically toothless Because you have to have Democrats and Republicans agree for the FTC to do anything, and Democrats and Republicans agree about as much as cats and dogs do. So this is not going to be a big issue. The fact that Harris was already on the ticket, right. This is the Biden Harris reelection fund, and Harris is now taking over. So it's the Harris whoever reelection [00:22:30] fund. Now, there is some other weirdness, though. So if this is the same campaign because basically saying this is just a continuation, the Biden campaign, that's why I get to keep the money. So let's suppose I am someone who already maxed out my contributions to the Biden campaign. Can I now give more money? Because now it's the Harris campaign. And the answer is probably not, because if I could, that would mean it's actually a different campaign. And they're saying it's the same campaign. So you'd probably have to tell those donors who already gave the $1,200 per cycle, okay, never mind. Just go give [00:23:00] to a superPAC now.
Nick Capodice: I also was curious about what would happen if, after the convention, say, Joe Biden didn't just step out of the race, but resigned entirely? So I asked Dan, would this in effect make Kamala Harris the president.
Dan Cassino: Not in effect? Whoa, whoa, whoa, we worked this out in the 19th century, my man. Like, no, he is he she would absolutely be the president. I don't want to have any of this stuff about Whigs fighting over whether the vice president who takes over is actually [00:23:30] president, or just assumes the powers of the president. We worked all this out. Thank you. We don't have to have this fight. Um, I think that is probably spectacularly unlikely. Um, this is actually an attack we're getting we're seeing, uh, from the Republican Party saying that, well, if Joe Biden is not fit to run for office, he's not fit to be in office. So therefore he should resign. And, you know, it's certainly up to the president if he resigns. And, of course, we do have a way to deal with this, because we have in the past had Woodrow Wilson. We've [00:24:00] had people who were disabled and should not have been in office and weren't going to resign. And we have a technique to deal with this. And technique is the 25th amendment. The vice president of the cabinet can say, this president is disabled, and they send it to Congress for ratification. And while they're waiting, you know, the vice president assumes the office of the presidency is a Democratic cabinet. And Kamala Harris can say that Joe Biden is not fit to be president. No.
Hannah McCarthy: Last thing, Nick, our show is [00:24:30] about democracy. It's about how our democracy works. Primaries are democratic. Does Dan think that this situation where a candidate will be on the ballot, who is different than the one that the people voted for in the primaries is, for lack of a better word, fair?
Nick Capodice: Yes and no.
Dan Cassino: I think it's absolutely the case that party leaders and party donors, for that matter, [00:25:00] picking a candidate after the primary is over is very much less small d Democratic than having an open, fair, competitive primary. However, we didn't really have an open, fair, competitive primary, right? It's not like Joe Biden was running against six other Democrats. And this hard fought race with all these debates and such, and Joe Biden wound up winning. If almost every state you went, if you were a Democrat, you vote in the primary, you got to vote for Joe Biden or maybe nobody.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, in New Hampshire, Joe Biden wasn't even on the ballot in [00:25:30] the primary due to the DNC not recognizing New Hampshire's demand that their primary be held before South Carolina's.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. And even then, he won with 70% of the vote as a write in.
Dan Cassino: on the Republican side, you had more of a democratic process. And we can imagine if the, you know, Donald Trump won the primaries. It was hard fought, right? Nikki Haley was staying in there till the end. And if the Republican National Committee then said, you know what, forget it. We're getting rid of Donald Trump. We're going to put Nikki Haley in there. There'd be a lot of Trump voters who would say, hey, that's not right. [00:26:00] You know, we voted for this person. We had a choice. This is not Democratic. And I think they'd have a stronger point. The fact that you didn't really have a democratic, small d democratic process on the Democratic side convention this year says, yeah, it's not very democratic, but neither was the primary in this case.
Hannah McCarthy: One of the most interesting things to me working on this show is, you know, we get to hear how things change in the US over the years, how the parties change with the populace. The parties stand for one thing, then they stand for another. Then [00:26:30] there are these periods where the parties are criticized for being too similar, and then there are other periods, like right now, when they're criticized for being too polarized.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. And what Dan told me was so important about this moment, it's not like what one party or another stands for. It's about the power that political parties, all political parties, have right now.
Dan Cassino: So we always talk about the American political parties in decline. And it's absolutely true that American political parties don't have nearly the power that they used to. What this shows [00:27:00] is that at least on at least on the Democratic side, the party can still enforce its will. The party can still say, we're doing it. This is happening. And as much as we talk about Democrats being disarray, this is Democrats in full array. Right. And in last 4 to 5 years, honestly, Democrats have shown a greater capacity to get in line than the Republican Party under Donald Trump has. So this is the party saying we still matter and elite cues still matter. And honestly, this does make it easier for voters. Right. So [00:27:30] what happened with Kamala Harris, especially with Joe Biden endorsing Kamala Harris, is what we call a Schelling point.
Hannah McCarthy: A Schelling point. What is a Schelling point?
Nick Capodice: A Schelling point. It's named after Thomas Schelling. He was a political economist. He wrote about how when you have a bunch of people trying to coordinate on something like trying to pick something and And communication is, as it so often is, an utter mess. If in this situation you have a focal point, spoken or unspoken, everybody will gravitate [00:28:00] and agree with that point immediately. His famous example is he asked a group of students to name a point in New York City, any point at all for a large group to meet, and the vast majority, said Grand Central Station without even thinking about it. And then everybody else in the group immediately agreed.
Dan Cassino: If one person says we're doing this, especially early on, then crowds start to form up around that, everyone goes, oh, okay, that's what we're doing. We go there, we go there, we go there, and everyone clusters around that. One solution. If you didn't have that endorsement [00:28:30] in the beginning, it's possible you wouldn't have had an obvious Schelling point. You would have had other people making endorsements and going all over the place. So even if the parties don't have we call hard power, they're not spending all the money. They're not in the back rooms picking who the candidates are outside of new Jersey. We know they still do in new Jersey, but even if they're not doing that, they still have the soft power to dictate the terms. And that's what we're seeing here, is that the Democrats seem by saying, hey, we picked Kamala Harris. The voters went, oh, oh, that's what we're doing. Oh, okay. Cool. Right. Maybe you would have heard Pete Buttigieg, right. I [00:29:00] can't spell his name, but maybe you can. And maybe you would prefer that. But he's not one of the options presented to you. So you go. Okay, well, I guess we're going with Kamala Harris then. So the party still matter. But they have had to adapt.
Nick Capodice: Well, that is the best analysis we could come up with for what happened this weekend. And I guess that's the way it is. The way it was, [00:29:30] the way it shall be.This episode was made by me Nick Capodice with Hannah McCarthy. Christina Phillips is our senior producer and Rebecca Lavoie, our executive producer. Huge shout out to Dan. Big shout out to Dan. He helps us out a lot. But man, this was a tight pickle. And the guy broke it down and nobody.Breaks.It down.Like. Dan Cassino. Nobody breaks it down better. Music in this episode. By Epidemic Sound. Asura, and that man who makes a war rage in my chest Chris [00:30:00] Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.