There’s no perfect way to pick a presidential nominee. But the Democratic Party’s process is awful. First they let unrepresentative Iowa and New Hampshire spend months agonizing over their choices, an unfair privilege that forces candidates to lavish attention on two predominantly white states and court voters practically one at a time. Then they let a group of states big enough to deliver a knockout punch vote all at once, with almost no time to weigh whatever choices are still left when their turn comes up.

So after months of debates, a gazillion polls, and endless politicking in the early states, Democrats abruptly narrowed their field to two candidates on Tuesday. With most results from the 14 states that voted on Super Tuesday contests counted, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden are now the only two candidates left with a viable pathway to a delegate majority at the convention in Milwaukee.

The primaries are too slow, then too fast. Too deep, then too shallow. Too small, then too big.


Consider that in Massachusetts, voters had less than 48 hours to make a fully informed choice. Two candidates, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, had dropped out just before the vote. Supporters of those candidates had a few days to make up their minds. (Another problem caused by the calendar: Thousands of Massachusetts residents had already cast early ballots for those two candidates, a waste of votes that could have been avoided if there had been more time between the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday.)

In the end, Massachusetts went for Biden, who beat both second-place Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who finished third. Yet just a few days before, the polls showed Biden not standing a chance in the Bay State.


Indeed, Joe Biden did extraordinarily well everywhere on Super Tuesday, riding momentum from his landslide victory in South Carolina and the endorsements he garnered from Klobuchar and Buttigieg. Maybe his support was always there, and will endure as the campaign turns to Michigan and Missouri. Or maybe Tuesday’s results were really a snapshot in time, based on the burst of short-term momentum for Biden that would have faded.

If that sounds like a criticism of Biden, it’s not. Arguably, it’s the former vice president who has the most legitimate gripe with the primary process. The results from South Carolina and Super Tuesday make clear that Biden had a much more racially diverse coalition than most of his competitors. The idea that the candidate with the highest levels of support from Black voters was almost finished off by New Hampshire and Iowa ought to raise some serious alarms within the Democratic Party. It was Biden’s political connections in high places as the former VP and a longtime senator that saved him; a future candidate with wide appeal might not be so lucky.

Or consider that last week, when Sanders appeared to be the front-runner, that conventional wisdom was based largely on the results of a caucus — not a primary — in Nevada. Caucuses are quirky, party-run events that require voters to show up at a particular time and engage in a faux deliberation over the candidates. The Democrats needed to get rid of caucuses yesterday; at a bare minimum, they should move them out of the early stages of the delegate-selection calendar so their results don’t warp the process.


It goes without saying that Biden and Sanders are both far preferable to President Trump. And as flawed as the Democratic process is, the GOP’s primary rules are still worse: The party allows winner-take-all primaries, while the Democrats at least attempt to ensure that candidates’ representation at the convention is proportional to the number of votes they received in the primaries.

But before the next election, the Democrats need a serious overhaul that goes beyond a few tweaks to the rules. Get rid of caucuses; put more representative states at the beginning of the line; leave a more reasonable time period between primaries; prevent so many states from voting on the same day that a well-timed hot streak cannot decide the nomination.

Democratic voters — no matter which candidate they supported — should demand more from the party. The exact scenario that played out this year may never repeat itself. But to ensure that its process is equitable to all racial groups, and fair to all voters, the party needs to modernize its antiquated system.

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