Bring back back rooms
Aparty’s political primary is not directly the public’s business. It’s the private party’s business. Only after the nominations are made does the matter become entirely the voters’ business—or the electors’, more precisely, considering that voters have been overridden twice already this century.
In the old days, party bosses were sometimes known to assemble in what were called smoke-filled rooms. They would emerge with negotiated dictates of the party’s nominees for president and vice president.
It had to have been better than enduring those debates last week.
If we must live still by the archaic concept of an electoral college, then why can’t we still live by the party bosses’ back rooms?
Currently, a Democratic field of minor-league candidates blunders along a campaign trail, steadily reducing itself to marginalization that likely will re-elect the behavioral atrocity that is Donald Trump.
A presidential race is not about one man against his negatives. It’s what they call a binary choice. In this case, it could emerge as one hideous man with a decent economy against an incompetent challenger.
Please permit me, then, this brief fantasy of an emergency back-room session of six credible modern Democratic party bosses of acceptable racial, ethnic and gender diversity.
One would have to be Barack Obama and another Bill Clinton.
Party Boss One: “We’re here because it’s a desperate time. Donald Trump is a dangerous man, but we can’t beat a good economy with a lame candidate. And that first set of debates was disastrous.
“So, what I’m proposing is an intervention. We go to the party with an emergency rule canceling all the primaries and caucuses and providing for the Democratic National Committee to appoint us a special nominating committee with binding authority.”
Party Boss Two: “There’s a reason Joe Biden lost twice before—to Mike Dukakis the first time, even. Kamala Harris is running on busing and can’t keep her health-care position straight. Bernie Sanders is running to the left of Denmark. Elizabeth Warren thinks she has to match Bernie rant-for-rant. Pete Buttigieg is the smartest, except maybe for Warren, but he’s too young, too inexperienced, too elitist, all-Harvard and no black vote. The least problem he’s got is that he’s gay.
“The rest of ’em? Hopeless.” Party Boss Three: “So, whom would we nominate? I think it needs to be somebody running, since we’re coming in late after the contest is afoot. It needs to be someone who can beat Trump, meaning someone capable of doing three things: feed the liberal base, appeal to working people in the upper Midwest, and debate that clown into submission with issue command, message discipline, deflection of attack and articulate passion.”
Party Boss Four: “You just described something only one of them is conceivably up to.”
Party Boss Five: “Buttigieg?” Party Boss Four: “No. Warren.” Party Boss Six: “OK, let’s say Warren. But she is a candidate of the upscale white, high-academic liberal. I think she could go to Pennsylvania and make the case to the working class about a rigged economy. But we’re also toast without high energy among minority voters. Our winners in this room generated it. Dukakis didn’t. Kerry didn’t. And here we come with another brainy white candidate from Massachusetts.”
Party Boss One: “So run her with Kamala Harris.”
Party Boss Two: “Could we please elect one woman before we run two at a time? Anyway, Harris has taken on all that 1970s busing weight.”
Party Boss Three: “Well, for that matter, Warren has taken on all that weight of holding up her hand for killing private health insurance.”
Party Boss Four: “I’ve got that figured out. She says she was merely staking out a negotiating position for the congressional battle ahead. She says you never start with a compromised position.”
Party Boss Five: “That’s actually not terrible. Do you think she’d say it?”
Party Boss Six: “I suspect she would if we told her she had to say it if she wanted to be our nominee.”
Party Boss One: “So Warren and who? It sounds like we need a man who can energize black votes.”
Party Boss Two: “Can Biden be vice president again, after doing it for eight years?”
Party Boss Three, a constitutional lawyer: “The Constitution is silent on that subject. So yes.”
Party Boss Four: “Would Joe do it?” Party Boss Five: “All we have to do is tell him we need him. He loves that stuff. He’d go in the history books. He’d eat that up.”
Party Boss One: “I always thought running mates should be bold, unconventional choices. I told Mondale in ’84 to pick Lee Iacocca. Biden as veep for life would be bold and unconventional, for sure.”
Party Boss Two: “But do we really think that’s the best we can do— Warren-Biden?”
Party Boss Three: “Hush. The decision is made. We just do the best we can.”