A Presidential Primary Would Benefit Democrats & Democracy
Democrats Still Don't Get The Value Of Media Attention
Word on the street is that President Biden will announce that he’s running for re-election for president this week — perhaps as soon as tomorrow.
Conventional wisdom seems to be that that would be great. Here’s Politics Girl, pushing for not having a Democratic side primary:
I totally agree with most of the conclusion: “We need to keep the Senate, and flip the House. We need to fill the states with AGs who believe in the rule of law, and legislators who believe in democracy. We need to pay attention to our school boards.”
Where I disagree is that a Democratic presidential primary would be distracting.
No, it wouldn’t.
A Democratic presidential primary could help drive the national media narrative.
Take a look at the current Republican presidential primary process, and the related news coverage overall recently.
Right now, national news organizations spend an absolutely inordinate amount of time covering Trump and Florida Governor DeSantis and who will win and who is running and who’s doing what and what do the polls say and what’s going to happen? What obnoxious thing did they say today? Where are they? What atrocious Florida law just got passed? Could that happen to the whole US? Can American voters stomach either one of these guys?
Current actual President Joe Biden gets a tiny fraction of all that media focus and punditry and discussion.
If Democrats were also doing a presidential primary, they would drive at least some of the primary news coverage… instead of DeSantis and Trump sucking up all the media oxygen for months at a time. DeSantis and Trump are sucking up tons of free minutes and hours of media coverage. On and on and on and on. And we’re still a year-and-a-half from the election! And DeSantis isn’t even officially running!
That doesn’t even matter. Republicans are getting this free, widespread coverage… and Democrats aren’t.
Functional, sane, middle-of-the-road President Biden doesn’t draw coverage.
It doesn’t matter how many factories and unions he speaks to.
He doesn’t draw it.
During the lead-up to the 2020 presidential primaries, the huge preponderance of Democratic party candidates drew a freaking ton of national news coverage in both 2019 and 2020.
They had big ideas, and we collectively talked about those big ideas. There was future-thinking. There was debate. There was problem-solving. There was controversy.
I saw it from the front seats here in Iowa in 2019 as the Iowa caucuses were the big draw then… for months at a time. There were around 23 or so Democratic presidential candidates for quite a while, and every single one of them drew media coverage at one moment or another. Some more than others.
They got all kinds of coverage, and they got it for months. We (the public) collectively talked about what we could do or see in the future the candidates imagined for months. The candidates collectively drove a big chunk of the national narrative.
Media coverage matters. The national media narrative has been shown to generally lead public opinion. What gets covered helps to drive our future opinion and our future direction.
In 2019, you could go to a Democratic presidential primary event anywhere in Iowa (and likely New Hampshire too) and see any number of national media reporters in the house. I met a few folks I regularly saw on cable news. That’s how it works.
Everyone was on the hunt for the next big thing some presidential candidate would say. News networks love stuff like that. Plus, since there were a whole pile of candidates, we had all kinds of opportunities for Democrats to make the national news. And the local news too! Not just in Iowa — but local station news, and local network news. Both are also always looking for content. Right now they’re covering Trump and DeSantis very, very often.
If Democrats were having a presidential primary for 2024, we’d have a similar opportunity to get coverage — and this time in all new lead primary states which would also make news. Because this time the Democratic primary would be in new locations for the first time in 50 years. Not Iowa! That’s news too!
All of that fuss would be good for Democrats, and good for democracy. One of the challenges of a strengthening authoritarian movement is that it offers primarily fear and abyss, and tends to disempower and isolate voters. A big Democratic party push from presidential candidates for a different future would help to disarm and offer alternatives to the authoritarian push.
But we’re not doing that.
It’s okay that we aren’t, because the Democratic party does indeed need to show unity. If the current president chooses to run for re-election, that can be helpful on its own for a variety of reasons… especially in a normal political cycle. Hopefully it turns out to be okay even in this abnormal political cycle.
Nothing is predictable in this political climate, though. We’ve got an increasingly animated set of far-right extremists at every level pushing politics into places it hasn’t been. No one knows what kind of a mess this country will be in or not by the 2024 election.
Assuming President Biden chooses to run again, the entire Democratic establishment will get behind him. It should. That’s how it should work.
Shift the Country supports a coalition of the majority of voters including Democrats, independents, and ex-Republicans — we’ll support Presiden Biden’s run as well.
It’s just worth saying today, before it’s official that President Biden is running, that a Democratic presidential primary could be really, really helpful in helping to drive that national narrative. In charting potential futures. In doing big imagining. It’s not something we should dismiss.
In fact, we should find other ways to drive the national narrative… especially so that Republican far-right extremism isn’t the only thing that gets national coverage for minutes, hours, and days at a time.
Heavy coverage of authoritarian actions also disempowers, disengages, and disheartens voters. It’s meant to cause shock and awe.
Part of why we need to drive the national narrative is to counter that authoritarian tendency and effect.
And we can.
We have other options to drive the narrative, to help shift voters’ minds and hearts, and to get more voters engaged than ever before. We can collectively help Democrats do more of all of that. Shift the Country is set up to help with that.
It’s time to think differently about coverage and narrative… and who’s getting attention.
We can collectively drive a moral shift. We can raise a ruckus.
We can collectively champion a different future than the Republican-inspired dystopian hellscape increasingly unfolding before us with bans on abortion, anti-everyone-but-white-straight-men intolerance, book bans, history erasure, the defunding of public schools, rampant availabiity of automatic weapons, increased random gun violence, and so on. The lists just keep going.
Shift the Country is set up to help us all drive attention and engagement in different ways. We can evolve political pressure and persuasion. Join us. Let’s get into options, and let’s get started working them. President Biden is going to need some major reinforcement; we can help bring it.
We can start now. We all need it.
Shift the Country events this week:
WEDNESDAY — Coalition-Building Group. Apr 26, 2023 2:00 PM CDT.
THURSDAY — Volunteer Meeting: Ramping Shift Up. Apr 27, 2023 2:00 PM CDT.
THURSDAY — It’s Time to Raise a Ruckus – Let's Go. Apr 27, 2023 7:00 PM CDT.
FRIDAY — Using Vision, Values, & Moral Courage to Fight the Good Fights (Thing 4). Apr 28, 2023 11:00 AM CDT.
FRIDAY — Strengthening & Support Session. Apr 28, 2023 2:00 PM CDT.
SUNDAY — A Social. Apr 30, 2023 6:00 PM CDT.
Couldn't agree with you more, Vanessa. The media are dwelling on the latest trump/DeSantis whatever. I firmly believe the media played a HUGE role in why trump was elected in 2016 because of how they covered his every breath. It fed his ego--even the supposedly "bad press." It was fodder for his acolytes. And it took all the air out of the room, so to speak, for coverage of anything else. The juggernaut paused for a few seconds when he lost the election in 2020. And it looked it may have run its course after January 6 happened. But when there were NO consequences for January 6 (still hoping...still waiting...) it fired right back up. DeSantis seemed to think he could horn in, but I think his 15 minutes of fame would have expired--except trump has figured out that blasting DeSantis benefits him. At.least.that's.the.story.the.media.push. We have GOT to change the narrative. We need to make sure there is buzz for Biden--and all the downballot Democrats who run. Buzz for the Democrats is essential for Biden to stand a chance of winning against a Republican Party that has demonstrated it will stoop to stealing the election if that's what it takes--unless people who vote for Democrats turn out in large enough numbers to overwhelm the Republicans' efforts. Please note I said "people who vote for Democrats" because I honestly believe a lot of fed up Republicans are tired of the lies and shenanigans of the Republican Party and will be willing to vote for Democrats--if the message gets out and it is welcoming. The only way we will Shift the Country is to find a way to embrace disgruntled Republicans. And that's going to take a whole lot of ruckus!