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| Version 5 | Version 6 |
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| There Is a Better Way to Pick a Presidential Nominee | There Is a Better Way to Pick a Presidential Nominee |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| Is the Democratic Party making a mistake by renominating President Biden to face the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in 2024? A nontrivial number of voices in and outside the party seem to think so. | Is the Democratic Party making a mistake by renominating President Biden to face the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in 2024? A nontrivial number of voices in and outside the party seem to think so. |
| But it’s already a mostly moot point. The system Americans use to nominate presidential candidates is not well equipped to make swift strategic adjustments. Voters choose candidates in a sequence of state-level primaries and caucuses. Those contests select delegates and instruct them on how to vote at a nominating convention. It’s an ungainly and convoluted process, and politicians begin positioning themselves a year in advance to succeed in it. | But it’s already a mostly moot point. The system Americans use to nominate presidential candidates is not well equipped to make swift strategic adjustments. Voters choose candidates in a sequence of state-level primaries and caucuses. Those contests select delegates and instruct them on how to vote at a nominating convention. It’s an ungainly and convoluted process, and politicians begin positioning themselves a year in advance to succeed in it. |
| It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be. Political parties in most democracies have the power to choose their leaders without going through a monthslong gantlet. | It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be. Political parties in most democracies have the power to choose their leaders without going through a monthslong gantlet. |
| The best way for a party to choose its leader is for that party to convene, confer and compromise on a candidate who serves its agenda and appeals to voters. The conventions of the mid-20th century, deeply flawed as they were, were designed for that purpose. If those flaws were fixed, they would be far better than what we use today. | The best way for a party to choose its leader is for that party to convene, confer and compromise on a candidate who serves its agenda and appeals to voters. The conventions of the mid-20th century, deeply flawed as they were, were designed for that purpose. If those flaws were fixed, they would be far better than what we use today. |
| Should Mr. Biden run again or step aside? On the one hand, he has stubbornly low approval ratings, and a number of polls show him trailing Mr. Trump. On the other hand, polling a year out is often misleading, and so are job approval ratings in a polarized age. Mr. Biden is old, but so is Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden defeated him last time. | |
| Replacing an incumbent president with another nominee is very rare and probably should be. But a convention could do it if necessary. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson stepped down at the beginning of the year, and Democrats could realistically expect to find a nominee before Election Day. |