Democrats meeting now after Biden backed push to drastically change 2024 process
David M. Drucker
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The Democratic Party at the direction of President Joe Biden is in the final stages of making a series of changes that could have major ramifications on the 2024 presidential race.
The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee was meeting in open session Friday to finalize Biden’s decision to crown South Carolina as the first state to hold a primary. The move would see Iowa caucuses bumped from its pole position on the party’s presidential nominating calendar, while also demoting New Hampshire as the host of the first primary.
Also at the president’s urging, the approximately 30-member panel was expected to vote in favor of making battlegrounds Michigan and Georgia early primary states. The changes would be an upending of decades of tradition elating some activists but disappointing others.
Democrats from Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t happy, with some vowing to ignore the DNC’s new order of voting in the 2024 presidential primaries. “Two very large, very expensive states are being added to the mix. This will surely favor front-runners and billionaire vanity candidates,” complained Scott Brennan, a DNC delegate from Iowa and member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, according to the Daily Mail.
“We will always hold the first-in-the-nation primary, and this status is independent of the president’s proposal or any political organization,” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said in a statement. Under New Hampshire law, the state must hold the first traditional primary contest of the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. The New Hampshire secretary of state is directed to alter the date accordingly from election to election.
Democrats are broadly supportive of the changes set to be implemented by the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee Friday and Saturday. Party activists and insiders had complained in recent years that Iowa and New Hampshire did not adequately represent the Democratic Party’s base of ethnically and racially diverse voters, nor did those two states sufficiently reflect the party’s base of urban and suburban voters.
With South Carolina voting first in the process, the influence of black voters would be elevated. With the addition of Michigan and Georgia, nonwhite Democrats living in urban and suburban environs will have more of a say in picking the Democratic Party’s standard bearer. To protect these changes, the DNC is discussing plans to levy severe penalties on state parties that skip the line and maintain the old calendar.
Meanwhile, Biden’s direct involvement suggests the president is keen on running for reelection in 2024.
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In 2020, his campaign for the Democratic nomination was hanging by a thread before being rescued by black voters participating in the South Carolina primary. By empowering the Palmetto State to vote first in the next primary, Biden is setting himself up for a big victory right out of the gate, diminishing the prospects of any possible challengers.