Dear Democrats: Invite Everyone to the Party!

David Loughnot
3 min readFeb 15, 2019

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The 2020 Democratic primary is shaping up to be easily the deepest primary in the history of the party. Although it comes with some potential problems, this is a good thing. It’s going to hopefully push new and exciting ideas to the front of the party and reinvigorate the base. But a problem from 2016 is already rearing it’s head for the 2020 general election: independent and third party candidates and voters. How big of a problem is it? Potentially fatal, especially with the calamitous potential candidacy of Howard Schultz. In 2016, over five percent of voters cast their ballots for a third party candidate. This was a higher level than even in 2000 (less than four percent). Voters who vote outside the two main parties are wasting their vote, making them the equivalent of non-voters, except they actually go to the polls. And just like non-voters who don’t go to the polls, they’re a high-value target in the 2020 race. To win the 2020 election, the Democratic Party will need to limit third party candidacies and, to the extent we can’t do that, we need to encourage all voters to support the Democratic nominee.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

How do we limit third party candidacies? We know that candidates shouldn’t run third party campaigns because of the spoiler effect (described further below), but they still do. Well, not all of them do. Ideally, they would all follow the lead of Bernie Sanders and run for the nomination of one of the two main parties. And The Democrats should actively support and encourage that by inviting them to participate in the Democratic primary.

Similarly, we know voters should never vote for third parties, at least not in Presidential elections. While things may differ for smaller elections (YAY for the growth of ranked choice voting!), several features of our system ensure that it’s impossible for a third party to wage a winning campaign for President. That sucks and we need to fix it, but the current reality is that voting for any candidate other than the Democratic or Republican candidate is the equivalent of not voting. But people still vote for third party candidates for a myriad of reasons, including feeling like their views aren’t given a voice in either of the main parties. We want to give these voters as many reasons as possible to vote for the Democratic candidate.

Very important distinction here. And seriously, fuck Schultz.

I’m proposing the Democratic Party invite all independents and even third party candidates and voters into the Democratic primary. The main terms of this proposal would be:

  1. Make the primary rules fair and transparent in advance and ensure they’re available to all candidates and voters.
  2. Allow any candidate to run, as long as they commit to supporting the eventual Democratic nominee regardless of who it is.
  3. Make it as easy as possible for people to vote in the primaries regardless of party registration.

The main gist is to make the entire process more fair, inclusive, and… democratic. The political moment is perfect for this. With Republicans attacking democracy and voting rights nationwide and likely to have no primary of their own to steal media attention, the Democrats can use the 2020 primary to demonstrate their commitment to democracy and encourage independents and third party voters to participate and support the eventual nominee. The size and openness of the primary would also make any third party/independent candidates look foolish and/or selfish by passing up a chance to participate, thus hopefully blunting their appeal. If done well, it would help frame the general election as a fight for democratic values and position the Democratic nominee as the champion for those values. All of this is to say that throwing open the doors to the Democratic primary is not just the right thing to do, it’s also the smart thing to do.

More to come on this topic with arguments as to the merit and specific ideas/proposals. Follow me to know when they drop.

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David Loughnot

Attorney. Activist. Trying to use my privilege in solidarity. Curious about how things work and how they could work better.