We know that the path to the presidency is not based on who has the most money and can produce the slickest ads (ask Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney how that worked out).
We know that the path to the presidency also isn’t based on who has the most institutional support (again, ask Hillary, Jeb, Al Gore, John Kerry, Bob Dole and the rest how that turned out).
The path to the presidency is a cult of personality. It’s being a rock star in a world of annoying accountants. Donald Trump, love him or hate him, is a rock star. Barack Obama was a rock star. Bill Clinton was a rock star (back then). Compared to Al Gore at least, George W. Bush was a rock star. Their personalities, their image, their auras resonated so strongly with enough voters that it propelled them each to the White House even though none of them were the most qualified candidates or best potential presidents.
And yet we insist on using a primary process that is not designed to find the rock star. It’s designed to find the person who appeals most to the party’s faithful and institutions. It’s a process that allows Joe Biden to pretend to be cogent and then replaces him with Kamala Harris without any sort of competition. It’s a process that panics when Bernie Sanders surges and then tries to ensure that the party choice comes out ahead instead.
To be clear, I’m not proposing we eliminate the primary process or even take away the role of the party in it. I’m proposing we find the rock star candidate long before that.
Imagine Battle of the Network Stars but for Democratic candidates for president. The goal isn’t to see who writes the best white papers (no one cares) or who can raise the most money (it matters, but much less than everyone thinks) or who can corral the most endorsements (again, pretty much no one cares). The goal is to just see who intrinsically resonates with real people in real settings.
What if you took a series of activities across the country — real events or settings that already exist so it’s genuine — and put the different candidates in them just to see how people react?
In the actual primary, the events are staged and the candidates are just speaking to the party faithful. That clearly doesn’t translate to the rest of the country. In a world where there are now far more independents (43% of voters) than Democrats or Republicans (28% each), just relying on your reception at a State Fair or the Jefferson Jackson Dinner is not a good barometer for winning the general election.
Let’s see how the candidates interact with real people, how people respond to them and whether their message resonates. Are people excited about them or skeptical? Are they energized or bored? Is what they’re saying what actually matters to the people or are they just listing policies and lines that are poll tested but fall flat in the real world? Do they have a proactive vision for America or are they just complaining about Trump?
It doesn’t need to be particularly complicated or expensive. You’d pick a series of locations and activities in different cities and towns and give the candidates the chance to participate at different times. Set up events at malls, in train stations, on college campuses. Let people know that Governor X or Senator Y will be there. See if anyone cares. See who shows up. See how they react.
You can put the candidates in the announcers booth to do an inning of radio on a baseball game. You can have them mill around the tailgate barbecue before an SEC football game. Send them to Comic Con in plain clothes. You can put them on a variety of high profile podcasts before a large live audience from SmartLess to Rogan, Good Hang to Dax Shepard… or throw them into a Hot Ones interview, answering real questions while eating spicy wings on screen. They could go on Shark Tank and make a pitch for America (it doesn’t even have to be the actual Shark Tank; a YouTube version would work fine). They can be invited to speak at a series of churches across different denominations. They can hang out in front of the tree at Rockefeller Center. Stick them in a Waffle House at midnight to host a roundtable. If they can keep a bunch of truckers, college kids and cops engaged over hash browns, they might actually be worth electing.
The point is to see how they perform and how people react. See how Pete does at a Texas high school football game compared to Gavin compared to JB compared to Shapiro compared to Gretchen. See how they each play in black or Pentecostal church. See if anyone shows up at the mall once they learn that one of them is there. The point is to not pre-ordain anything. It’s to honestly learn how they each come off so that before we enter the highly scripted primary process itself, we know which candidates (if any) resonate with real voters.
Obviously, a candidate can lose the real people sweepstakes and still run in the primary. This isn’t a requirement to run. And yes, some candidates will be too afraid to participate in these events because they’re worried it will expose their weaknesses. But if they’re not resonating, they won’t win anyway.
Those who participate and do well will generate a lot of traction and attention, so the candidates with the most confidence and most mojo will likely jump in. And those who refuse are sending a message that there’s something lacking about them.
Will the DNC hate this? Probably. It points out their failures. But with an approve/disapprove of 33-63 in the latest surveys and after hemorrhaging 2.1 million members over the past four years, why would any rational Democrat want to solely entrust the party with the next presidential election?
The next president will be a rock star — or at least a rock star among the world of politicians running for office. And the one after that. And the one after that. Resonating with the people is what it takes and the DNC’s process often produces the opposite of that.
2026 is the 250th anniversary of America, the most democratic and creative country to ever exist. Let’s use that creativity to modernize the selection process and meet the demands of our time.
The status quo is not working. It’s time for something new.
The parties need to implement party run Regional Presidential Primaries with Mobile Voting. Allow Independents to vote. Totally within their control. No new laws required.
https://open.substack.com/pub/independentsforamerica/p/regional-presidential-primaries-and?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1csnak
Donald Trump was the wrong answer to the right question. However, neither political party even heard the question. Trump heard the question, but didn’t understand it let alone have an answer, so in his well-practiced way, he just bluffed it. In 2020 it was clear that Trump had no answer, so the voters gave Biden a chance. It was clear once he was in office that he still had not heard the question, so the voters returned to Trump in 2024.
The question the voters have been asking of the political system is:
Why on earth do you keep making us choose between such shitty candidates?
It’s a good question. Within about five minutes I think I could come up with a hundred or more individuals I would choose to be president over Joe Biden. If we still had phonebooks, I could come up with an endless number of people I would choose over Trump. So why can’t the parties come up with better candidates? I have given this question a lot of thought and have come to the following conclusion.
For more than 100 years we have effectively given guaranteed and exclusive control of the selection of the only two candidates for president that matter. We know that monopolies (or duopolies) tend to have adverse consequences. In this system the two parties are only competing against each other. They don’t need the best candidate they only have to be perceived as better than the other candidate
If you then consider the vast sums of money spent by the parties for marketing and promotion with a marketing budget that rivals most large consumer businesses. And then realize that it is just as effective to disparage their opponent as it is to tout the accomplishments of their own candidate, that’s exactly what they do. And, beyond just disparaging their opponent in marketing, they also actively obstruct their opponents within government every chance they get to prevent them from gaining and accomplishments. Thus, establishing a negative feedback loop that obstructs government, obstructs accomplishments and increases more negative campaigning. It is no wonder why the populace is so sharply divided. Both parties spend more money and more effort disparaging the other party than they do governing.
I am proposing that we eliminate the role of the parties in the primary process. I think we should open the primaries to all qualified candidates that meet the requirements to be on the ballot without any regard for their party affiliation.
George Washington warned the nation about the negative effects of political factions, nevertheless, political parties formed. For about 100 years the parties would form, typically around some major issue of the time, but then fade away when that particular issue was resolved. In the last 50 or more years, the parties have enacted more and more hurdles to prevent third parties from gaining any traction. I see no way to improve the functioning of the government without drastic reduction of the power of the parties.