It’s not enough to simply condemn politics that embrace white supremacy. Instead of “a negative peace, which is the absence of tension,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once admonished, we need “a positive peace, which is the presence of justice.” A fairer caucus process is one critical step toward that positive racial justice.
For example, about 43 percent of Democratic voters are Americans of color. Yet the first two states in the Democratic presidential primary are Iowa and New Hampshire, where only 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively, of residents are Americans of color. Yes, the following states of Nevada, at 26 percent, and South Carolina, at 32 percent, are more representative—but that doesn’t change the fact that the first two and most campaigned-after states are demographically an abysmal reflection of the Democratic Party.
On Tuesday, Senator Kamala Harris suspended her presidential campaign. As I tweeted that day, there are many reasons she dropped out, but the early voting states inarguably presented Harris, like all candidates of color, with an unfair obstacle—a fact Julian Castro has courageously brought to light in recent months.
Failure to address this obstacle risks two consequences—both devastating to America’s future. One, a depressed turnout of young progressives and people of color that is not enough to win the White House, flip the Senate and maintain the House of Representatives in 2020. Two, a victorious Republican Party that even more aggressively pushes its agenda of providing massive tax breaks for billionaires, while cutting food stamps and social benefits like health care, education and housing for middle-class and low-income Americans.
Running for office is hard. It’s trying to manage a dozen things in your control and two dozen things out of your control. But it isn’t the difficulty to which I object. It’s that on the issue of race, candidates of color and voters of color have the additional obstacle of a caucus system that is anemic in its representation of the Democratic base.
But here’s the good news: The Democratic Party’s recent history shows it can fix this issue. Even the current model, as flawed as it is, was established in 1972 as an improvement from the previous model, and stemmed from the party listening to the concerns of Democratic constituents.
With the party in disarray after a violent 1968 Democratic National Convention, Democratic constituents felt locked out of a nomination process that didn’t include them. The party then created the McGovern-Fraser Commission, which produced recommendations to better enfranchise constituents. One notable recommendation: “Overcome the effects of past discrimination by affirmative steps to encourage representation on the National Convention delegation of minority groups, young people and women in reasonable relationship to their presence in the population of the State.”
While pushing for more inclusiveness today may irk the old guard, it is in line with the Democratic Party’s history and has clear benefits. At the very least, the 1972 model quelled violence at future conventions and helped build party unity. Now, the time has come to do better. We must strengthen our ties and continue our unified fight for working families against a billionaire class that wants tax breaks for themselves that harm the economy and force starving Americans further into poverty.
Some object that demanding the earliest caucus states better reflect the Democratic Party’s demographics insinuates that people from Iowa and New Hampshire are racist or incapable of judging based on merit. On the contrary, a more reflective early caucus state admits that all people have subconscious bias. Rather than ignore that reality, let us create a process that better levels the playing field.
Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire take their roles extraordinarily seriously and should be commended for their service to the party and nation. No one can deny this.
The threshold for change cannot be overt or explicit racism before we act. Change must be proactive, to anticipate our future, not reactive, to catch up with the present. Since 1972, America has changed, politics have changed and demographics have changed. Our election process should reflect those developments to ensure fairness throughout.
Others object that if racial demographics were that relevant, how did Barack Obama win the Iowa caucus in 2008 on his historic campaign to the presidency? Notwithstanding that exceptions prove the rule, perhaps it is worth noting the rule—neither Iowa nor New Hampshire has ever elected a nonwhite member to the U.S. House or Senate. Is this due to a lack of qualified candidates of color in those states, or evidence that presidential candidates of color are facing an obstacle in Iowa and New Hampshire that white candidates are not? I argue it is the latter, and history backs it up.
History also shows us that we can improve. In 1972, the Democratic National Committee made changes to its election process and built a stronger party. While it is too late to make adjustments ahead of 2020, we should expect a fairer, more representative model to guide the Democratic Party, and America, in 2024 and beyond.
Qasim Rashid is a human rights lawyer and the 2019 Democratic nominee for Virginia Senate District 28. Follow him on Twitter @QasimRashid.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
