While it is mainly a legal term, “precedent” has an important role in general society as well. There are many things we accept as “normal behavior” that someone at some point was the first to do. The idea for giving gifts at Christmas comes from the Biblical story about the Magi, and their famous donations of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to a newborn baby established the accepted pattern for later Christians to spend billions of dollars on gifts every year that are as useless as those first presents.
Sometimes, precedent can change long-standing traditions and customes. If it weren’t for Pete Gogolak in the 1960’s, we would still have straight-on kickers (probably offensive linemen) booting field goals and extra points in the NFL. Thomas Edison was the first to use “hello” to answer the telephone. The inventor of the device, Alexander Graham Bell, had previously established the use of “ahoy” when picking up the receiver. Perhaps some day, my father will get credit for setting the precedent of answering the phone with “speak”.
Following this week’s Democratic National Convention, a new political precedent was set: A major political party can change its nominee after the primary is completed, if that candidate is lagging in the polls. The last nominating contest on the Democratic side was on June 8th. After it concluded, President Joe Biden had 3,905 delegates committed to him out of the 3,949 delegates available. The eventual nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris had ZERO delegates committed to her–as she never actually ran for President in the Democratic primary.
Until 1972, such a turnabout would have been nothing new–as Democrats didn’t adopt a primary system to determine delegations for all 50-states until that year. When people point to Robert Kennedy entering the 1968 race late, and winning the California primary in June, that was one of just 12-states on the Democratic side that held an open primary that year. There was not yet a precedent set that the voters in all states would be the one to decide who their nominee would be.
I did a bit of a deep dive into that 1972 primary and Democratic convention to see how the precedents of the party’s nomination process were then set. George McGovern secured the most committed delegates through the open voting process, but it turns out that did not guarantee him the nomination. There was a considerable “stop McGovern” contingent that showed up in Miami that July convinced that while McGovern got a majority of the primary votes, his delegate count did not represent the “true wishes” of the majority of Democratic voters. It did not help that polls showed McGovern trailing President Richard Nixon in the polls.
It was none other than future President Jimmy Carter–governor of Georgia at the time–that was leading the “stop McGovern” effort at the convention. His group sought to throw out the California delegation because that state’s party had done a “winner take all” primary instead of a proportional distribution of delegates. Illinois’ entire delegation was denied credentials to attend and vote because Chicago Mayor Richard Daley convinced the state party to put the names of the delegates themselves on the primary ballot–instead of the actual presidential candidates–and then campaigned openly for his political machine members to make up the entire delegation.
In the end, McGovern was the Democratic nominee, and the precedent of allowing the voters themselves to make the selection was set. And in November, the polls proved to be correct, as he only won the state of Massachusetts in an historic landslide loss to Nixon. As an aside, it was McGovern himself that chaired a party committee to draft the rules for the 1972 primary process after the disaster that was the 1968 primary and convention in Chicago. Then, it was Jimmy Carter that benefitted from that process to win an underdog effort against five other candidates that took their campaigns all the way to the convention in 1976.
Speaking of Jimmy Carter, he was involved in what was considered at the time a serious breach of precedent, as Senator Ted Kennedy launched an inter-party primary challenge against an incumbent President. You really couldn’t blame Kennedy though. When he got into the race, Carter’s approval rating with the American public was 28%. And that played out in the primary itself, as Carter went to the convention in New York City with just 51% of the delegates to Kennedy’s 40%. Kennedy didn’t concede the race until the second-to-last night of the convention after continuing his attacks on the President that week and trying to work back-door deals to get enough delegates to flip their vote if Carter didn’t get the nomination on the first roll call. It would be the last time Kennedy would run for President–due in large part to the animosity 1980 created within the party. Yet, precedent had been set–you could run a serious campaign against an unpopular incumbent President within your own party.
Which brings us to 2024. A very unpopular incumbent Democratic President is up for re-election. As Ted Kennedy set the precedent in 1980, a primary challenge–while potentially damaging to a political future–is not forbidden anymore and was open to anyone that wanted to bring about “change”. But no serious contenders took that step–including the eventual nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. And it was party insiders and power players that decided that the winner of the primary process, President Joe Biden, was too high a risk to lose to Donald Trump in the general election that they browbeat him into withdrawing from the race after winning the vast majority of delegates, using the “you are too far behind in the polls” argument that was tried in 1972.
In the myriad political podcasts I listen to, these points have been brought up as well. And the answer used to justify the actions this summer of the Democratic Party is always “We are facing too great a threat to Democracy to do what was done in the past–this requires a new course of action!” Well, the new precedent has been set. And my recommendation to those party zealots who cram their yards with campaign signs hold off until you are 100% sure those candidates you selected in the primary are the ones actually on the ballot come November.
