The way forward for Democrats — and the country

After weeks of turmoil in the Democratic Party over the electability of incumbent Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president announced Sunday that he was withdrawing from the 2024 race, a decision that he said was in the best interest of the party and the country.

Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to head up the party’s ticket, a move that was quickly followed by a surge of public support from hundreds of Democratic lawmakers, as well as numerous governors once thought to be potential Harris rivals for the nomination. Grassroots donors gave nearly $50 million in 24 hours to Act Blue, a major fundraising site for the Democratic Party.

Party officials have not yet laid out the precise process or timeline for how a new nominee will be chosen. Though Harris appears to dominate the field, some have called for a competitive process to choose a new nominee ahead of the party’s convention in Chicago next month.

The Gazette spoke with Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard and director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School, about the political moment we’re in and what it tells us about the health of American democracy. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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We’re in the midst of some dramatic changes that have significant consequences for the country. How are you looking at this moment?

I think probably if we really zoom out from a broad historical perspective, then what matters is that this is a time of incredible social, economic, and political transformation in the world. In that context, pre-existing governance patterns will come under strain, and that strain will force change. And that’s basically what we’re watching. We’re watching both parties try to cross a bridge from the political-economic world that defined the ’90s and early 2000s to a political-economic world that has been dramatically reorganized by tech.

You recently wrote in The Washington Post that the country needs to change how we channel our disagreements and that elected officials are rarely rewarded these days for embracing the better angels of their nature. President Biden said he believed it was in the best interest of the party and the country to withdraw. Does that upend the dynamics you wrote about?

I don’t think it does. I think he did the right thing and I’m grateful to him for doing the right thing. It was an important gesture, but it’s pretty far removed from the fundamental dynamics of how our legislators interact with each other when they’re at the negotiating table.

Support has coalesced behind Vice President Kamala Harris as Biden’s successor on the ticket. Before the president’s withdrawal, some had called for an “open” process, saying it would be unfair to simply “anoint” someone before the convention without giving others an opportunity to compete. What’s the best way to ensure this nominating process is seen as open and fair?

The simple fact of the matter is that we are currently in a competitive process. And that competitive process started the moment that President Biden said that he was dropping out. From that moment forward, anybody could put up their hand. This is currently an open competitive process with a dominant competitor, Harris, and no one else yet who has been willing to step up, except for Marianne Williamson.

The delegates who previously pledged to Biden are free to switch their votes to someone else before the convention. They don’t have to consider anyone else who may get the required signatures, and they will determine who is ultimately the nominee, not primary voters. Does that undermine the notion that the way the party chooses presidential candidates is truly small-d democratic?

All those delegates were elected in a democratic process, so they actually represent us voters. They were elected in congressional districts all over the country in a public process that anybody in the party could participate in. So, in that regard, to the extent we have a problem, we have a civic education problem. We don’t have a deep enough shared understanding about all these processes.

Different states have different rules for how delegates can be reallocated and some of this is inarguably new terrain. Should that variation affect people’s perceptions of how transparent and/or equitable the process is?

I don’t think so. This country’s a federal union of states, all of which are, as per the Constitution, guaranteed a republican form of government. It is possible, in fact, to run republican forms of government — that is to say, constitutional democracies for free and equal self-governing citizens — in a multiplicity of ways. That is again why civic education is so very, very important. Every one of us needs to understand the structure of our national constitutional democracy. But we also need to understand the structure of our state-level constitutional democracy or republic or commonwealth. That’s the single greatest weakness in all of this, the fact that civic education has not delivered that knowledge about the basic apparatus of our government to so many Americans.

So public perceptions about what’s fair or unfair come from a lack of knowledge about how the process works, not from some systemic unfairness? 

Correct.

The debate over Biden’s candidacy has roiled the Democratic Party for the last several weeks. That’s in contrast to what appeared to be a highly unified Republican Party during their convention last week. Is the party turmoil and debate a sign of American democracy’s dysfunction or its robustness?

I think the fact that the people’s opinion ultimately won the day is a sign of health for American democracy. We should all be glad to see it. The only way you get the people’s opinion to help steer is to actually permit debate. So I think this has all been very positive. If you pay close attention to the Republican side, you’ll see that there’s plenty of debate and dissent and disagreement over there, as well. Check out The Wall Street Journal’s coverage in the days after the convention. There were all kinds of counter opinions going all over the place, lots of business-side concern about where the agenda is going, concerns of conservative Christians about the change in the abortion platform, and so forth.

Harris would be the first Black woman to be a party nominee for president, and the first with Jamaican and South Asian immigrant parents. She also has a chance to be the first woman president. How do you see these biographical facts affecting the race?

I think it’s time for us to stop counting firsts. We’re at the point in the life of this country where everybody’s going to be a first in some kind of way on some kind of dimension, and it’s time to stop counting firsts. It’s time to really focus on the question of what’s the person’s vision and what are they going to bring to the table to deliver on that vision? And that’s where we should put the focus of our analysis and our attention. That’s what people generally want. I think we are struggling to break out of a world where we start by analyzing everything in identity boxes. I think a lot of people are tired of that and are ready to break out of it.