2020 contenders

‘Nothing’s invisible now’: How the 2020 contenders are trampling the old rules

From Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren to Kamala Harris, the emerging 2020 Democratic field is taking a new approach to the early presidential campaign.

By DAVID SIDERS

For decades, the most critical early stages of a presidential campaign unfolded largely out of public view, with candidates quietly courting financiers, party bosses and interest groups influential in the nominating process.

But two years after President Donald Trump proved a candidate could flout traditional power structures and succeed — and with the 2020 campaign now picking up — the reign of the “invisible primary” is in decline.

New Democratic Party rules have stripped party leaders of much of their power in selecting a nominee. The prevalence of small-dollar fundraising has tilted the presidential landscape toward more public maneuvers designed to build massive lists of supporters online. And the rise of progressive populism is making its mark, prioritizing high-profile appeals and personal brand-building — typically through digital platforms — over the behind-the-scenes pursuit of party elites.

The shift toward an increasingly open, early presidential primary is exemplified by uncharacteristically brazen campaigning by top-tier contenders, more than a year ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Informed not only by Trump, but by the potent, small-dollar operation built by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) have spent months cultivating lists of small donors on highly public social media channels, while promoting themselves on TV.

In the process, they have pulled back the curtain — or removed it entirely — from a critical stage in the nomination process.

“Nothing’s invisible now,” said Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean. “This notion that if you got the endorsements and you got the money and played your cards right, you became the de-facto choice of the party, whatever that means … Trump blew all that up. That’s all out the window now.”

He said, “Trump is the tsunami that came, and as the wave pulls back, there’s nothingness. Anybody can fill it up … Do donors still matter? Sure. Will an endorsement matter in a given state? Of course. But they’re not decisive in any way.”

In one chockablock span of 24 hours last week, Sanders rallied supporters via livestream from a progressive gathering in Vermont, Warren began running ads on Facebook calling the Trump administration "the most corrupt in modern history," and the political action committee Democracy for America opened its first online poll of the 2020 election — all for public consumption.

The website TMZ, meanwhile, was airing video of Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke at Reagan National Airport. He told supporters recently that once he leaves office in January, his posts on Medium will be “my venue to talk to you.”

Even Joe Biden, the 76-year-old former vice president, is posting selfies on Instagram.

“The days when the wizard could hide behind the curtain and be the unseen moving hand are over," said Darry Sragow, a longtime Democratic strategist in California.

Momentum toward a more visible and transparent primary has been building, said Arshad Hasan, a former executive director of the activist group Progress Now.

“More and more of this [campaign] is public,” he said. “I saw this beginning to happen in the run-up to and in the wake of Howard Dean’s campaign, the first really big campaign where you had a bunch of outsiders come in and start participating.”

Many of those outsiders ended up joining local political organizations and paying increasing attention to practices and procedures that in previous decades drew less focus. Now, in the early stages of the 2020 primary, Hasan said, “there are so, so many more people not just paying attention, but being active in these otherwise mind-numbingly boring processes.”

Amid an uproar from such activists, the Democratic National Committee in August voted to prevent superdelegates — the members of Congress, DNC members and other party officials representing about 15 percent of delegates in 2016 — from voting on the first ballot at a contested national convention. Though superdelegates could prove instrumental in a second ballot, candidates’ ties to them, at least initially, were rendered less significant.

Some invisible primary practices endure, even as other efforts become more visible. Candidates continue to schedule private meetings with DNC members and major donors. As in previous election cycles, Democratic contenders have rushed since the midterm elections to dial donors in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago, while simultaneously courting members of Congress, state party leaders, labor officials and other Democrats influential in party politics. Many candidates have enlisted so-called sherpas in critical primary states to help them make introductions.

“Right now, what is happening with people considering running for president is they are actively talking to people they think may fund their campaigns, could support their campaigns in other ways, or are trying to get those individuals not to support other candidates,” said Bill Burton, a Democratic strategist and veteran of the Obama White House. “There are certain people in certain parts of this country whose phones are ringing off the hook with people who fancy themselves Democratic primary contenders.”

Jaime Harrison, associate chair of the Democratic National Committee and a former South Carolina state party chair, said candidates need DNC members and members of Congress to help them navigate “who is important and where are the friendships and the issues of importance” in critical primary states.

And he suggested that “the voices and the clout and the influence of these folks may actually be enhanced, because there’s a limited number of Congress people, and there’s a limited number of DNC members, and in order to break through the pack, and break through the din, these candidates are going to want to be able to showcase that they have some clout and have some support.”

But with many major donors and many party leaders hesitating to commit to one candidate because of the unusually large field, the effect of institutional support has been dulled in the campaign's earliest stages. And it is most likely to substantially materialize following — not proceeding — a culling of the field.

“I think a lot of people will be taking their cues from what happens publicly,” Harrison said.

The newly introduced sunlight has not always been flattering. Elizabeth Warren stumbled in front of a national audience with her elaborate — and widely panned — presentation of DNA test results to support her distant Native American ancestry. Michael Avenatti, the combative lawyer who gained prominence feuding with Trump on cable television, has been unraveling under equally bright lights after being arrested on domestic violence allegations, accusations he denies.

“There’s nothing invisible in the world anymore,” Sragow said. “Every person has a TV camera in their hands, right? The iPhone, the smart phone. Every person is a reporter. Every person is a pundit, and they can capture something, and you don’t even know it’s captured, and it gets posted on the internet, and it’s there for the whole world to see forever.”

In one early — and public — effort to narrow the progressive lane of the primary, the progressive political action committee Democracy for America last week opened its first online poll ahead of the 2020 election. The group, which boasts more than 1 million members, employed similar field tests ahead of its unsuccessful effort to draft Warren into the 2016 presidential campaign, before swinging its support to Sanders.

In the 2020 campaign, said Yvette Simpson, DFA’s incoming chief executive, “we don’t have a person who’s anointed … to be the presumed nominee this cycle.”

That is a significant departure from the dynamic Arthur T. Hadley described in his book “The Invisible Primary” in 1976, a point of reference for 40 years.

In 2020, Maslin said, the campaign is “going to be in front of us. You’re going to see it on cable news. You’re going to see it on YouTube. You’re going to see it in people interacting with candidates that go beyond the Great Mentioner or the big donors or the party hierarchy.”

Anymore, he said, “There is no party hierarchy.”

The primary, Maslin said, “won’t be invisible. It will be unbelievably visible, right in front of our very eyes.”