In the latest episode of his podcast, Forward, Andrew Yang discusses the 2024 presidential race with US political commentator and former CNN news host Chris Cillizza. The two men talk about several things, including whether or not Joe Biden should run, but they also discuss the DNC, and what actions the party could take if Biden's nomination is contested.
The Democratic National Committee was the subject of controversy in 2016 and 2020 for a variety of reasons. The most talked about controversy was how superdelegates were being used to skew how primary election results were being perceived in early contests.
Many might remember when the party chair in 2016, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, said on national television that superdelegates exist to protect party favorites from grassroots competition.
But that was just the start. The party punished the Bernie Sanders campaign for reporting confidential voter data vulnerabilities, was called out by a former party chair for corruption, and was sued and made it clear in court that they have every right to go against primary voters and choose their own nominee if they want.
This doesn’t even get into actions taken to ensure that “less desirable” candidates either didn't run in 2020 or got pushed out early.
Yang, who made a name for himself while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, believes that in a situation where multiple Democrats decide to run in 2024 the DNC will once again not play fair, especially when it comes to debates.
“They are going to totally short circuit the process,” he says. “Let’s say they set a debate threshold of ‘hey you need to be polling at 15%,” and then you have a couple of upstarts polling at 15% then I think they will just raise it to 25%. They will screw with the dials and make it into as much of a non-race as possible.”
Cillizza believes the DNC would not want a competitive race for a couple of reasons, including money and the quality of candidate Biden is during campaigns. “He lost twice in ‘88 and 2008. He won a race that was one of the weirdest races that we have ever seen.”
“[The race] was going against Biden until South Carolina and then he won in South Carolina and then the race effectively ended because of COVID."
As a candidate, Cillizza believes Biden would be vulnerable (though he also believes he’d still win) in a contested 2024 primary, and it’s in the DNC’s interest to prevent a competitive primary from emerging.
Yang and Cillizza expound on the topic, along with other possibilities leading up to the 2024 election, in the podcast. Check out the full conversation above.
