Elites Have Their Say (with Clifford Vickery)

This chapter explores how party elites shaped candidate prospects during the pre-primary period. We describe how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and state parties designed the nominating contests to make it exceedingly difficult for party outsiders to upend the delegate selection process. We show how party elites signaled their preferences for Biden to rank-and-file partisans by disproportionately arming him with critical resources such as endorsements, campaign funds, and media coverage. We explain how the DNC set up qualifying criteria for the intraparty debates to favor the frontrunners, forcing many candidates from the race. By the time the contests were set to begin, only 11 major candidates remained, demonstrating the potency of these efforts.