Now HERE’s An Idea Worth Considering: February 18, 2025 The DNC should re-write its rules for the 2028 presidential primary to hold it all at once on November 5, 2026 — the day of the 2026 mid-terms — with ranked-choice voting. (Full disclosure: this was not my idea. It came from a fellow donor this past weekend at a fundraiser for Senator Ruben Gallego and Congressmen Eric Swalwell and Derek Tran. He gave me permission to steal it and eschewed credit.) The two main advantages? Mid-term turn-out among Democrats would be huge, improving our chance of winning back Congress and state legislatures. Whoever emerged as our nominee would have two years to “lead the opposition” and get his or her message across. By using ranked-choice voting, most people would see one of their top choices win; everyone would feel they had had a role in the process. A subsidiary advantage? The whole country would learn how simple and sensible ranked-choice (also known as “instant-runoff”) voting is . . . which really matters, because the more widely adopted it is, the more moderate candidates will be able to win primaries, and the less polarized our politics, and our nation, could become. (As I’ve written before, ranked choice voting is the very simple idea that if you’re ordering a lychee frozen margarita and the waiter says he’s not sure they have lychee today, you say, “well, if they don’t have lychee, I’ll take pineapple.” Just substitute Ralph Nader for lychee and Al Gore for pineapple.) A couple of finer points: > Sure, the RNC could copy this; but do we really think Trump would allow it? He has his eye on a third term, one way or another; and, even if not, would he want to see his successor in the spotlight so early on? My guess is no. > The rules should probably allow some mechanism, triggered under certain specified circumstances, for an escape hatch. Perhaps a re-run-off among the top tier if, a few months in advance of the 2028 Convention, national polls showed that the winner had not held up well. A health issue, perhaps, or a scandal. Either way, shortly after November 5, 2026, our newly-chosen nominee would take over leadership of The Perfect Shadow Cabinet (as described here a few days ago) and perhaps swap out some of its members. What do you think? Would this improve our odds in the mid-terms? And in 2028? PRESIDENT’S DAY BONUS Abe’s birthday was last Wednesday; George’s, this coming Saturday. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden were also pretty great presidents in my view, despite some well-known flaws. Nixon, too, in some ways . . . even aspects of Reagan and the Bushes, if one hunts to find them. But the true gold standard in the modern era had his 102nd birthday last August 18th: President Jed Bartlet. Here he is with our Ambassador to Bulgaria. (Thanks, Andy R.)