Not the practice scrimmages during the primary and convention.
But all evidence now suggests that a large number of Democrats and Republicans would rather win in May and June and then suffer for four years after November than accept basic realities.
The most recent example of this is the bickering following the Democrats’ nomination of Beau Bayh as their candidate for secretary of state. He defeated Blythe Potter by a healthy but not overwhelming margin for the nod.
Since then, Potter’s backers have complained that Bayh’s victory denies “values voters” in the party their voice in setting policy for the state.
It’s hard to take such arguments seriously.
For one thing, the Indiana secretary of state’s power to set policy for the state is next to nil. The duties of the office are largely clerical, keeping accurate rolls, issuing permits and the like.
That’s important work, to be sure. If it’s not done right, then many things suffer.
Such as elections.
But it’s not an office that lends itself to pitched ideological conflicts.
A good candidate to fill the post, Democrat or Republican, should be honest and competent—two words that do not describe the current incumbent, Diego Morales, who has used the office’s budget as a slush fund that enables him to employ family members and purchase expensive cars for him to ride around in, among other things.
The office of secretary of state is so determinedly non-ideological that, when he was running for the office in 1990, four-term Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut, a Republican, used to joke that people wondered why he wanted to be the state’s most prominent notary public.
That bit of candor may have helped cost Hudnut the election that year, but it was on point.
The reason the office seems significant is that Beau Bayh’s father—former Indiana Gov. and U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh—used it as a launching pad for a career that brought him within reach of the White House.
Maybe lightning will strike twice.
Maybe it won’t.
Maybe a largely clerical post should be largely a clerical post—and not something worth fighting over.
But the Democrats aren’t the only ones spatting.
Just a month or so ago, Republicans spent millions in an intraparty dispute over an issue no one but President Donald Trump cares about—redistricting the state’s congressional districts to give the GOP an unfair and unearned edge in November’s race to determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump is afraid that a House controlled by Democrats will investigate his many, many raids on the federal cookie jar to enrich himself, his family and his cronies.
This intramural tussle not only means that Republicans won’t have those funds to spend in the fall, but also that they will be taking a dispirited, distracted and disunited team onto the field come autumn.
Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem because Indiana is a solidly conservative state.
But former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, once a Republican, has mounted a campaign for secretary of state.
Some observers have labeled it an independent campaign.
It’s not.
Ballard isn’t running as an independent. He’s running as the standard-bearer for a new party, the Lincoln Party.
I doubt Ballard thinks he will win in the traditional sense. Victory for him may consist of making a point.
Whatever other weaknesses he and his backers may possess, their powers of mathematical analysis are first-rate. They’ve studied the field and realized that neither Indiana Democrats, enfeebled as they are, nor MAGA Republicans, devoted to shrinking the party as they are, have a majority.
That puts the voters of the Lincoln Party—which is trying to establish itself as a new home for displaced Ricard Lugar, Mitch Daniels, Hudnut and Ballard Republicans—in a position of leverage.
If they can’t win, they can tilt the outcome.
And make it clear that neither major party can claim a majority without them.
They’re not running to make statements about values.
They’re running to get hold of the levers that could shape policy for years.
They’re thinking about November and beyond, not May and June.
That’s the way the grownups do it.
And that’s why they most often win.
