In defense of caucuses

I posted a response to this Yglesias post. It seemed worth it to reproduce it here:

For the record, my preference would be for the nomination to be decided through a series of closed primaries...

Does this mean that MY is against caucuses? While I agree that caucuses are weird and definitely less democratic than an ordinary primary, it seems to me that being democratic is not necessarily in the party's interest when it comes to selecting a candidate. The reason is because the purpose is not just to elect a candidate for president, but also to build and strengthen the party.

Whereas primaries reward the candidate with the broadest, most horizontal popular support, caucuses reward voter intensity and organization (vertical popular support). I bet that in the smaller states--or just any state whose priority is growing the ranks of the party--having this intensity and organization is more important for a candidate than having broad popularity within the current base of the party.

I agree that the schedule should have a round-robin element to it to make things more fair for the different regions, and that the schedule should be contracted at least somewhat. But a short election cycle consisting of just primaries seems too geared toward ascertaining the will of the current base of supporters, and not geared enough toward growing the party and improving organization.

Indeed, for all of the complaining you hear on the internets about how bad for the party the long primary season is, it's mostly couched in hypotheticals--Democrats might not vote if their primary candidate loses, McCain could pull ahead as he consolidates his base while the Dems bicker, etc. But the benefits of the long, drawn-out primary are very real: voter turnout for the Democratic contests is breaking records and dwarfing Republican turnout, and more people are registering Democrat than Republican.