The complete and utter stupidity of the 2008 US Presidential Primaries (a.k.a. it is now entirely ab

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

As expected, today Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill moving Massachusetts primary up to February 5, 2008 (some background here).

Let's just call a spade a spade and completely call off the primary process this year! We have no primary "process" any more... we have a primary day!

And we all lose. But more on that in a minute...

Massachusetts officials offered this rationale:

Proponents of the earlier date argued that moving the primary will ensure that Massachusetts has some clout in a presidential race that may be all but decided after Super Tuesday.

Exactly.

For those not yet following the follies of the US election cycle this time around, in a race for "attention" the entire 2008 process has become, in my opinion, completely screwed up. In past election cycles, the "presidential primary process" provided a longer more deliberative process for choosing the nation's leader. It started off with the traditional Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary typically in mid- to late January. There were then a number of different state primaries leading up to "Super Tuesday" at the beginning of March where a large number of states voted. The remaining states then voted on different days going out through the beginning of June.

Take a look at the schedule for the 2004 primaries. Iowa and NH lead off on January 19 and 27. 18 states follow in the next month and then on March 2, Super Tuesday, 10 states voted including the major prize of California (which has a huge number of delegates at stake).

Now look at this year's primary schedule. Here's the Democratic schedule (the Republican schedule is similar):

Jan 3 - Iowa
Jan 8 - New Hampshire
Jan 15 - Michigan
Jan 19 - Nevada
Jan 26 - South Carolina
Jan 29 - Florida
Feb 5 - "Super Duper Tuesday"... 22 or so states... the game is over
.... and then the rest vote

Yes, indeed, February 5, 2008 is now being called "Super Duper Tuesday" or various other names. Desperate to "get more clout" the various states have now moved their primaries up to February 5. With big states in there like California and New York, there will be a huge number of delegates at stake on that one single day. Right now that Wikipedia page is showing 1,943 Democratic delegates up for grabs on Feb 5th (Democratic candidates need 2182 delegates to clinch the nomination) but that doesn't reflect Massachusetts. I would expect that other states like my own state of Vermont will now probably also look to move their primaries forward to February 5th. (Vermont continues to be on March 5th, which was the original "Super Tuesday" with the rest of New England (outside of NH), New York and California.)

Why shouldn't they? Effectively none of the primaries after February 5th really matter. It's almost certain that the candidate will be decided in the votes that occur on that one day.

The irony of all this is that all of these states moved up their date to "play a greater role in the primary process", but in so doing they really have wound up losing out. It's no longer a game of "retail politics"... of going around and visiting states. The states are no longer accorded much individual attention. It now becomes purely a game of advertising dollars. Whoever has the most dollars to put the most advertising out on the mass media in the most states will probably win. If you are not Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards in the Democratic race, you might as well fold your cards are go home. Your odds of winning are next to zero. It's all now about money. Who has it and who can spend it.

Certainly you could argue that it's always been about money, but in the past races the thing was that lesser-known candidates had a chance because they could do well in New Hampshire and Iowa and build upon that to go into the other races. Bill Clinton did exactly that in the 1992 election. He placed second in NH and built upon that to win subsequent primaries. (I remember this quite clearly as I was living in New Hampshire and was active with the Clinton campaign (although after the primary)).

There was more time for a lesser-known candidate to emerge.

Now, there is no time. The NH primary is 43 days away. "Super Duper Tuesday" is 71 days away. Game over. It's all about who has the most money to get out to the most states right now to win elections on that day. February 5th, 2008.

To me this is a rather sorry state of affairs. We all lose, in my opinion. There are some very good candidates on both sides of the election who don't have the money that the front runners do. In another election cycle, they might have honestly had a chance of being seen as a contender. We all might have had more of a chance to hear from them. Now, we probably won't, despite however much they might try.

Some will say it's a good thing that the race is over so quickly... candidates will be chosen and they can start bashing each other in preparation for the actual election in November 2008. Perhaps. Some will say that NH and Iowa unfairly get more attention and play a disproportionate role in helping elect candidates (and are not representative of the US population). This is why the parties were moving Nevada and South Carolina forward... in an effort to give more diversity and yet still have smaller races where less-monied candidates could have a chance. But then all the other states wanted to jump in there and so we have the mess we have today... where it all will come down to advertising dollars... and whatever slim chances there were for actual deliberation and evaluation of candidates get completely tossed out the window.

We all lose.

Technorati Tags: politics

Blog.DanYork.com

The complete and utter stupidity of the 2008 US Presidential Primaries (a.k.a. it is now entirely ab