Michigan will hold its Democratic Primary on 15 January. The state has 156 delegates: more than Iowa (56) and New Hampshire (30) combined. The national party, of course, pretends that it can ignore 17 electoral votes that John Kerry won in Michigan with a thin 51.7% of the vote. That’s because Iowa’s seven electoral votes and New Hampshire’s four electoral votes are so much more important, you see.
To my mind, Michigan’s will be the first real primary. Senator Clinton is likely to win it by a landslide, since the only candidates on the ballot are Kucinich, Gravel, Dodd and her. This underlines the skill and professionalism with which she has managed her campaign. Obama and Edwards, by contrast, look like children playing Simon Says contorting themselves in all manner of ridiculous postures to follow the Party line.
In short, a botch for every Democrat except the four contenders on 15 January. If Obama, Edwards, Biden and Richardson were more aggressive, they would be on the Michigan ballot. They should be.
The Democratic Party, which has stripped Michigan and Florida of their convention delegates (I guess Democrats don’t need Florida, no matter what happened in 2000) needs to wake up and smell the 21st century coffee. Holding the first Presidential contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, state-sized equivalents of smoke-filled rooms, only makes sense for consultants and Party insiders who make money by trading on connections developed over years in those states.
Each state should be free to choose its own primary date, or groups of states should vote all together, or the largest states should vote first — feel free to suggest your own arrangement in the comments — but the current system is a loser. The first real Democratic primary will be 15 January in Michigan.
The real first primary in 2004 was Washington DC, and was held a few days before Iowa. Kerry, Gephardt, Clark, and Edwards refused to compete, because the delegates would not be seated. Remember what a big deal the results were when they came out that night? Exactly.
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p>A primary is worthwhile only if it’s real competition. Few people cared about the 1992 Iowa caucuses because the candidate all ceded it to Senator Harkin. Same with Michigan in 2008 — the fact that Hillary wins is a non-story, and the same with Florida.
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p>Now, will this be reason for some petulant people to vote Republican in November? Perhaps, but unlikely. First of all, the Republicans are similarly punishing Michigan and Florida for their bum’s rush of the calendar. Regardless, ordinary voters care little for the primary calendar’s logistics…the only people intensely interested are party activists, and unless the Michigan Democratic Party wants to be frozen out of anything interesting until the sun shrinks into a dwarf, they’ll grow up come November.
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p>None of this is an endorsement of the current system, which sucks.
Really only benefits the consultants and insiders: the politocracy, or hackocracy, as you prefer, and is evidence of their unhealthy stranglehold on the machinery of the Parties? I wonder what you think of that. That’s the only good explanation I can think of for the continuation of this appalling, idiotic self-defeating Iowa and New Hampshire-based nomination system.
The last line of my comment was an agreement that this system sucks. And it needs to be changed, but not by last-second shifts to an agreed-upon calendar that your own clerks say is coming too late. This is equivalent to a NFL ref starting the fourth quarter by announcing “Guys, we were talking it over and figured hey, let’s give each team only 1 timeout, disallow playaction, and extend the quarter by five minutes, so we can see what happens then. Okay?” We need leadership, and cutting in line isn’t leadership.
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p>(Mind you, the only people who benefit are the hacks in Iowa and New Hampshire who get crazy campaign contributions from candidate PACs, and attention they simply don’t deserve. However, the national hacks don’t get much of anything at all. Buying lots of airtime in Manchester and Cedar Rapids isn’t a way to get the money the hacks crave — the way to such riches is a national primary.
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p>Personally, I think these things continue because they aren’t that old and it takes a long time to change things in politics. In 1992 all the Dems skipped Iowa, there was little real competition in 96, or 2000. It was only in 2004 that Iowa became important, and that only because that was Dean’s death scene. Had Dean won Iowa, followed by New Hampshire, his inevitability strategy wouldn’t give Iowa any credit at all.)
I was about to make essentially the same post as Sabutai, rather than echo him Ill just say hes right on the money, nobody gives a shit about this primary since its useless. Its basically a big straw poll.
So we have the best chance of taking back the White House…everyone agrees…the GOP is in trouble across the board…so what does the DNC do?!…why of course, we try and level the playing field for the Republicans by alienating as many swing/battleground states as possible…absurd…who cares if Michigan and Florida want to have their primaries the day after tomorrow!!??…Let them, it’s their state and their primary. This quadrennial kow-tow to NH and Iowa is not worth the aggravation they cause.
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p>And if the DNC were not doing its best to help the GOP, we need look no further than our own Democratic candidates’ speeches, press releases, comments and commercials to see another death wish in progress. Do they really think they can razor each other 1,000 times and not cause permanent bleeding? When our candidate is finally chosen, they may already be the walking wounded trying to take on the GOP.
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p>And voters turn off to the whole nasty thing…
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p>The Dems better thank their luck stars that the Republican field is just as uninspiring and flawed as our own.
I had not heard that we would not seat delegates – on our side that is still being argued, but we do have the same rule.
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p>Hey, Parties! The STATES get to determine when they want to hold elections. The STATES are soverign bodies. You may be big deals today, but talk to the Whigs. I’m a member of a Third Party myself – the Republicans.
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p>STATES get to pass their own election laws, and the idea that parties are so big for their britches that they can dictate to states is ridiculous.
About a month ago, Florida Republicans were the national cte when half their delegates were stripped for its attempt to put a bumrush on the primary calendar. Similar actions have been taken against other states (another update here).
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p>Secondly, STATES aren’t sentient fauna on the political landscape, PP. Rather, it is the decision of the governors and legislatures of these STATES when to hold the election, and oddly enough almost every state legislator or governor is also a member of a…wait for it…political party! And given that primaries and cauci are essentially party exercises, wouldn’t it make sense for the parties to regulate the process?
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p>Your argument is akin to saying that since the Patriots are in a separate state, they should have a “Massachusetts goalpost” that is 1 foot narrower than the rest of the NFL. And if the NFL doesn’t like it, they’re attacking federalism when in fact they’re just trying to uphold the integrity of the process.
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p>Not to mention that the Michigan and Florida crybabies agreed to these rules a year ago when first proposed.
The parties get to control their nominating process, not the states. And as long as independent candidates are allowed on ballots then this is the way it is.
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p>Look at Massachusetts, we’ll have primaries on February 5, 2008. Then we’ll have caucuses afterwards to select the delegates. Party rules state that we must have the delegates vote for the candidate they’ve been elected to represent. In Massachusetts for Republican’s that is by proportional vote, as you well know.
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p>If the convention does not produce a clear cut winner and we have a brokered convention, which I think may happen this year, those delegates can vote for whomever they want after the first ballot.
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p>If in 2012 the Republican party changed its rules in Massachusetts and decided to say that caucus selected delegates could vote for whom they pleased and not be bound to the results of the primary then we as a party would be within our rights to do so. I also submit to you that it would help us rejeuvenate our party.
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p>So I fully support the Democratic Party’s right to do what it wants for its nomination process.
Dictating to Secretaries of State when they must hold elections is another.
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p>I’m glad to learn we’re only HALF as arrogant as the Democrats, as we’ve only stripped half the delegtes, and have not put penalties into place for candidates who campaign in ‘rogue’ states.
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p>The latter is more important, BTW, as there will BE no official candidate – brokered convention or no – until LABOR DAY, a full seven months after the 58% +/- of primary voters have chosen candidates. Must Democrats refrain from campaigning in Fl., Michigan, et al until after AUGUST?
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p>Conventions still must ratify Vice Presidential picks, so I expect we’ll have a long, hot, testy sumer with the second place people fervently hoping that ‘apparent’ nominees are hit by a Greyhound bus – literal or political.
When it comes to a state’s fitness as a primary bellwether, all the children are above average. They’ll have no difficulty convincing themselves that they should get to go first.
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p>So if you are king of the DNC, and you invent a set of rules that is both orderly and fair, how do you enforce it?
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p>Wouldn’t there need to be penalties? Wouldn’t the penalties have to have a real bite? Wouldn’t that bite necessarily risk pissing off some voters in the affected states?
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p>What is your solution to that?
Solution Option #1
Have Just ONE National Primary…let’s say in March, with the Conventions in the Summer…then there would be no need for these campaigns to start 3 years early…and the states could stop jockeying for early post positions just to get the media and campaigns to come to their state and spend money first)
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p>we would still have to suffer through too many months of the talking heads and pundits just talking to themselves about polls and fundraising prowess (as to them, that’s what matters and tough issues are so much harder to cover)…
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p>Solution Option #2
Go back to the smoke-filled room (sans smoke) where party leaders got together and jockeyed for one candidate over another…and the delegates to the convention were acvtually, at times, more than just props for a poorly watched TV show.
Then state parties and their party regulars would matter again…belonging to a party might matter…today it doesn’t amount to much more than fundraising list keepers…and the fundraising is now perpetual on all fronts by all candidates from city and state officials to Congress (but that is another post topic)
Personally, I’m intrgued by the Regional Primary system, which divides the country into four quadrants. If the first time it goes Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest – four years later it goes Southeast, Southwest, Northwest, Northeast, and so on. Each quadrant would have its ‘first in the nation’ shot once every 16 years.
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p>A single national primary gurantees that none but trillionaires could run, in order to have an effictively nationwide campaign as a primary candidate.
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p>And you denigrate smoke filled rooms more than they should be. They produced Harry Truman, for instance, and Teddy Roosevelt. Politicos have a sharper sense of what makes a candidate electable to the mainstram voter, the masive middle, than the fringe groups that have seized control of both party’s nominating process. But, your boilerplate denigration alone demonstrates why we are unlikely to see them return.
A single day national primary becomes a big media frenzy, kills retail politics, and shuts out candidates without any money or name recognition.
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p>Regional primaries are just as unfair since the first set of primaries will hold the most influence with the way the media covers races and with Big Mo then trumping money, substance, etc. in the remaining races.
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p>And the current system is inane so there aren’t any great options.
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p>The same dilemma occurs when the electoral college is removed in the general (good for high name rec candidates with big money and big media).
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p>Rotating regional primaries are probably the fairest system we can get assuming they are mixed with big states and small states though it would still be chock full of unfairness.
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p>It still beats the European way where the members of parliament choose the next leader and the party members have very little say.
Peter….you misread my intent…I think returning to the s”smoke-filled room” system (which is just code for the party leaders winnow the field) has some definite merit…I’m a Truman Democrat and that would suit me fine….Some would argue that that takes away the direct input of party members in the state and gives more power to the few…but, heck, the current system does the same thing!
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p>We give the power to the power elite people who fill campaign coffers faster and fuller…by the time party members on the local level get to make a choice, the field has already been picked over and the frontrunners declared…our choices are very limited…and we get to know very little about those pre-designated by pundits as “also-rans”…
National, regional, lottery, rotation. Smoke filled rooms of wise men and women and party hacks.
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p>All these schemes are very interesting and thought provoking and everything, and I am sure we are all clever students of interest articulation. But what should the party do if a state decides to game the system and break the rules? Because that is where we are now, in spades.
Under this regime, the Democrats refuse to seat any delegates elected in “non-authorized” primaries. The Republicans, as ever reluctant to impose any penalty on powerful white men, only take away half the delegates.
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p>The expectation is that the nominee, who controls the convention, would force the seating of the delegates to smooth over feelings. What if there isn’t a presumptive nominee and we’re headed for a brokered convention? That is when it gets interesting (and in court).
Lots of powerful white men in Detroit, are there? The Democrats are choosing to disenfranchise black Democratic primary voters.
Black voters are still the minority in MI. And guess what? Detroit is home to many whites and middle easterners too. Nice try, though.
Watch your own presidential debates, then come talk to me about powerful white men being a load of crap.
How can it be real with two of the three main contenders off the ballot and no actual delegates up for grabs. And if Clinton has just lost Iowa and New Hampshire – winning Michigan by a landslide is not a done deal for her.
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p>Michigan jumped the schedule and should’t be considered real.