A Game With No Winners
The Opinion Journal points out the rank insanity of the game of leapfrog the various states are playing with their presidential primaries. It is becoming a completely unworkable system and will completely eliminate the possibility of a dark horse candidate breaking through. It also sets up a possible scenario where a very mediocre candidate would win the nomination by virtue of being well funded.
The way things are going, the first votes in the 2008 Presidential election may yet be cast in 2007, more than 10 months before the national elections next November. This is not an improvement.
In a little-noticed move this week, Wyoming Republicans moved their party conventions to January 5, beating out Michigan, which just moved its primaries to January 15. State laws in Iowa and New Hampshire require those states, in turn, to leapfrog Michigan and Wyoming, potentially pushing one or both elections into December. So voters in those two states might have to interrupt their holidays to participate in a Presidential primary campaign better held during a much less busy season.
This maneuvering continues a Presidential election process that is changing in ways that make it both longer, yet paradoxically less reflective, than ever. Sixty years ago, Presidential nominees were chosen largely by delegates to conventions held in late summer, between 60 to 90 days before the actual vote. That system gave us FDR, Truman and Ike, to name three better than average Presidents. It also gave us Warren Harding–but then no system is perfect.
In any event, this was deemed too beholden to insiders, so the Progressives lobbied for primaries to open the nominating process to more voters. Yet those primaries were also spread out, from March through the early summer, allowing candidates to adjust to a defeat, raise money between primaries, and even to enter at a late date.
All of that is gone at this point. The winner will likely be decided in a short few week window. There will be no chance of a relatively obscure person making a breakthrough. The "progressive" ideas have virtually ensured that only a well-heeled candidate can possibly win. The complete loss of control by the parties is evident. This is not a good thing for the country. It will not be a good thing for the voters, certainly. The choices will be predetermined by who raises the most money - the exact opposite of what was intended by "opening up" the process. The smoke-filled rooms will simply move further ahead of the preliminary election called a primary. But the outcome will have been predetermined before the first primary vote is cast.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Saturday, 1 September , 2007 @ 9:15 am
Opinions are like bellybuttons - everyone has one.
So here is mine, Gaius. I think that the opposite of what you described is more likely to happen - the primary season could end with the Democrat and/or Republican party having a presidential frontrunner but no winner (in terms of actual delegates). The gap between what the frontrunner has and what he/she needs to get the nomination might in fact be huge. If the delegate vote is spread pretty evenly among competing candidates, we could see one or more national party conventions in which the eventual nominee will be decided at that time. I don’t know if that is good for the country or not.
Reagan was the early GOP favorite in 1980, yet he stumbled badly in Iowa and it took him about two months (as I recall) to amass enough delegates to win what was a two-man race. I believe that Reagan winning primaries week after week over a (relatively) long period of time was crucial in helping him clinch the nomination. By contrast a short primary season would only diminish this “bandwagon effectâ€, especially if Romney, Edwards, or Huckabee have strong pockets of support in the first primary states.