Now that the Iraq war is over, you’re gonna be hearing a lot more from me about the presidential campaign. But you’ll have to look elsewhere if you’re into the horse race, you TiVo the debates so you can play them over and over, or care about who Hillary will choose to be a running mate nine fricking months before the conventions.
My perspective will continue to be that the system by which we elect our presidential is badly broken. In that spirit, I’ve already posted mud pies on the complicity of the mainstream media in this broken-ness and why 200,000 white Iowans with no fashion sense and high cholesterol levels may have more to say about who the next occupant of the Oval Office is than anyone else.
This brings me to today’s installment on an ancillary of the Iowa Idiocy and one of the more insidious aspects of the system – the way it is being front-loaded more than ever this cycle as an increasing number of states schedule early primaries.
Florida, which has moved its presidential primary from May to late January despite meaningless threats of sanctions from the Democratic National Committee, is Exhibit A in this regard.
Florida may be the fourth most populous state, but it has already played too big of a role in recent presidential elections. Its move to advance its primary to give it a greater voice in the nominating process has the signal result of making it even more difficult for cash-strapped candidates to compete in a slaughter house where survival depends more on their ability to raise obscene amounts of money than run an issues-based campaign with real revelance.
Take Pennsylvania. Please!
Pennsylvania is the sixth most populous state, but its late April primary means that presidential candidates have no reason to campaign there except for flybys where they to take a limo from the airport to spend an hour raising money at an invitation-only event before hightailing it back to Iowa (the 30th most populous state), New Hampshire (41st most populous) or someplace else that couts no matter its size and significance because it is a participant in the orgy.
Then there is Nevada (35th most populous) which will hold its first presidential caucuses of consequence on January 19 after the Iowa caucuses on January 3 and the New Hampshire primary on January 8.
Now I have to admit that there is a certain appeal to the possibility of the Nevada caucuses having an outsized significance if no clear leaders emerge from Iowa and New Hampshire.
This is because Nevada is a rising center of the American West as opposed to, say, Florida, which is so yesterday and has found more ways to screw up the process — notably on the back end — than perhaps any single state.
Democracy in action? Well maybe.
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