Dems modify primary calendar? [View All]

Dems have pushed Nevada and South Carolina up near the front of the primary calendar along with Iowa and New Hampshire ... the problem of the previous schedule was that some believed it lacked ethnic and other forms of diversity ...

i can agree the old schedule had some problems ... but i very much liked the "retail" nature of Iowa and NH ... adding two more states so early seems to cause a brand new problem and completely fails to address what i see as the most significant problem with the previous process ...

first, by stacking two additional primaries so far up front, once again the party is favoring insiders ... those with big name recognition and/or big bucks will have an easier time campaigning in four states, instead of just two, than "outsider" candidates ... this is just another case of the rich get richer and instead of opening up the process to new ideas and lesser known candidates, it stacks the deck ... the goal of setting early states with greater diversity is a good one; burdening "upstart candidacies" with four states instead of two was an unfortunate way to go about it ...

and second, and this is the real achilles heel of the whole process, most states are irrevelant during the primary process ... voters either don't tune in at all or don't tune in the way we would want them to because the nominee is often determined after just one or two primaries ... one of the key reasons for this is that once someone wins a primary, they tend to attract all the money ... big donors like to bet on the front-runner ...

Democrats talk often about campaign finance reform but what do they really offer within their own primary process? ... adding more diversity to the early states would be fine if the new rules also found a way to temper the overwhelming impact of the early states ... it is an extremely unhealthy state of affairs for the party to lock the later states out of meaningful participation in selecting the party's nominee ...

I don't know whether the party could enforce campaign spending limits in its own primaries but i don't see why they couldn't ... if we as Democrats believe that money should be removed from the political process as much as possible, we should put our money where our mouths are ... attracting the "big boys" should not be what putting our candidates' best ideas before all the voters is all about ... until we can get real campaign finance reform passed into law, we should at least try to impose it within our own primary process ...