SUPER-DUPER TUESDAY….Kos comments on the new front-loaded primary schedule:
There’s some level of nostalgia over the notion of a long, drawn out primary process in which Iowa and New Hampshire kick things off. This is supposed to help the Jimmy Carter-type underdogs “build momentum” and give voters a chance to “deliberate” over their decisions.
In reality, of course, we had a system in which two non-representative states (IA and NH) decided our nominee last time, and they were gunning for the same “right” this time around.
The rest of the states aren’t morons. They saw what was happening, and so many have moved up to the front of the pack that now we have essentially a national primary on Feb. 5. Is that a bad thing? I’d argue it’s a fantastic thing.
I’m pretty much on board with this. I’d rather see the candidates spend a year running a truly national campaign — the kind they’ll need to run in the general election — instead of spending 90% of their time in two small states where they engage in nostalgic but obsolete coffee klatsch campaigning. Like it or not, that just isn’t the way the world works anymore.
However, if a single massive primary day is the way we decide to do things in the future, I hope that by 2012 we can agree to move the whole process forward and hold it in, say, April or May. The first week of February is just too early to commit to a candidate who won’t be elected until November.
