There have been a few diaries lately going on and on about Iowa and New Hampshire having "First in the Nation" status and why it's wrong. Let's examine and dissect some of these arguments and see why they miss the point and come off as nothing more than rants against the two states. Jump below if you dare...
Kos recently wrote a diary
http://www.dailykos.com/... regarding the first in the nation status of Iowa and New Hampshire. I'd like to address of the statements made.
"Iowa/NH are too white and not representative of the rest of the nation."
This statement is absolutely true. But the part that individuals making this assertion miss is that we're not supposed to represent the rest of the nation. The people in Iowa/NH are not voting for Floridians interest or Californians or anyone else. The fact is, those states do not represent Iowa/NH interests or demographics either. The people in Iowa/NH are simply casting their support for who they believe best represents THEIR interests.
"Iowa had roughly 2.2 million voting eligible adults in 2004, of who (as of last month) approximately 1.9 million are considered "active" registered voters by the Iowa Secretary of State. But only 124,331 participated in the 2004 Democratic Caucuses for President (according to the subscription only Hotline). That number amounts to roughly 6% of all registered voters [...]"
This is a fun one because it is meant to verify the previous assertion that Iowa/NH are not representative not only because of race, but also because so few people participated. What is left out is the fact that most of the general voting public (regardless of state) do not get involved this early and usually wait until the general election to participate. The people that are involved in caucuses and primaries tend to be the loyal party activists. When you look at the actual general election numbers you'll see a different story about Iowa. In Iowa for the 2004 general election there were a total of 2, 106,658 registered voters. Of that 1,938,657 were active voter registrations. The total voter turnout for the 2004 general election in Iowa was 1,521,966 or 78.5% of total active registrations and 72.2% of total registrations.
http://www.sos.state.ia.us/...
"Six percent of registered voters in Iowa decided our nominee, a decision then rubberstamped by New Hampshire."
This is just a ridiculous statement, but at least is starting to get to what the main point should be. Obviously, Iowa and NH do not decide the nominee. There are other states afterwards that hold their own contests (before candidates begin dropping out). You can claim that the top 3 candidates get a bounce from IA/NH (yes, not 1st, but top 3) and therefore those 2 states decides the nominee, but then that implies one of a few things: 1) That voters in other states are incapable of independent thought and just "rubberstamp" the previous results, 2) Might actually have chosen to support a candidate they liked based on their own conclusions or 3) A combination of the two.
Even Kos' supporting quote from Larry Sabato AND his solution misses the point as I stated previously.
The point that Kos and his IA/NH detractors should be making isn't that Iowa and New Hampshire DECIDE the nominee, but that not enough other states get the chance to have the same candidate options. This, of course, is because they drop out due to the lack of money. Since this is the underlying cause for Kos' gripe, the main solution is what so many here advocate for...Public Financing of candidate campaigns.
As of yet, we don't have that, nor even meaningful Campaign Finance Reform. But Iowa and New Hampshire do help to even the media playing ground for those candidates whose pockets are not as deep. Because we are smaller, our media markets are cheaper allowing more candidates to participate early. But the added benefit is the national media that comes to cover the contests. Candidates that otherwise would never be known about throughout the rest of the nation, let alone be able to afford to advertise in large media markets, receive national attention through the press, spreading their names and messages.
When I read diaries like Kos' on Iowa with the kinds of arguments above and here(http://www.dailykos.com/... to me it comes off as a rant against us, especially when the solutions I'm reading about don't actually solve the true problem at hand, but just change the name of the state that's first.