Perhaps I'm just grumpy this Wednesday morning. But this
drives me crazy. What have Iowa and New Hampshire done to deserve such influence on the Democratic nomination?
I have honestly never heard a credible argument for maintaining the status quo other than "tradition." No one has presented -- in my opinion -- a clear value proposition for why New Hampshire and Iowa should be first and not heavily African-American states like South Carolina or moderate states like Pennsylvania.
I've been to New Hampshire and didn't see very much diversity there. How can we ever expect to have a diverse national ticket when the gauntlet through which candidates are expected to pass is not diverse?
So, we have an nomination process that requires candidates to pander to ethanol enthusiasts and Patriots fans. I'd much rather hear what candidates for the Dem nomination think about reinvesting in America's urban core, or meaningful education reform, etc.
Has anyone else ever heard a clear reason for why Iowa and New Hampshire should be first? I mean, after all, they did give us John F. Kerry...
Now that the commission has made its proposal and the Democratic National Committee is deciding what to do, the reviews from outsiders are a mixed bag. New Hampshire politicians are nearly uniform in deploring the proposed changes. Political scientists, meanwhile, disagree over whether the recommendations would diminish or add to the problems they were designed to solve.
Elaine C. Kamarck, a Harvard professor, a longtime Democratic activist and one of the first witnesses before the commission, calls the proposals inadequate and fears they will only add to the problem of stacking early events on top of one another, a phenomenon known as "front-loading."
The risk of a front-loaded primary calendar is that it produces a nominee long before many voters have begun to pay attention, or seriously weigh who would be the party's most effective contender in a general election. "Let me just say that this does not seem to solve the problem," Kamarck said.
But Thomas E. Mann, a Brookings Institution scholar who appeared with Kamarck to offer expert testimony, praised the panel for smartly navigating a thicket of conflicting interests, arguing that the proposed schedule will not contribute further to front-loading. "My view is they squeezed the most they possibly could out of it," he said.
The panel, which carried the unwieldy name of Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling, made two sets of recommendations, one dealing with the opening phase of the nominating calendar and the other with the later phases.
The commission came into existence as part of a bargain between former DNC chairman Terence R. McAuliffe and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). Levin has long agitated against what he calls the privileged position of Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the first caucus and first primary every four years. During the 2004 presidential campaign cycle, McAuliffe bought peace with Levin by promising to appoint a commission after the election if the senator would agree not to try to blow up the calendar for that year.
The commission, chaired by former labor secretary Alexis M. Herman and Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), began work early in the year under pressure to add diversity to the early part of the nomination battle -- diversity being a code word for diminishing the significance of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Proponents of a new system argued that the two small, largely white states are not representative enough of the country and the Democratic Party to warrant the influence they have on who becomes the nominee. As supporters see it, states in other regions, with larger African American and Latino populations and economies with more manufacturing and union representation, deserve a louder voice in winnowing the field and influencing the outcome.
The commission's final recommendation was a classic compromise. Seeking to avoid angering Iowa and New Hampshire voters, the panel reaffirmed Iowa's status as the first state to hold a caucus and New Hampshire's as the first to hold a primary. Seeking to mollify the critics of those two states, the commission proposed inserting one or two caucuses between Iowa and New Hampshire in mid-January 2008 and then adding one or two primaries shortly after the Granite State's primary. No other states would be authorized to hold contests before Feb. 5, 2008.
The proposal disappointed the most vociferous critics of the current system, who were dismayed by the reaffirmation of Iowa's and New Hampshire's status. It also prompted complaints from New Hampshire politicians, who saw the insertion of more events before their primary as effectively diluting the state's importance. For half a century, New Hampshire's contest has generated more attention than any other primary or caucus and has become an integral part of the state's identity.
The DNC must ratify these proposed changes at a meeting in April, but New Hampshire still has the ability to negate what the national party wants to do.
Under New Hampshire law, the secretary of state is required to schedule that state's primary at least seven days before any other state holds a "similar election." Iowa's caucuses are different enough to avoid triggering the provision, but New Hampshire Secretary of State William M. Gardner said in a recent interview that many statewide caucuses are actually primaries in disguise and could prompt countermeasures by his state.
Noting that "we've walked this road before" when other states have tried to encroach on New Hampshire, Gardner said he is confident of the outcome of the debate over the 2008 calendar. "We will preserve the tradition that we have had," he insisted.
But any move by Gardner in late 2007, when he will have to set the date of the New Hampshire primary, could trigger protests and countermoves by Michigan's Levin and others.
The other big complaint is that there are so many contests so early in the year that a presidential candidate becomes unstoppable just by winning in Iowa and New Hampshire and riding the momentum through the next round of contests.
Indeed, the 2004 calendar was designed expressly to encourage an early winner -- on the theory that he would emerge with fewer scars and more money to prepare for the general election showdown. Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) swept to an early nomination victory. But backers of former senator John Edwards (N.C.) felt he had too little time to make his case that he would have been a stronger opponent to President Bush.
The commission proposals address concerns about front-loading in two ways. First, there could be fewer contests in the first 15 days of voting. In 2004, there were nine Democratic contests in that opening round, including Iowa and New Hampshire. In 2008, there could be as few as four and no more than six contests in a similar period.
Beyond this, the panel has two ideas aimed at discouraging too many states from scheduling their contests close to the Feb. 5 date that formally opens the remainder of the nominating season. One is to limit to five the number of contests that could be held in any week. The other calls for giving states bonus delegates to the national nominating convention the later they hold their primaries or caucuses.
William G. Mayer, who has edited or co-authored several books on the nominating process, believes the net effect may be to diminish the problem of stacking too many events early in the year. "It is somewhat less front-loaded . . . than the 2004 calendar," he said.
But Kamarck fears that the effect of the changes will still be a quick outcome in the battle for the Democratic nomination, if only because "there is no time for subsequent electorates to reflect on what happened" in the first few contests.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean and the rest of the national committee now will have three months to wrestle with the proposals before starting to set up the 2008 calendar, but if New Hampshire refuses to yield, the party could face another nasty internal debate and the primary-caucus schedule could remain in flux until just before the voting begins.