The growing body of Dems who would, at a minimum, consider changing the primary calendar lost an ally yesterday — Howard Dean.
Howard Dean lost the Iowa caucuses a year ago, but that doesn’t mean he wants to dump them as the first presidential nominating event in 2008 if he’s elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
The former Vermont governor said Thursday he sees no reason to keep Iowa from leading off the 2008 nominating season. That’s a point of disagreement between Dean and another leading candidate for chairman.
“I don’t believe that the system’s going to be changed or that the order is going to be changed,” Dean said in an interview with The Des Moines Register. “You’re going to have to show me a reason to change. I’m just not going to change it for change’s sake.”
For those who’ve backed Dean with the idea of significant reform in mind, this has to be a bit of a disappointment. Indeed, as Peter Beinart reminds us this morning, it was Dean who insisted five years ago that the Iowa caucus system was terribly flawed and “dominated by special interests.” Now, however, Dean is willing to protect Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status. In fact, of all the would-be party chairs, Dean is the first to say definitively that he sees no reason to alter Iowa’s position.
For reform-minded activists, that leaves Simon Rosenberg as the only DNC chair candidate who’s on record as saying he’d consider changing the calendar.
“Whatever they end up with, whatever the formula is, the aspiration should be to have more states and more people involved at a co-equal setting with Iowa and New Hampshire,” said Rosenberg, president of the centrist New Democrat Network.
For what it’s worth, the DNC assembled a 40-member commission to examine the primary/caucus calendar. The panel will hold its first of six regional meetings next month before approving a 2008 calendar in February 2006.