The primary calendar gets even worse

August 17, 2007

For the love of God, won’t someone please stop the madness?

According to sources inside both parties, the two state parties in Michigan have agreed to move the state’s primary — legislatively — to Jan. 15. This is a compromise date out of respect for Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, who really wanted to move the primary to Jan. 8. Others wanted the primary on Jan. 22 as a way to, essentially, play ball with the other early states. There was a nice window being created for a Jan. 22, 2008 event. But by moving to Jan. 15, this will put pressure on the other early states to either entertain a December event or lobby the two national parties to not sanction Michigan at all.

The state senate is going to move a bill next week and it will be legislatively driven; the state will pay for the primary, not the two parties.

The calendar was a mess anyway, but it’s reached a whole new level. Most of the nation’s biggest states already moved their primaries up to Feb. 5, creating a de facto national primary. Florida thumbed its nose at the national parties and picked Jan. 29, which threw the chessboard into the air. South Carolina, which insists it has to be the first primary in the South, was forced to move up its date. And New Hampshire, which has to have a certain buffer between it and South Carolina, also has to go earlier. Which means Iowa, which needs a week-long buffer between it and New Hampshire, could hold its caucuses as early as December.

And now Michigan has blown up the chessboard, sending DNC and RNC officials reaching for the Maalox.

What happens now? It’s an unpleasant situation, which is likely to get worse.

If New Hampshire insists on a week-long buffer between it and the subsequent primary, and it does, the Granite State will have to vote by Jan. 8. Iowa could either accept a smaller buffer and vote in the first week in January, keep the buffer and vote in December, or allow New Hampshire to vote before Iowa (which is highly unlikely).

And then, of course, there’s South Carolina, which expected the marquee post-NH vote, and which may not look kindly on Michigan’s power play.

What’s more, several huge states (California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois) agreed to Feb. 5 based on mandates from the national parties. If Michigan and Florida have announced, “We no longer care about the parties’ ‘rules,'” what’s to stop other states from blowing off the agreed-upon Feb. 5 threshold? Absolutely nothing.

Michigan’s Carl Levin has been talking about destroying the primary calendar for a while now, and it looks like he’ll get his wish. The status quo is now, officially, broken. A massive overhaul is inevitable in advance of 2012. (I know, you’ve heard that before, in previous cycles, but it’s never been this broken before.)

What a pompous, addled nation we are, posing as the one which teaches the rest of the world about Democracy. One which believes itself to be the “last, best hope” and all that. What a sick joke.

  • The real question is whether the parties have the backbone to rein this in. Nothing blows up at all if the national parties simply say “I dont care how big your state is, and I don’t care how loudly you scream. You can send delegates to the convention on your dime to watch and enjoy, but they will not be counted as votes. We’re still the national organization; you want to be a part, you play by our rules. This is not the Anarchy Party. So go back behind Jan 21 so no one moves to December, or you don’t count. Simple as that.”

  • The real question is whether the parties have the backbone to rein this in.

    No, the real question is which party dares go first to defy a battleground state delegation.

    I’m hopeful that Iowa’s Democratic governor will do the right thing and say fine, whatever, you go first if you like, we’re not going to push the caucus date up to the point where it starts to interfere with the holidays.

  • Shhhh! Please, Haik, don’t give them any ideas – they might actually do it!
    (But no sooner would they agree to that before someone decided to go the week before Election Day 2008. . .)

  • I’m kind of enjoying the shambles. That Feb. 5 de facto national primary always felt like bad news anyway; the further the first group of states goes toward New Year’s (or earlier), the more those big states–including mine (NY), FWIW–look dumb.

    This isn’t to suggest the current system is anything like effective; look at the nominees it produces. And the problems with the exalted roles of lilly-white, not-very-urban Iowa and New Hampshire are well documented. With those things in mind, I’m not sorry to see Michigan–which at least has some cities, is more diverse, and has a union presence–moving up in the mix.

    The rotating regional primary approach seems a smarter methodology to me. Maybe next time.

  • Nothing blows up at all if the national parties simply say “I dont care how big your state is, and I don’t care how loudly you scream. You can send delegates to the convention on your dime to watch and enjoy, but they will not be counted as votes.

    But that won’t change things completely, because, while having a say at the nominating convention is important, these states also seem to think that just being early is important. Being early gains them candidate visits, press discussion, and the dollars that those two things bring. I wonder is having the nominating votes dismissed will just make them that much more proud of their state…tap in to the victim mentality.

    What I don’t understand is why Levin, at least as reported by the article, seems so intent on breaking the calendar? I understand the reasons for the state legislature, but what does he think he will get out of it? Purely speculation, but he might want some negotiation with party leaders to see what he can get out of respecting the party’s wishes. Is he mad over the increasing push towards stricter CAFE regulations? Whatever it is, if the Democratic Party had real leadership, they’d tell him to get in line or he is going to have some serious trouble getting what he wants in the next session.

  • When you come down to it, it’s the media that treats political campaigns as “horse races” to blame for this mess. The media creates the illusion of candidates’ quest for the nominations as “jockeying for the lead.” Isn’t time we told the media to screw off.

  • We need instant gratification. I still think voting primary, general, or otherwise should be spread out over several weeks. But that will just allow more people to vote and, hopefully, result in an actual count. No one wants that.

  • I wonder if any states have a secret plan to hold theirs in October. Absentee voters be damned.

  • Count me among those in states like Florida, California, and New York who rarely get to cast a meaningful primary vote. I have never understood why New Hampshire and Iowa have to go first. Why does a tiny, mostly white state and a rural state with entrenched agricultural interests (Hello ethanol!) get an outsized voice in who the next president is going to be. I know the press are suckers for those phoney diner handshake photo ops in Manchester and all, and I’m sure that the politcal crew on CNN know where all the best B&Bs are by now, but come on!

    Parties, show some backbone! the best plan I’ve heard is the one with 4 regional primaries (Northeast, South, Midwest, West, or however you want to divide it), held two to four weeks apart, with the order rotating every election cycle. So, If in 2012 it goes NE, S, MW, W then the South would go first in 2016 and theNortheast would go to the back of the line.

    I really don’t much care if New Hampshire gets miffed by that. It’s more tradition than anything else that has put them first in any case.

  • I’ll repeat again my problems with the 4 regional primary plan. Going first matters, and 25% of the delegates really matters. So it is almost a certainty that the region going first would pick the nominee in that cycle, and it would almost certainly be a “local.” So the year the Southeast goes first, we will have a southern candidate. Next time may be the NE and we will have a New Englander. I’m not sure that makes sense.

    Second, it rules out slow-building candidates (as does this year’s compressed schedule). There would be no Jimmy Carter — one of only two Dems to win in the last nearly 40 years — unless it happened to be the South’s turn to go first, and even then it might not happen. Regions are large enough that you still would need massive money up front to compete in that many states at once.

    Third, the flip side of my second point is that it really wouldn’t be any more balanced or more likely to create shared attention and spreading out of the benefits than the current system. Lets take a hypotehtical Western regional primary. California, maybe Arizona and Washington get attention. No one will care about the other 9 states in that region any more than they do now. You go from the supposed ill of small states (Iowa and NH) having undue influence to having the biggest two states in the first two regions having undue weight. I’m not sure that is an improvement — I would argue that Iowa and NH going first forces candidates to run in what is more of a swing state environment than letting California and NY pick the candidate since they are both pretty reliably blue.

    There are other plans (if I get a minute I’ll try to link back to my “megaphone” shaped diverse-state system), but I really have some problems with roating regionals.

  • I for one would like to see the primary schedule scrapped. Iowa and New Hampshire should lose their “me first” rights after what happened in 2004.

  • I don’t know what the hurry about the primaries is; it’s not as if we’re gonna get rid of Bush any sooner if we only move the primaries. Let’s move the elections, too. Say, to early June…

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