Timing of primaries needs to change
Poor Mike Bloomberg. To date, he’s spent nearly $300 million to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, yet fell a bit short in Iowa. Caucus participants in the Hawkeye State’s first-inthe-nation contest gave Bloomberg a whopping zero percent of the vote. Likewise, Elizabeth Warren is seeing red since she couldn’t pull a feather out of her hat to win, despite being a fairly recent frontrunner. She came in third.
And then there is former Vice President Joe Biden, who seems to have been running in Iowa primaries since the ’80s -- the 1880s -- and limped to a fourthplace showing.
The Dems’ night was marred by monumental embarrassment when a new computer system designed to tally votes crashed. That debacle left the candidates livid, caucus-goers bewildered, Donald Trump gleeful, and the world in disbelief. Unfathomably, it took the better part of a week to sift through the results, with some claiming that the screw-up opened the door to voter fraud.
In the aftermath, there have been calls to strip Iowa of its “golden position” as America’s first nominating contest.
Right call, but totally wrong reason.
The infinitely more important issue is why we continue to allow a system that gives Iowa and New Hampshire voters a vastly outsized say in who our nominees will be. Iowa has 41 delegates, and the Granite State has a mere 24 – out of the 1,990 necessary to win the Democratic nomination on a first ballot (and 2,375 if the convention is contested).
Granted, Mr. Bloomberg decided not to compete in the early states, but why should he have to do that? Why should candidates be forced to pick and choose states in which to campaign? Years of excruciatingly hard work should not get flushed down the toilet simply because of a non-stellar performance in one or two states. The president represents all 50 states – not just some – but that’s not reflected in our current primary system.
The disproportionate power of the early states accomplishes three things:
• The rest of the country grows angrier every four years.
• That resentfulness leads to significant voter apathy because of the correct mentality that “my vote doesn’t count since the winner has already been chosen.” For example, Pennsylvania’s primary vote almost never matters, as most candidates have long since dropped out, and the nomination is typically locked up by the Keystone State’s primary election day. As a result, critically important state and local races, many of which affect people much more than a national contest, fly under people’s radar, and voter turnout nosedives.
• The eventual nominee leaves much to be desired.
Change will require courage to speak out against the party hierarchy that promotes the undue influence of early states. Despite campaign advisers who would cringe at such a gutsy strategy, it would be worth its weight in bushels, as that’s exactly the kind of leadership Americans are desperately seeking.
But don’t hold your breath. Frontrunners are almost always part of the establishment, so count them out. And long-shot challengers either suck up to party leaders or spend an entire year in one state pandering to a particular constituency.
To make the system fair, we should divide the nation into four equally diverse groupings, with no one set having too many large states, and rotate each so that every four years, a different bloc votes first. That would offer enough variation so that local or regional issues would not dominate the campaigns, and the diversity of Americans’ interests would be better reflected. With only four primary election dates, every state would have a significant say in which nominee wins.
The downside is that nationwide campaigning would drive campaign costs up, thus increasing the need for more fundraising.
Americans will peacefully choose their next leader, continuing a miracle that we take for granted. The not-so-great part is that many of the 97 percent who don’t live in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina will, yet again, have a limited voice in their party’s presidential nominee.
Enough of being pa’ fa’ tha’ coua’se. It’s time to do the truly American thing of returning power to the people, instead of relying on Hawkeye butter cow sculptors and New Hampshire lobsta’ fishermen who still don’t know there’s an “r” in the alphabet.