I wonder how many people outside of Iowa and New Hampshire are upset by this? I imagine, not that many: ” For nearly a half century, Iowa and New Hampshire have played a pivotal role in American electoral politics. But their top place on the nominating calendar is under threat like never before.” Certainly Republicans outside of those two states are going to default to not-caring at best.
Although the situation is particularly complicated this cycle by the continuing inability of Democrats to create an interesting primary season. As it stands right now, it’s still accurate to say that it won’t matter who will win the Democratic Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary; Hillary Clinton is still the front-runner, and they don’t have anybody better to replace her with. Then again, it kind of doesn’t matter who wins the Republican caucuses and primary in those two states, either: the state GOP organizations in Iowa and New Hampshire cannot guarantee either state for the Republicans in the general election. That’s what gave those two states electoral clout, not some sort of inherent respect for tradition. If there’s no point to pandering…
I know I’m heartily sick of the nomination being all but officially decided before I get a say.
I’m of the opinion that Iowa and New Hampshire voters should be able to experience this, for at least the next fifty years.
Hear, hear.
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And kill the corn ethanol subsidy. With an ax.
Screw that, burn it down like Dresden.
Hey now, not all of Iowans are pig-stupid corn farmers.
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Mew
This is very true.
The thing is, they don’t have much electoral clout to begin with. NH has always been piddly, and Iowa just *lost* a vote. I still favor rotating electorally equal blocks of states or some such regular diversification.
Agreed.
Iowa and NH are small and at least sort-of competitive. Which is a profile I like for early primary states. Unfortunately, the result of pandering to Iowa is some really bad policy (NH, not so much; at least, I can’t think of anything particularly horrible that only exists because NH has a lot of influence in the presidential primaries).
That’s why this cat thinks Iowa should be forced to join Super Tuesday until 2026, but doesn’t object to Dixville Notch reporting early.
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Damn Iowans of *all* parties with their hands out looking for a payoff…
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Mew
Hey Moe – Goodhart’s Law applies. Once a metric is identified as useful, that usefulness will decline as more effort is devoted to changing that metric rather than systemic improvement.
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I am, of course, paraphrasing.
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Mew
The thing New Hampshire and Iowa has going for them is the fact it’s easier to talk to the voters instead of it just revolving around television ads.
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I really think the primary voting should be changed to voting for X number of different candidates so we aren’t dividing the vote and letting the establishment pick our nominee.