Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

Relevance

I finally took the time to take another look at the current calendar of presidential primary caucuses and elections, and as a Pennsylvanian I'm no more pleased than I was three years ago.

Oh, there's been a furious flurry of repositioning, so much so that several states have dates yet to be determined. New Hampshire's petulant child statute, demanding that they be first for any primaries, means that in order to maintain that they will currently have to hold their primary in 2007 unless they decide that Wyoming's Jan 5th caucus is sufficiently outside the "similar election" phrasing of their law, which seems to be a fair assumption considering that Iowa and New Hampshire seem to each be secure in their individual stations as political bellwethers.

Here's the current list as pulled from NPR's site:

Updated Sept. 4, 2007: The 2008 primaries are scheduled earlier than ever, and some dates remain in flux, as states jockey to make their primaries more relevant by holding them sooner. Most state delegates to the parties' nominating conventions will be chosen on Feb. 5, 2008 -- a date being called Super Duper Tuesday.

2008 Presidential Primary and Caucus Calendar
Date Election (* =Caucuses)

TBD New Hampshire
January Jan. 5 Wyoming* (R)
Jan. 14 Iowa*
Jan. 15 Michigan
Jan. 19 Nevada*, South Carolina (R)
Jan. 29 Florida, South Carolina (D)
February Feb. 1 Maine* (R)
Feb. 5 Alabama, Alaska*, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado* (D) (see note 1), Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota*, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico* (D), New York, North Dakota*, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah
Feb. 9 Louisiana
Feb. 10 Maine* (D)
Feb. 12 District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia
Feb. 19 Hawaii* (D) (see note 2), Washington, Wisconsin
March March 4 Massachusetts, Ohio (see note 3), Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont
March 8 Wyoming* (D)
March 11 Mississippi
April April 22 Pennsylvania (see note 4)
May May 6 Indiana, North Carolina
May 13 Nebraska, West Virginia
May 20 Kentucky, Oregon
May 27 Idaho
June June 3 Montana, New Mexico* (R), South Dakota

August Aug. 25-28 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colo.
September Sept. 1-4 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
No Election: Kansas has opted not to hold a presidential primary election in 2008.

Notes:
1 - Colorado Republicans have not yet finalized the date of their caucus.
2- Hawaii's Republican Party will not hold a primary or caucus; the party will select delegates to the national convention in May 2008.
3 - Ohio lawmakers have introduced a bill to move the primary date to Jan. 29, 2008.
4 - According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, the following dates remain under consideration: Feb. 12 and March 4.

Source: National Association of Secretaries of State

So, where do you fall on this timeline?

As you can see, we in PA are currently still sitting in the latter half of April, this year it's the 22nd, a date so ridiculously late that aside from any state and local issues that may be on the ballot we may as well save everyone the money and follow Kansas' example of simply not holding a presidential primary. Even the dates currently under consideration (as seen in Note 4) - Feb 12 and March 4 - are ones where it's difficult to imagine our primary votes would make a difference in determining who our chosen party's nominee will be. Some friends in Kentucky seem even worse off with their May 20th date, though honestly the chance that any primary held after February 5th will have any impact beyond simply patting an all-but-anointed candidate on the back seems slim to none, so we're really in the same boat.

I know that the intent of the current structure is a mix of state's rights issues and attempting to prevent the primary campaigns from devouring as much or even more cash than is currently consumed by each, new, record-setting presidential campaign season. The argument is that were we to go for a national primary day then each primary candidate would need to be able to raise enough cash to potentially mount two national campaigns. At this point, though, I can't see how this could be any worse than what we have now. Attempts to dam contributions/spending through one avenue only increases it in another, if not causing a new one to be created. And it isn't as if the current system realistically enables just anyone to mount an effective campaign -- millionaires and billionaires are already all but required to make a candidate viable.

The only clear truth is that the current primary system is a sham.

Maybe getting almost everyone to move to February 5th, letting spoiled New Hampshire take January 29th or even earlier (perhaps letting Iowa take a space in between for its caucus) and then having the media focus intensely on the campaigning in New Hampshire (and Iowa, if it insists on maintaining that spot) so that the polling organizations can see how it's affecting the likely voters in all the other states... oh, I know, it'll still be a mess with the same fantastically huge sums of money being spent chasing each vote and the states with the most delegates getting the most attention, but, again, it has to be better than what we have now.

The candidate I've actually wanted to vote for each time the field's opened up in a primary race has been eliminated by a handful of states long before the choice came to me, leaving me with a lesser of two evils choice each presidential election year, and I honestly don't believe the result would have been the same if we were all reaching for levers on the same day.