Posted on 05/14/2005 5:26:20 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHICAGO - Democrats, looking to reverse their fortunes after two straight White House defeats, met Saturday to hear competing proposals to revamp the election calendar used to choose a presidential nominee every four years.
The three major proposals would focus on regional primaries. Two of those proposals would allow Iowa and New Hampshire to retain their leadoff roles in the candidate selection process.
A third plan, offered by Michigan Democrats, would create a rotating series of six regional primaries. A different region would launch each presidential nominating season.
That plan would allow single-state contests to begin the process, but those states would be rotated. "Share the wealth," said Michigan Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record). "I would not lock in specific states."
Activists from Iowa and New Hampshire vowed to fiercely defend their leadoff status, and said the problem the party faces is excessive "front-loading." In 2004, 30 states had held delegate selection contests by mid-March.
Former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen argued that the crush of early states takes influence away from voters in later states.
"I think front-loading is one of the issues we want to address," said Shaheen.
Tina Abbott of the Michigan Democratic Party argued that the leadoff roles of Iowa and New Hampshire give two tiny and unrepresentative states disproportionate influence on whom the party picks.
"This must be changed," said Abbott. "Under the current system, millions of votes in later states count for nothing."
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (news, bio, voting record) defended his state's position. "It emphasizes face-to-face politics, not big money," he said. "There should be a role in the beginning of our process for the party faithful."
New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch argued: "With 85 years of ingrained tradition, the New Hampshire primary forces candidates to answer questions. Having that opportunity not only makes them better candidates, it makes them better presidents."
Levin, however, said, "What's at stake here is nothing less than a struggle for political equality and political relevance." He blasted "this perpetual privilege that two states have."
The proposals were made before a special commission selected by the Democratic National Committee.
Leslie Reynolds of the National Association of Secretaries of State said her group favored a plan that divided the country into four regions, which would hold rotating primaries. Those elections would follow Iowa's leadoff caucuses and New Hampshire's opening primary.
"Iowa and New Hampshire have both tradition and success," Reynolds said.
A group called Democrats for the West pushed for an early primary group of eight interior western states, but they would also vote after Iowa and New Hampshire.
Brian Kuehl of that group said the region is the fastest growing in the nation, and represents prime areas where Democrats can gain.
"We believe that with coordinated regional party building efforts and concerted attention from the Democratic presidential candidates, many western states will endorse the Democratic nominee in 2008," said Kuehl.
The commission will debate the various proposals in October. In December it will recommend any changes, if any, to be made to the primary calendar.
Republicans are already planning to launch their 2008 nominating process in Iowa and New Hampshire, and potential candidates have begun the painstaking process of courting key activists.
Yes, that's their problem: bad primary processes.
But if they revamp all of those, how will Howard Dean know in which primary process he should scream?
YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHH! The screeching one is really going to solve the problems in the Dim party by changing the Primary schedule. /sarcasm off
They still dungedid! Keep it up RATs!
California should go first, because it has the most electoral votes by far.
They want a big time office, so let's see who has it together.
Big money, big charisma, big ideas, big stamina, big supporting staff, etc.
Applies to both parties, too.
"Republicans are already planning to launch their 2008 nominating process in Iowa and New Hampshire, and potential candidates have begun the painstaking process of courting key activists."
Well, two out of the three plans presented by Dems follow the Republican lead, so as usual...no new ideas from the Dems, LOL!
Keep up the good work, Losers. Now... if we Republicans could only find a way to make the ones WE ELECTED to office actually REPRESENT us all would be right in my little world. *Rolleyes*
I guess none of them is bright enough to realize that it takes electable candidates to win elections. There problem isn't how they pick the loser, the problem is that losers are all they have to pick from.
Pushing up the moderate states to kill off the liberal candidates? Or vice versa?
The RATS have little or no relevance right now - yet they try to make a somewhat stab at making sense. Latest updates from the RAT party come from the depression years. (Tax increases fix everything!) That doesn't exactly jazz future voters.
My projections - the so-called RAT party will suffer even more losses in the House and Senate. This may plunge them into some sort of abyss that they may never recover from. That will force them into being even MORE hysterical and extreme.
And as soon as one of the *Crintons find themselves behind bars for JUST ONE of the crimes they've committed, my dreams will come true...
Bob Dole, Bill Clinton and even Howard Dean (as governor of a pissant state) had actually accomplished something to deserve the nomination, but Kerry's momentum was built simply on a lucky poll when Dean crashed-- a poll taken by the adoring presstitutes which indicated he was electable as long as the public remained uneducated to the reality of his record rather than his whitewashed image.
What is really, really scary is that the worthless Communist playboy came within 3% of getting elected.
Hillary believes she will do poorly in Iowa. She is behind this.
She's right for once.
The basic problem is that the Democratic primary electorate is INCOMPETENT.
In three of the last four truly open nomination battles (84, 88, 92, and 2004) they chose terribly -- pulling off the neat trick of choosing someone who was BOTH far left of the mainstream AND incapable of connecting on a populist level, which would be needed to sell left-wing ideas if anything could.
And I wouldn't credit 1992 so much to competence as to luck. Bill Clinton's force-of-nature ability to get the party to act in its interest in spite of itself, the unexpectedly fast collapse of Bush's popularity post-Gulf War I.
2008 will test that competence once again. With at least two, and possibly as many as four, Southernerns to choose from, the party may still end up debating between giving Kerry a second outing, or going with Hillary Clinton, who fits somewhere between Mondale and Dukakis in terms of core electability.
If you want to be serious about primaries, start them early, and run them one at a time, with the small states first. Run them every few days. after about 20 primaries, you will have had a lot of exposure, a lot of referendums on your candidates, but over 3/4ths of the delegates will still be there to be picked, so you won't have a winner.
But if someone has started winning all the primaries, it might just make it easier for everybody else to drop out and let a candidate sweep to election.
The idea of front-loading a group of primaries such that it is nearly impossible for any candidate without millions of dollars to compete in all of them is simply another way to put the party bosses in charge.
But being democrats, I'm surprised they don't just suggest to do away with the primaries altogether. They already pretty much force all primary opposition out of races, even sometimes their own party (Vermont), or declared candidates (Pennsylvania), or even candidates who have already ONE primaries but turn out to be bad general election candidates (New Jersey).
They also like to run dead people so they can simply appoint the winner (Missouri), or better yet let the other party pay for the seat, and then simply bribe the winner to join their party (vermont).
These have all turned out to be better winning strategies for them than actually allowing elections of their candidates.
"New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch argued: "With 85 years of ingrained tradition, the New Hampshire primary forces candidates to answer questions. Having that opportunity not only makes them better candidates, it makes them better presidents." "
HAHA... That is funny. Expecting the RATS to bow to tradition.
Sure! Confuse the already confused supporters that they still have.
That's really gonna' work to win the White House.
Desperate Democrats!!
I bet when rank and file democrats read this they'll think, "been there, done that". They'll remember the DNC shuffling primary dates around every election since Clinton, trying desperately to figure out a gimmick to keep from losing.
But if they back-load the primary process, then the millions of votes in earlier states count for nothing. How about a Democrat primary system by popular vote instead of delegates? Or a smoke-filled back room at the convention?
More McAuliffe fall-out. I bet you remember this:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40482
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
"Terry McAuliffe didn't expect this. When McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, decided to frontload the Democratic primaries, he was convinced that an early nominee would unify the party. He and his fellow Democrats were sure that hatred of President Bush was widespread and that any nominee with party backing – especially a nominee with appeal to swing voters – would be able to defeat the incumbent. If only the Democrats could grab an early nominee and keep him undefined until the Democratic National Convention, the White House would fall into Democratic hands.
The early primaries were a dangerous tactic. The early passion of primary voters meant that they defined the party. At first, that meant a strong Howard Dean candidacy. But then, the primary voters revealed their main agenda: getting George W. Bush out of office. It didn't matter who replaced him. And that is why Democrats chose John Kerry.
They thought Kerry would be able to withstand attacks from the Bush administration by citing his Vietnam experience. They thought he could pose as a moderate, even though he voted like a liberal. They believed that hatred for President Bush ran so strong that any candidate, even a zombie like Kerry, could beat him by default.
The Democrats who voted for John Kerry must be crying into their beers at this point. The slim lead he took away from the early primaries immediately dissipated, and the campaign became a dogfight, even as President Bush did little to defend his name or define his opponent.
Kerry and his cronies fired political nukes at Bush, slandering him as a war profiteer and a corrupt Saudi plaything. Extra-party organs like MoveOn.org compared Bush to Adolf Hitler. High-ranking Democrats like retired Gen. Wesley Clark questioned Bush's patriotism. Michael Moore, easily the most popular member of the Democratic Party among his base, accused Bush of treason.
Bush did virtually nothing to respond, and yet Kerry could not pull away. It wasn't panic time yet for McAuliffe. After all, Kerry was still leading, and the American population still didn't know Kerry and didn't realize who he was or what he stood for. A Los Angeles Times poll in June 2004 showed that a full third of voters "didn't know enough about Kerry to decide whether he would be a better president than Bush." The train was still running smoothly.
Kerry selected the popular and pretty John Edwards, creating a McAuliffe dream North-South ticket. Still, Kerry could not pull away. And then, the Democratic Convention began. Kerry, who had avoided all attempts to categorize himself in any way, branded himself a Vietnam veteran candidate. He made his service in Vietnam the focal point of his White House run – and still, he could not pull away. He got virtually no bump from the convention.
In August, finally, President Bush began to strike back. All of the undercurrents of anti-Kerry sentiment bubbled to the surface. Veterans remembered his anti-military stance after returning from Vietnam in the 1970s. Americans remembered his anti-military stance during the Cold War and the 1990s. And everyone remembered that, in wartime, all the misdirected vitriol in the world won't protect Americans from attack.
It all added up to this week's devastatingly low approval ratings among registered voters. As of Sept. 14, Kerry's approval ratings stood at 36 percent. By comparison, Michael Dukakis' 1988 approval ratings look positively Reaganesque, at 47 percent. Famous baseball star George Brett once stated that the first thing he looked for in the papers every Sunday was to see who was below the "Mendoza line." He was referring to Mario Mendoza, an infielder with a career average of .215; if a player hit below that average, he was flat-out terrible. To score below Michael Dukakis as a presidential challenger is very much akin to breaking the Mendoza line – call it "breaking the Dukakis line."
So what went wrong for McAuliffe? After all, he got everything he wanted: an early nominee, a nominee with possible swing support, and a nominee who remained largely undefined until the convention. The McAuliffe strategy went south for two reasons: First, John Kerry is imperious and arrogant. Second, Kerry didn't have to define himself – his backers defined him.
With the rise of the alternative media (including so-called "527 groups"), close ties between political parties and those outlets define the candidates, even in the absence of self-definition. Michael Moore and his crowd defined Kerry more than Kerry defined himself. While Kerry remained an enigma, the Michael Moore wackos showed the American public that Kerry's candidacy was about Bush hatred, not American security.
And so when Kerry finally defined his candidacy at the convention, he had already been defined as a far-left candidate. Even his bloviation about Vietnam couldn't mask the radicalism of his supporters. That was the biggest problem with the McAuliffe strategy: The primary voters defined the party candidate. "
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