Sam and Ivan talk about:
- Sam: My Computer Sucks
- Ivan: Maybe I could live with Hillary
- Hillary’s Collapsing Campaign
- Hillary’s Self-Inflicted Wounds
- More Stuff Goes Missing
- Divided Republicans
- Path to a Brokered Convention
- Newt Returns?
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You guys mentioned the primaries (and caucuses) being moved up so that there would be more time devoted to campaigning with set candidates and the like. I don’t believe that’s actually the cause. In fact, I doubt the candidates are too jazzed about this front-loaded situation.
Instead, many states with later primaries, especially big ones like California and Florida, were irritated by being ignored by primary candidates. So, a movement started to get the state placed earlier in the process, so that it would still be important to involve California, for instance. In the past, decisions were already made before California primaries occurred, and the general sense was the Californians were being shortchanged by the process.
What began as an effort to push involvement became a mad rush to be at the start. New Hampshire and Iowa laws require them to go first, so they couldn’t even set dates until all of the other states did. The candidates didn’t have time to know which state was going to wind up when, and many probably didn’t set up their campaign machinery properly early-on to take advantage of the changed primary landscape.
And so, we’ve got this mess. Not because of a desire to know who the major party candidates are for a longer period of time, but because the voters of a couple of big states felt they weren’t being treated sufficiently well.