Primary Madness

From the DK:

New Hampshire is throwing one of its usual hissy fits over the possibility of Nevada having its caucuses before the NH primary, and looks to reset the calendar to leapfrog not just Nevada, but Iowa as well.

"I believe we should hold the New Hampshire primary the day after the Iowa caucus or on the Tuesday of the week before the Iowa caucus," New Hampshire State Rep. Jim Splaine, a Democrat from Portsmouth and author of the state's election law, told me in a phone interview. "We must protect the traditions of New Hampshire."

That would not please Iowa, which has its own laws and traditions and will always try to move its caucus to be eight days ahead of New Hampshire. New Hampshire has no problem with that, but some in Iowa now fear that in trying to fend off Nevada, New Hampshire will set a date so early that Iowa will be unable to get ahead of it.

Gordon Fischer, former head of the Iowa Democratic Party, is very worried about that possibility. "I don't like Nevada being in there, either," he said. "Everyone in Iowa politics is aware of Secretary Gardner's power. Once you break the historic link between New Hampshire and Iowa, you are asking for trouble, and trouble is what we are going to get."

That frackin' "tradition" is a naked power grab at the expense of the rest of the country. It's one whose days are numbered, no matter how hard NH and Iowa struggle to hang on. And the more unreasonable they are (like in this case), the quicker the day their monopoly ends.

The DNC can fire back easily -- refuse to certify any delegates "won" by the unsanctioned calendar change. New Hampshire would be relegated to "straw poll" status.

The DNC has established punishments for the states and candidates who violate its calendar, but it is toothless: The Democratic convention can change the rules any way it sees fit, and it is not likely to punish the nominee of the party or states that it needs to carry in the general election.

Hogwash. Elections don't hinge on process issues like this one. And if, by chance, they did, then I'll take Nevada's five electoral votes over New Hampshire's four.

I think Kos has this exactly right. (I'll wait while folks get themselves back upright in their chairs.) These archaic primary practices do nothing but handicap the parties using them. If either major party wanted to gain a competitve advantage over the other in 2008 they could do no better than scrapping the old primary system altogether for a more streamlined process. That, of course, will never happen, but at a bare minimum the parties should force Iowa and New Hampshire to drop their childish ways.