Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Politicomeat: A modest proposal
Last weekend, a few of the loyal 'Meaters gathered sidled up to the bar and tipped back a few pints as we watched the Saturday games. But surprisingly, the topic du jour was politics, not sports. E.J. mentioned that he has at least one political post in the works, and I thought I'd start things off with my two ideas for reshuffling the primaries.
With all due respect to Snoop and his fellow Live-Free-or-Die-ers, this whole Iowa-New Hampshire nonsense must end. Yes, every state deserves to have a voice, but shouldn't first dibs be given to a few states that are more representative of the country as a whole? My proposal is to kick off the primary season with a joint Florida-Illinois primary day. Florida and Illinois are both relatively large states in the electoral college, their race and ethnicity demographics mirror the United States as a whole, and they're fairly "purple" states, with a good mix of Republican and Democratic interest. Florida and Illinois would give a more accurate measure of the country as a whole. Plus, having two states kicking off the season would help to cushion the advantage of a favorite son like Obama in Illinois.
Don't like that one? OK, how about this: Set five primary dates, 10 states per day, two weeks between each, and rotate them with each presidential election. Every state would be guaranteed to be in a kickoff primary every 20 years. That's fair, no? Or maybe the best thing is to have everyone vote on the same day. Or have people watch the candidates on a reality TV show and then phone in their votes. Or, or... eh, you've all stopped reading by now.
By the bye, my two cents on the T.O. pic: It's sort of a combination of Isaac Hayes and Rod Tidwell.
With all due respect to Snoop and his fellow Live-Free-or-Die-ers, this whole Iowa-New Hampshire nonsense must end. Yes, every state deserves to have a voice, but shouldn't first dibs be given to a few states that are more representative of the country as a whole? My proposal is to kick off the primary season with a joint Florida-Illinois primary day. Florida and Illinois are both relatively large states in the electoral college, their race and ethnicity demographics mirror the United States as a whole, and they're fairly "purple" states, with a good mix of Republican and Democratic interest. Florida and Illinois would give a more accurate measure of the country as a whole. Plus, having two states kicking off the season would help to cushion the advantage of a favorite son like Obama in Illinois.
Don't like that one? OK, how about this: Set five primary dates, 10 states per day, two weeks between each, and rotate them with each presidential election. Every state would be guaranteed to be in a kickoff primary every 20 years. That's fair, no? Or maybe the best thing is to have everyone vote on the same day. Or have people watch the candidates on a reality TV show and then phone in their votes. Or, or... eh, you've all stopped reading by now.
By the bye, my two cents on the T.O. pic: It's sort of a combination of Isaac Hayes and Rod Tidwell.
# posted by Budds @ 3:06 PM 
Comments:
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Missouri would also be a good starting post -- the winner of Missouri has won something like the last 10 elections, which is the longest streak running in the nation. (Of course, that also assumes that W won the 2000 election.)
I completely agree that starting every year with Iowa and N.H. is ludicrous. It's a quaint but outdated tradition. Another possible scenario would be for the smaller states to vote first, building to the states with more delegates at stake. This would be enough to weed out the weaker candidates in the field (Duncan Hunter, Mike Gravel, etc.) while ensuring that all states would have a role in the party nomination process. I've never understood why the parties don't play a larger role in deciding the order of primaries.
Once we get this fixed, we can get to work on abolishing the electoral college.
I completely agree that starting every year with Iowa and N.H. is ludicrous. It's a quaint but outdated tradition. Another possible scenario would be for the smaller states to vote first, building to the states with more delegates at stake. This would be enough to weed out the weaker candidates in the field (Duncan Hunter, Mike Gravel, etc.) while ensuring that all states would have a role in the party nomination process. I've never understood why the parties don't play a larger role in deciding the order of primaries.
Once we get this fixed, we can get to work on abolishing the electoral college.
It's hard to argue that NH deserves to be the first primary, although it's also hard to claim that it has a huge amount of importance in the ultimate nomination by each party (ie "if it ain't broken, why fix it" or as certain people like to say, "if it ain't broken, don't break it") Does anyone remember Paul Tsongas in '92 or Gary Hart in '84? How about John McCain or Pat Buchanan on the Republican side in 2000 and '96?
I actually like the idea of 10 every two weeks. It still serves the purpose of weeding out the wierdos, but doesn't place a particular importance on any one or two states just based on when they have their vote.
Interestingly, Iowa has only had it's status as "first in the nation" since 1972, so I don't get the whole of idea that it would be heresy to take it away from them.
I say screw 'em. They're usually wrong anyway.
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Interestingly, Iowa has only had it's status as "first in the nation" since 1972, so I don't get the whole of idea that it would be heresy to take it away from them.
I say screw 'em. They're usually wrong anyway.
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