The presidential primary season ought not to be a looked at as a horse race. What the folks of Iowa want is not necessarily related to what the folks of New Hampshire want, ditto Michigan and South Carolina, etc. In other words, while I can understand how “Hillary seems to be doing well among group X” and “McCain is drawing support from group Y” or “Biden isn’t doing well and is likely to quit” are somewhat reasonable interpretations of what’s going on, primary/caucus-wise, the whole “momentum” thing strikes me as silly. I mean, are the folks in South Carolina really going to vote for candidate X because s/he did well in a previous primary? How stupid is that?
I can sort of understand the funding thing (which is what has an actual effect from the whole “momentum” phenomenon), but this whole “Obama is in the lead! No, Hillary is catching up!” kind of horse race thing strikes me as extremely silly.
At some point the media needs to be told to shut the hell up and just let us elect the candidate we want. That the supposedly ‘neutral’ major media try to shape the elections drives me bonkers!
What…
You want the Press to actually report issues and where the candidates stand on those issues?
Crazy man.
Then what would Chris Matthews have to do for several hours a day then. The entire media is set up to do nothing but Horse Race reporting or in the Case of the Media Heathers (Dowd, Broder, Brooks, Will, etc) make up stuff and report it as fact.
QOTD via Digby
Video here.
It bugs me that candidates have to drop out because of money this early in the race. I guess I want the positively unelectable candidates like Tancradeo to drop out….However, it’s rather sad that someone like John Edwards who I feel is a viable president might run out of money because he didn’t win in Iowa or New Hampshire. It’s no wonder that states are all in a hurry to get their primaries moved up. The rest of us just want to pretend we have a say. I’d love to see some law passed that makes all of the primaries for a presidential election year be held on the same day.
Amusingly enough…
Todays RMN headline is “It’s a horserace.”
Oh how I love our useless press, they are so easy to mock. ;P
There are aspects of the Iowa / New Hampshire primary initial pair that I like (the personal candidate contact, etc.). I agree, though, that the sequencing of things remains unfortunate, so that the whole horse race meme (yes, I saw the headline too, BD) is just exagerrated.
The problem with a single national date for primaries is similar to the problem with a single national election (aside from the fact that there’s no constitutional basis to mandate it), i.e., the candidates will go only to the “battleground” states where they feel their presence will make a difference.
I agree fully that losing, even losing big-time, in Iowa or NH (or even both) ought not to effectively disqualify a candidate.