Moving the Primaries

So South Carolina has moved its primary up to January 19.

South Carolina’s primary was originally scheduled for February 2. But then Florida scheduled its primary for January 29 to get ahead of South Carolina. South Carolina got annoyed at no longer being the first southern state with a primary, so it moved its primary.

This means that New Hampshire and Iowa are legally obligated to move their primary and caucus. Under state laws, the New Hampshire primary has to be held at least seven days before any other state primary, and the Iowa caucus has to be held at least eight days before any other state votes at all. So New Hampshire’s going to have to move its primary up from January 22 to at least January 12. And Iowa’s going to have to move its caucuses from January 14 to January 4.

If the leapfrogging continues, the Iowa caucuses could wind up happening in late 2007.

Isn’t this a bit ridiculous, the first primaries occurring nearly a year before the general election? The major party candidates will be chosen by February 5, and we’ll have a Democrat and a Republican sniping at each other for nine months.

That’s quite a long time, isn’t it? Maybe we should just move up the general election from November to, say, July. And we can move Inauguration Day up to September 2008.

Heck, we may as well start the 2012 primaries now. Candidates can declare their candidacies today and start railing against President X’s administration before President X is even elected or nominated.

Why don’t we hold the 2016 Olympics next year? And can I retire tomorrow?

3 thoughts on “Moving the Primaries

  1. I am all in favor of waiting on this whole primary thing, in the hopes that Clinton’s campaign will self-destruct like Howard Dean’s.

    I think there should be a random lottery every four years to determine the order of the primaries. No offense, Iowa, but you twats stuck us with John Kerry. Your caucus privileges should be revoked for that. Why do a bunch of flyover rubes get to determine the course of the country? Hello, it’s time for a liberal, enlightened state like Oregon to have the first primary, and it shouldn’t be earlier than six months before the election.

    What’s going on right now is a waste of time. We’ve got Obama and Clinton sniping at each other, but we’d be a hell of a lot better off with either of them in charge. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, goodness gracious me, this country would be better with Donald Duck in the White House. (At least he spoke English.) Can we please just get back to concentrating on how bad Bush sucks?

  2. Florida’s new law enacted in May specifies its primary shall be held 7 days after N.H.’s primary (but no earlier than Jan. 8).

    So Florida moves up its date automatically if N.H. changes its date.

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