NH primary holds on … barely
Michigan Democrats voted today to move their primary to Saturday, Feb. 3, after being threatened by the national DNC if the state moved its primary before NH’s
["Democrats vote on presidential caucus date, new commission"]. The state will join Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, and South Carolina, holding primaries and caucuses on that date [until more changes occur].
The deal made with Michigan is that Terry McAuliffe will create a commission to study the primary system and make recommendations for changes in 2008.
At issue is whether NH is "diverse" enough. In some ways, the democrats who complain about NH’s ‘the first in the nation’ primary status have relevant points. The state is whiter and more conservative than other states. But the issue depends on how you measure “diversity” and over the last 20 years, the demographics in NH have changed.
It has become more politically moderate, with a diversity of incomes, viewpoints, ethnicities, and races, especially as Massachusetts residents have moved north.
Is Manchester as urban as Detroit? No, but that doesn’t necessarily mean letting the Michigan caucus occur before the NH primary will change anything about how the primary process works.
The problems with the primary process have nothing to do with typical complaints about diversity. The problems have everything to do with how the process is structured, not who gets to go first. The “criteria” of being a candidate – viability, electability, the money-raised, how seriously a candidate is taken by the establishment media, etc. – are the biggest problems with the primaries. Allowing Michigan or some southern states to go first, just because there are more blacks or Latinos, doesn’t fix any of these problems. As well, candidates quit too early. They assume that if they don’t win NH or Iowa they are out of it. While this is essentially true, candidates should not forget their political history.
Look at both 1976 and 1992, for instance.
In 1976, after it looked like Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter had the whole thing sewn up, Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Frank Church jumped into the primaries – in May no less – in an effort to stop Carter from getting a first ballot nomination. Because the primaries were spread out, and the democrats had a number of candidates with a collection of delegates who had already dropped out, Carter looked vulnerable.
In the end, neither Brown nor Church was successful. But the point is that they tried to stop Carter. Had only one of them jumped in – or one of the other liberal candidates like Sen. Fred Harris or Gov. Mo Udall hung on through May – that candidate might have succeeded by creating a coalition of dissident voices, and the past would have been a whole hell of a lot different.
In 1992, a similar thing happened: Sen. Paul Tsongas dropped out of the race in early March, handing Brown primary victories in Connecticut and Vermont, with a slim poll lead going into the April 7 New York primary. The ABC – Anyone But Clinton – crowd was fast and furiously working behind the scenes to stop a candidate they thought would be destroyed by Republicans in the final election. But instead of galvanizing behind Brown, the ABC crowd convinced Tsongas to jump back into the primary, which he did. This move – along with Brown’s solicitation of support from Jesse Jackson which angered Jewish voters – was enough to solidify victory for Clinton in New York and Wisconsin. Tsongas quickly dropped out again. But his dirty work was done: Brown’s insurgent campaign was crippled, and Clinton went on to become the nominee and president.
Check out my analysis from March 23 about how the Democratic primaries could play out next year: Woodlief 2004 piece in the Boston Herald