1115.org

There are plenty of good things that can be said about New Hampshire and Iowa; after all, without New Hampshire Vermont would get lonely, and without Iowa we would need to rely on Nebraska to fill the corn vacuum. But for all the good things that New Hampshire and Iowa provide the rest of us, every four years they team up to frustrate Democrats in the 48 other states that don’t have privileged status in choosing our presidential candidates.

The New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucus date back for decades, but came into prominence in the mid-1970s. People started paying attention to Iowa after Jimmy Carter won there in 1976, while New Hampshire created a state law in 1977 to guarantee that it always has the first primary in the country. Since then, both states have earned an undeniable amount of power over the selection process. The problem is, neither state is exactly a diverse cross-section of Democratic voters, and other heavily-Democratic states (like our home base in California) wind up having little to say in the decision. This is not a policy that creates a strong race between candidates.

Democrats recently took baby steps toward adding more diversity to the selection process by proposing more caucuses and primaries:

The final report of the Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling reaffirmed Iowa’s opening caucuses and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary election but also proposed changes that would authorize caucuses in one or two other states between Iowa and New Hampshire and primaries in one or two other states the week after New Hampshire.

“We’re proposing an incremental solution that is neither radical nor trivial,” said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), co-chairman of the commission.

It indeed is an incremental solution, especially to those who wanted to tell Iowa and New Hampshire to take a flying leap off a short pier, but incremental progress is better than none. Of course, the lone dissenters in the commission were predictably from New Hampshire:

The key changes were adopted 23 to 2, with New Hampshire’s two commissioners, former governor Jeanne Shaheen and former ambassador Terry Shumaker, the only dissenters. Kathy Sullivan, the state Democratic chairwoman, condemned the changes in a later statement, saying the new plan “would make the process narrower and less democratic and it would be a huge setback to Democrats’ efforts to carry Iowa and New Hampshire in the future.”

So, let me get this straight—if New Hampshire and Iowa Democrats don’t get special perks, they will suddenly turn into Republicans? Or they will not vote out of spite? Also, I’m sure Kathy Sullivan is a wonderful person, but I would love to know how opening the primary process to more states will make the process “narrower” and “less democratic”, especially when New Hampshire is 96% white and ranks #41 out of 50 in population by state (Iowa is 30th, and New York City alone has about twice as many people as both states combined). Opening the process to more states, and making sure that all the primaries aren’t crowding into each other at the beginning of the schedule, will let more Democrats have a voice in how a nominee gets chosen. Why would this be a bad thing?

I’ll tell you why. If the nomination process was broadened, and Iowa and New Hampshire’s influence faded, there would be less reason for news networks to follow every development. There would be less hand-shaking and photo opportunities in homespun diners and on family farms. And less instances of candidates twisting their messages just to appeal to one or two states. And I imagine there would be less of that sweet tourist money as well. Iowa and New Hampshire like being, for a small point in time, the center of the political universe. The proposed rule changes aren’t going to radically shift that reality, but it’s a start.