How would the issues in the primaries be different if we had South Carolina and Nevada

[dsc]

Last edited Wed Aug 12, 2015, 12:35 AM - Edit history (1)

as the first states instead of Iowa and New Hampshire? Ethanol is a sacred cow in this country thanks to Iowa's position as first in the nation primary. New Hampshire has one of the highest student debt loads in the country and three of the five candidates on our side have platforms to relieve student debt and college costs. What issues would be at the forefront if Nevada and South Carolina were the first two instead?

To expand on this. Would BLM have had to crash events if the first campaign state was SC where black voters make up about half the voters? The fact is no candidate had a detailed plan on this issue until after they crashed Netroots. Would gun control be a bigger issue if Las Vegas and SC were the first locales of campaigning and not Concord and Des Moines? We are a much less homogeneous party than the Republicans. For them the states matter considerably less. For us, the party in Iowa and New Hampshire has a different set of issues than that in states that are more diverse. If we don't want BLM to hijack our events it might behoove us to have our early campaign states have some black people in them so our candidates have incentive to feature issues they care about.

[jeff47]

1. How 'bout CA and TX as the first two?

Would be quite a different race.

I am in favor of stopping our "These states get to go first, forever" system.

[dsc]

2. I chose them since they are currently 3 and 4

I will say TX and CA would be expensive first states. But yes, they would bring different issues.

[yeoman6987]

3. I don't think it would be financially possible to start with tjose

However without costs, it would be great to start with CA and TX.

[jeff47]

5. Yeah, I'd like to do a rotating system or a regional primary system

but have not bothered to work out the details.

[yeoman6987]

6. I think that would be great

Every four year rotate the first four states so eventually they all get a chance. I think besides costs, they picked Iowa and New Hampshire because one was red and one was blue but now both are purple and outlived their usefulness.

[jeff47]

7. Main problem with that is it's 200 years before you're first again.

Which seems rather long. And there's some states with rather unique issues that could skew the election a lot via a very small number of people.

Hence "or regional primaries", but I can't make that seem too fair either. One "region" would be NY, and another "region" would be CA. Then divide the rest of the country into regions that are similar in population size. Say, IA, NE, KS, SD on the same day.

Then rotate through the regions for "first". But that has it's own slew of problems in drawing the regions fairly. Who's going to give a damn about WY and ID when OR and WA vote on the same day? Where do you put Alaska?

At which point I stopped trying to come up with a solution.

[DCBob]

4. I agree it should be changed.

Maybe 4 states first one from each region.

[daleanime]

8. Looking at the problem we are having with student debt.....

I would hope that it would still be on the agenda.

[dsc]

10. It might be

but given what BLM had to do to catapult their issue to the top tier one wonders.

[SonderWoman]

9. Would be nice to switch it up.

[murielm99]

11. How about if we have them all on the same day,

and limit the amount of time and money spent on the process?

[dsc]

12. then little known candidates could never win

In 2008, Obama needed the time to get voters on his side. Had we had say a 3 month campaign with only a limited amount of money, I don't see Obama breaking through. I don't know the ideal solution to this. Other countries have much shorter campaigns but their parties are also what is being voted for, not people. In other words, you only have to learn about the new positions, assuming there are new positions that parties are taking. You don't have to learn about the who person of a candidate.

[murielm99]

13. I don't agree about Obama.

He gave the keynote address in 2004. He was on the party's radar very early on. They were going to make him the nominee, no matter what the timeline was.

I belong to a number of state Democratic organizations, and belonged to even more in 2008. You have no idea how much pressure there was on us to endorse Obama -- before the primary. I voted against this every time, because I think it is wrong to endorse before the primary.

Obama was the choice. It was very unlikely that anyone else, including Hillary, was going to override that choice. She may have been given the Secretary of State job as a consolation prize. She was qualified, but that is often how it works at those levels.

Bill Clinton gave the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 1988. He was being groomed then. It does not necessarily follow that the keynote speaker will be the nominee. But up and coming people are always given exposure.

I don't always like how my party does things. I don't always agree with their choice of nominee. But in Clinton and Obama's cases, they did it right. And when push comes to shove, we don't need disarray. There is a lot to be said for party discipline.

We have to do something about spending so much time and money on these elections. There is a lot of time left in Obama's term, and we should be getting behind him to see that he gets to finish his work. We need to pay more attention to Obama, not the upcoming elections.

[JI7]

15. Illinois is the state Obama was representing, this was not the case in the rest of the

country. Hillary was hugely popular and had a lot of support. it was never gauranteed obama would win.

if Obama lost iowa he would not have won. his iowa win was how he wa able to start gaining among hillary's black supporters and win in places like south carolina .

without a small state like Iowa going first it's unlikely he would have pulled it off nationally . it was close even with the results we had.

[murielm99]

16. Hillary is popular in Illinois, too,

and was back then.

Then is never any guarantee that any of the chosen ones will win. But they are given the endorsement of party insiders, so it happens the way the party wants it to most of the time.

Iowa is not indicative of the way the rest of the primaries will go.

[JI7]

17. but at the time it was considered more of an Obama state and for obvious reasons

the push to support him there was not the same in other places.

for 2008 Iowa did matter because Iowa was what helped Obama take black support from Hillary and be competitive in enough states to win the primary. if he had not won iowa clinton would have kept black voters and won the primary.

[JI7]

14. immigration , discimination , criminal justice etc

there would be no need to crash an event as there would already be many events highlighting those issues .