California Blows Up The Primary Boxes

Well, the Governor signed the death warrant of the American primary system today, moving the state Presidential race up to February 5, which will trigger something like 23 other states to do the same. Can't cry, so I'll just laugh. Let me address a couple things.

John Edwards sent 70,000 DVDs to Democratic voters in Iowa for a very simple reason: he knows that you still have to win Iowa to win the nomination. This isn't reform, it's reform grafted onto the current system. It enhances the current system, nothing more. It will make Iowa decisive. There, I said it. If you want primary reform, this ain't it. A rotating regional system is simply the fairest and best way. Larry Sabato's been arguing for it forever. This is a brilliant article from about a month ago, from one of the most astute political minds in the country. He does a great job describing the problem, and actually offers one hell of a solution:

In an essay published in the Virginia Quarterly Review last summer (CLICK HERE), I outlined a new arrangement of four regional primaries held one a month from April to July, with the nominating conventions in August. This shorter, focused campaign season would be preceded by a few contests in small states held in March. How would the regions and small states be selected? On January 1 of the election year, a lottery would be held to choose the order of the regions, and a second lottery would pick two to four states among the twenty that have four or fewer electoral votes. Finally, those ping-pong-ball lottery machines can be put to wiser use than bestowing great wealth on people who can't handle it.

Think of the salutary results. In one stroke, we would eliminate the permanent campaign in a handful of unrepresentative states that currently, insistently, start off the presidential selection process. We would concentrate the elections in a five-month window that leads immediately to the conventions and the general election. We would allow the incumbent President to govern for three and a half years of his four-year term without would-be successors underfoot and second-guessing him daily on the campaign trail for two or more years preceding the general election. We would give every region an equal chance to go first--and every region would get that opportunity over time. And we would preserve the advantages of having small states lead off the process, without those small states always having to be Iowa and New Hampshire (and Nevada and South Carolina, if the Democrats' plans for '08 actually work out). Iowa and New Hampshire are wonderful, but their first-in-the-nation role is not a Constitutional right, and other small states would undoubtedly take service as the early "screening committees" just as seriously.

The cynical semi-circle of your spherical Crystal Ball believes that this sensible reform will happen on a set date: The Twelfth of Never. The idealistic glimmer in the Ball is a bit more optimistic, though for a depressing reason. The 2008 schedule may actually be seen for the disaster it is, as it unfolds next year, leading to a spasm of productive reformation prior to 2012. If this be called Hope, it springs eternal.

My hope is with Sabato. The parliamentary system in place in most other countries on Earth (including those in Iraq and Afghanistan) allows for a 4-6 week election cycle. That sounds about right. What this means is that we're in March the year before the first primary but it's the equivalent of July because of the expected end date. And then we'll have a nine-month long general, interminable and alienating.

I don't like the permanent campaign. While we salivate over Hillary this and Barack that, we're still in war with Iraq, going to war with Iran, and we have a Justice Department running a criminal enterprise in cahoots with the White House. The nation shouldn't stop governing for 22 months while we figure out who gets to govern it next.

P.S. You can't get any traction on real electoral reform like the National Popular Vote because people think the founders are divine saints who once trod the Earth's soil, who oh by the way came up with a system where the winner of the election doesn't always take office. Ezra Klein is right, we could all write a better Constitution right now, given the 250 years of accumulated history. It's ridiculous to keep in a current system for no reason other than it's the system we've always had.