Christmas With The Candidates

I agree that in the short term, this impending move of primary days by New Hampshire and South Carolina and Iowa, possibly into December 2007, is good for democracy, because it'll weaken the Iowa effect and put some breathing space between it and Super Duper Tuesday. That also helps the current front-runners, who can now better survive early missteps, it should be noted.

But in the long run, having the primary process be over on February 5 and having a 9-month general election is horrible for democracy and for good government. My ideal would be no primaries until April 2008, on the regional rotation platform, or even picked by lot on New Year's Day so that candidates couldn't camp out anywhere before then. This primary system needs to be blown up and we need some innovative ideas to start over.