The Flaws In The Nomination System

[Dover]

...“The idea of bunching up the primaries within a few months, the brainchild of Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, was that the Democrats should select a candidate as quickly as possible, giving the nominee more time to raise the enormous amounts of money needed to respond to the heavily funded Republican advertising campaigns that have already begun. But what if the primary voters haven’t had enough time to learn about the candidate they select?”

In other words, in the flurry of primaries that have quickly steamrolled the candidate pool down to Kerry & Edwards, has the Democratic Party rushed to the best choice? This is, after all, a newly compressed calendar: between Iowa and New Hampshire, for example, there used to be a two-week gap (as opposed to one, this year). Drew posits that this has harmed the nominating process, since we have less and less time to wade through the hyperbolic press coverage of the winner. Citing a finding by Larry Sabato, professor at the University of Virginia, “Kerry’s Iowa victory gave him an additional twenty to thirty percentage points virtually overnight in New Hampshire and several other states.”

In the fall of 2003, if we can remember back, the ten candidates were engaged in frequent (almost weekly) debates. “The results were terrible for the party – ten squabbling candidates in a largely meaningless, time-and-energy consuming blur.” The brief amount of time allotted for each candidate forced him/her to emphasize just what it was that made them stand out, which typically resulted in rehearsed one-liner zingers and a feeling that their differences had been processed & homogenized. Like Benjamin DeMott recently mentioned in our interview (link), the amount of substance has sadly declined in these races, and the media comes out of debates proclaiming that each of the candidates really aren’t that different, after all.

Put simply, Drew is concerned that Kerry has been too-quickly escorted to the front of the pack, without the proper scrutiny of his voting record...which is far from praiseworthy. Too many images, too little substantive reviews.

“The image-driven strategies of John Kerry’s campaign have been evident for anyone who has followed it closely. He seems to want to appear as several different people-changes his clothes and his personality perhaps even more often than Al Gore did in 2000.”
We’ve seen him in a leather jacket riding into The Tonight Show on a Harley, pheasant hunting, hockey-stick wielding…but these photo-ops are of course not unique to his or any campaign these days. Drew, however, worries that his record won’t endure the slog until November – particular his acceptance of more money from special-interests than any other U.S. Senator. He has criticized Bush for rejecting the Kyoto protocol while voting to reject it, and his waffling on Iraq has not been sufficiently defended....

http://www.usamnesia.com/blog.html (scroll down to Feb. 25 entry)

[K-W]

1. There is some validity to that concern,

but while it does change the nature of the primary, im not sure it makes it neccessarily worse.

As for the idea of Kerry being a bad choice, we could have nominated God himself and there would already be several perception problems placed on him by the Conservative Press and Republican Campaign Machine. Its time to get behind Kerry, he is a good candidate, and not let the Republicans force us to question ourselves.

[Old and In the Way]

2. If one wins 27/30 primaries, could it possibly be that the people want

Kerry to be our nominee?

Super Tuesday should have made this clear. The field had narrowed down to Kerry, Edwards, Kucinich, and Sharpton. Realistically, Kerry and Edwards. Kerry swept the primaries (VT results notwithstanding) that day.

A single/few dates for primaries would open the door to people complaining that media and/or money has too much influence on our choice. A primary season strung out longer would drain the Party of $ and also favor monied candidates.

Everyone had the same set of rules going into Iowa. I never heard anyone complaining about this in the lead-up to that primary. Why the sour grapes questioning after the fact?