They Did Not Think This Through
I launched into a predictable three-part rant last week about Iowa Democrats getting elbowed out of the way from the first in the nation role they have held for a half century.
But it gets even better. Apparently the states that were handed the prize not only did not know about the proposed changes…but they don’t seem to want it.
South Carolina was in the group of four states that in recent years had gone first. As a payback for rescuing his sinking presidential campaign, President Biden decreed that South Carolina should go first in the future. But folks there aren’t terribly happy about it, because it will mess up the election calendar for the other races in their primary, and they had not prepared for such a thing—dozens of would-be candidates traipsing around their state for a couple years before an election. They seem to prefer their current role…let Iowa and New Hampshire cut the field to a manageable size, then they can focus on a more select group of candidates.
Georgia, though, was even more surprised. They weren’t in the “first four” and were apparently added into the mix as a payback for flipping two U.S. Senate seats from red to blue. But given how the President had called their voting system “Jim Crow 2.0” and railed against election rules there…there is confusion about how to make this work. Again, it completely changes the organization of the party in terms of down ticket races, and there’s also the pesky state law that sets the date for the state’s primary election. No one apparently checked into that in advance.
So in an effort to drive caucuses from the face of the Earth, to punish Iowa for not bowing to the wisdom of the elites and selecting Joe Biden, and to exert greater control over the process…they now have more unhappy states than before, with barely a year before the first contest.
