How is that going to help?

As more states move their primary dates up, presumably to attract more attention from the candidates and to have more of a say in the nomination, the effect of such leapfrogging on individual candidacies is unknown. There is a lot of discussion about the jockeying going on among the states for calendar position and no apparent consensus about what the result might be for any particular candidate for the presidential nomination.

But a discussion we seem not to be having is just what result we want to achieve by any change in the calendar or the process. That is, while the objections to the calendar seem to be defined, any changes ought to be evaluated in terms of achieving the goals of the Democratic Party at the national level.

Of course there is always a discussion of the relative power of the individual states in the nominating process, and whether Iowa should retain its traditional first in the nation status (if you mean by "tradition" since 1972 when the Democratic Party adopted the McGovern-Fraser Commission’s recommendations for the delegate selection process), whether Iowa and New Hampshire are representative enough of the nation, etc. Then there is the discussion surrounding the influence of money and the problem of nominating a candidate who is beholden to this or that (or many) corporate interests.

In order to achieve goals, the goals must be set. That seems self-evident. So let’s see what the goals of the Democratic Party, and the party’s nominating process are. I would propose that the goals are stated within the following: "To nominate a presidential ticket that will win the general election, serve the following four-year term, and govern in a manner that reflects as nearly as possible the views and in accordance with the values held by the party."

There are a bunch of caveats that could be thrown in, and, of course, a laundry list of special statements about empowerment, civil rights, etc. But what I am looking for here is consideration of the process itself.

Let’s look at the history of the process as it has been, more or less, since 1972.

1972 – McGovern ran as the anti-war candidate. Nixon won a landlside for various reasons including the "southern strategy" and by painting McGovern as just this side of a communist.

I’m not so sure there was a candidate who could have beat Nixon, but that is open to discussion. Edmund Muskie won the Iowa Caucuses while McGovern came in second. It was also a trial run for the new process. Perhaps Muskie could have run a better campaign, had he held his campaign for the nomination together

1976 – Carter ran as a fiscally conservative southern Christian who was at least tolerant of liberal social views. He used the Iowa Caucuses (where he finished second to ("uncommitted") to get the momentum for a national run. He won the presidency, but he was not an extremely strong candidate and the vote was very close. but the Watergate scandal had lowered public respect for government and politicians. The Republicans right took advantage of that to gain strength for the next election.

1980 – Carter (after a challenge from the left, led by Ted Kennedy) was tagged with the "malaise" speech and was attacked as ineffectual. The Iranian hostage crisis did nothing to help him, either, especially when the military botched a rescue mission.

Would Kennedy have been a better nominee? If so, how would the process have had to change to deny the nomination to the incumbent President?

1984 – Mondale led another electoral disaster against an incumbent Republican. Who could have beat Reagan? I don’t think any one could.

1988 – Dukakis blows a chance at the open seat. George H. W. Bush was not that popular with the right wing, but he held their interest in the face of Dukakis, who was framed as an effete east-coast liberal.

Dukakis was a horrible candidate. Standing up for Iowa, he came in third in the caucuses behind Gephardt and Simon. 1988 was Gephardt’s chance win, but the rest of the country decided to nominate Dukakis. Whatever change in the process would prevent that sort of thing from happening again deserves a look. But Iowa certainly did not dictate thae nomination – and that was a bad thing in that instance.

1992 – Clinton is nominated as a "centrist" with help from Harkin (whose candidacy made Iowa irrelevant), and the "Super Tuesday" primaries across the old south. Clinton, with help in the general election from H. Ross Perot as a spoiler, won the presidency. It would seem, then that the process worked to nominate another southern governor to go on to win the general election. The argument could be made that it worked because of Harkin and in spite of Iowa’s position on the nominating calendar.

1996 – Clinton was renominated without opposition. Again the process worked.

2000 – Vice President Gore staves off a challenge from Bill Bradley to gain the nomination. Gore won the popular vote and there is little doubt that had the votes been counted honestly in each state, he would have won in the Electoral College as well. Instead, five right-wingers on the Supreme Court effectively nullified the election and appointed George W. Bush. But, again, the process seems to have worked in nominating a popular candidate who actually won the election.

2004 – Kerry gains the nomination after perhaps surprisingly coming in first in Iowa. Kerry could have run a better campaign against W. But, in all honesty, who would have been a better candidate in 2004? Gephardt was past his prime and the media set about to destroy Howard Dean. Perhaps Edwards would have connected more with those average voters had he been on the top of the ticket. If so, how could the process have been different to achieve the result that we may see as having been preferable?

Of course, in all instances, I can see that there could be other candidates who did not even attempt to negotiate the nomination process. And perhaps that other candidate could have been nominated and could have turned out to be the best president ever. Fill me in in the comments section if you think that might be the case.

If a different calendar or process would not have given us a better ticket, then there would not seem to be a reason to change.

Now, all of this is getting a bit long, but the nut of it is this: any change in the process and the calendar should be made for the purpose of ensuring the selection of a presidential ticket that will win the general election, serve the following four-year term, and govern in a manner that reflects as nearly as possible the views and in accordance with the values held by the party.

So as for me, when I see proposals to leapfrog primaries and caucuses, front-load the nomination process, increase or decrease the influence of certain states in that process, etc., I will be asking myself this:

How is that going to help?

Editor asks: Where Are the Democrats?

In the editor's personal column in the weekly Anamosa Journal Eureka, she lamented that although two of the Republican also rans had put in appearances in Jones County (Iowa), none of the Democrats had yet showed up. Moreover, as noted in a diary from May 3rd, Rudy Giuliani first scheduled a visit, then cancelled when it was found that the hosts were not rich enough to help him campaign against the inheritance tax. That decision is regrettable not because of the potential loss of support for Giuliani, but because the visits the candidates make to Iowa help them to grow and learn as well about a broader segment of the country. In addition, listening to a candidate in person, allowing issues to be discussed without the constraints of the radio and TV sound bites, and outside of the slickly produced advertising, gives people a chance to evaluate that candidate in good faith, both on issues of substance and of style.

In the editor's personal column in the weekly Anamosa Journal Eureka, she lamented that although two of the Republican also rans had put in appearances in Jones County (Iowa), none of the Democrats had yet showed up. Moreover, as noted in my diary at DailyKos from May 3rd, Rudy Giuliani first scheduled a visit, then canceled when it was found that the hosts were not rich enough to help him campaign against the inheritance tax. That decision is regrettable not because of the potential loss of support for Giuliani, but because the visits the candidates make to Iowa help them to grow and learn as well about a broader segment of the country. In addition, listening to a candidate in person, allowing issues to be discussed without the constraints of the radio and TV sound bites, and outside of the slickly produced advertising, gives people a chance to evaluate that candidate in good faith, both on issues of substance and of style.

But the question remains, why we were able to attract early visits by Howard Dean, John Edwards and Richard Gephardt by this time in 2003,(as well as a visit in August from John Kerry to the National Motorcycle Museum) but no visits yet during this round from any of the large field.

One of the major differences in this election cycle as far as attracting candidates is that the nomination process has become even more front-loaded than before.

Here in Iowa, our perception of the process in the past has been that in Iowa and New Hampshire, candidates had the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to put together an effective campaign organization and attract sufficient support to be an effective candidate. The hope was that such a process would weed out those candidates who could not organize well and give the better campaigns a chance to grow and take their message to a wider audience. Then the later primaries and caucuses would choose from the viable candidates that survived Iowa, New Hampshire and a couple of other early states. In a tight race with two or three viable candidates left, a late primary state could play a huge role in deciding who the nominee would be.

Over the nine presidential election cycles since the current nominating system has been in effect, a candidate did not need to come in first in the Iowa caucuses to win the nomination - or the presidency. But it has been crucial for a candidate to place in the top three. In fact, since the current system was put in place in 1972 for the Democratic Party, no candidate that failed to finish in the top three in Iowa has gone on to win the nomination.

While we in Iowa like to think this part of the process helps the other states by allowing them to choose from field of viable candidates who have been tested in the early contests, many people in other states have grown to perceive Iowa and New Hampshire as having more of a say in the nominations than they do. Consequently, over the years, more states have moved up their primary or caucus dates to overcome that perceived inequity. This front-loading has forced the candidates to build a national campaign earlier in the process and, as a result, hurts everyone's chances of meeting a leading candidate in a coffee shop or other small venue looking for that last vote. No, with a front-loaded and compressed schedule such as we face in this cycle, the candidates must maximize their exposure with larger events.

Despite the clamoring in certain other states to be first, the Iowa caucuses are still the first contest that leads to the selection of delegates in the whole arcane nominating process. It will be interesting to see how large the turnout is as they have been forced back to another earlier date.

No matter how the process is compressed, the true test will be if that process can give us a nominee we can all work for in the General Election.