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Balancing Act: Iowa, N.H. vs. Critics
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Race
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Dec 27, 2005 09:32pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Thursday, December 29, 2005 03:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Democrats Weigh Plan to Stretch 2008 Calendar
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 28, 2005; Page A04
For much of the past year, a Democratic Party commission labored to build a better mousetrap. The goal is to create a 2008 presidential nominating calendar that reduces the outsized influence of Iowa and New Hampshire and stretches the process into the spring to give a better chance to potentially strong candidates even if they do not win early contests.
Now that the commission has made its proposal and the Democratic National Committee is deciding what to do, the reviews from outsiders are a mixed bag. New Hampshire politicians are nearly uniform in deploring the proposed changes. Political scientists, meanwhile, disagree over whether the recommendations would diminish or add to the problems they were designed to solve.
Elaine C. Kamarck, a Harvard professor, a longtime Democratic activist and one of the first witnesses before the commission, calls the proposals inadequate and fears they will only add to the problem of stacking early events on top of one another, a phenomenon known as "front-loading."
The risk of a front-loaded primary calendar is that it produces a nominee long before many voters have begun to pay attention, or seriously weigh who would be the party's most effective contender in a general election. "Let me just say that this does not seem to solve the problem," Kamarck said.
But Thomas E. Mann, a Brookings Institution scholar who appeared with Kamarck to offer expert testimony, praised the panel for smartly navigating a thicket of conflicting interests, arguing that the proposed schedule will not contribute further to front-loading. "My view is they squeezed the most they possibly could out of it," he said. |
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