[eyeroll]
No, it will not be a shocking defeat, bc—as it says in the preceding clause, of the same sentence!—Biden wouldn’t be contesting it. If NH goes before SC it won’t embarrass Biden, it will embarrass _New Hampshire_.
Only dumb reporters will care https://t.co/xPkpLligSR pic.twitter.com/VeAC6uj0Hc
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) July 5, 2023
FITN stands for First In The Nation, a voting position New Hampshire officials have protected like rabid weasels protecting their crown jewels, which for a state whose primary industry is tourism really isn’t that suprising. But they’re no more representative of the national Democratic voter than Iowa, so the DNC is quite correct to use this cycle’s status with a popular incumbent (yay, President Biden!) to change things up a bit.
The NYTimes Magazine article, by Ross Barkan, is titled “The D.N.C. Has a Primary Problem”… and it’s blocked in white letters on black, next to a big photo of Jaime Harrison, DNC Chair, who happens to be… you know… not White. Because the NYTimes, they’re subtle like that.
Last December, the 30-odd members of the Democratic Party’s rules and bylaws committee filed in to the Omni Shoreham, the glittering resort hotel that once hosted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural ball. All of the Democrats, many of them gray-haired habitués of the rubber-chicken circuit, knew they had come to Washington to hash out, after months of debate, what the presidential-primary calendar would look like come 2024…
… Iowa would be demoted, as would tolerance for any kind of caucus. New Hampshire, perhaps, would vote first, along with Nevada and its increasing Latino population. That seemed like plenty of change as Biden, who will turn 81 this November, seeks a breezier path to a second term as president.
Instead, the co-chair of the rules and bylaws committee — and the grandson of Franklin Roosevelt — made a different announcement.
“I move a resolution, which will be displayed on the screen,” James Roosevelt Jr. said, “which grants waivers to Rule 12-A, conditional upon the outlined stipulations for a state-run primary in South Carolina on Feb. 3, 2024; New Hampshire and Nevada on Feb. 6; Georgia on Feb. 13. … ”
A few members of the Democratic National Committee had known what was coming — but only because Biden-administration officials called them on the phone mere hours after Biden himself sent a letter to the rules and bylaws committee, on the first day of December, outlining his demand for a primary calendar that ensured that “voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window.” Biden called Black voters the “backbone” of the party, though he didn’t specifically mention South Carolina in his letter. It was left to his aides to tell the top-ranking D.N.C. members, including Roosevelt, that South Carolina was the new first-in-the-nation primary. It had been decreed, and so it would be done…
The horror! A mere handful of an elitist cabal to make such drastic changes! Respectable news organizations will have to send Important Reporters to some Dixie hinterland, where they will be required to schmooze with… the sort of people you would never run across in Wolfboro.
In 2006 I managed a Congressional race in NH. Very quickly I figured out that in every town—& the district was a city of 100K, the 30K state capital, & like 100 small towns—in every town there were a few Dems who got stuff done. There were MoveOn & anti-war activists…
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) July 5, 2023
…who worked their butts off. That was about it. We ended up running a very good volunteer-powered field operation. But we did it not just without most of the Dem party “activists,” we did it despite the efforts of many to undermine us. They didn’t care about flipping Congress…
…they only cared about getting a press release announcing they had endorsed Evan Bayh or Bill Richardson, or getting opportunities to talk to John Edwards while he stood there acting like he gave AF about them
The NH primary is a racket
Take it away & it will be a big hit…
…to the hospitality industry of a small out-of-the way state, to the state’s only TV station, & to the egos of a bunch of insufferable mediocrities who think they’re geniuses but don’t know anything.
I love NH. I loved our volunteers & supporters. The state party was a scourge.
Maybe things are better than they were 17 years ago. But I doubt it. Even if the demographics & geographic quirks of NH didn’t make it a wildly unrepresentative place for Democrats to conduct their first primary I still wouldn’t want NH to vote first.
Anyway…
…good luck, New Hampshire, with conducting your sad contest between the anti-vax self-help grifter & the anti-vax, increasingly anti-Ukraine loon trading on his family name. I’m sure it will be a riveting primary.
But the NYTimes! The Clutching of the Pearls, to replace the NH Running of the Journos!
… Biden has the entire party establishment on his side. The D.N.C. has formally endorsed him, which means that the organization, in addition to rubber-stamping a primary calendar that is far more favorable to him, will not sponsor any debates. Normally, this wouldn’t matter much; incumbent presidents enjoy such deference…
At the same time, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of the slain senator and attorney general and a nephew of the slain president, has polled at 20 percent nationally among Democratic voters and has begun a campaign blitz in New Hampshire, where voters and politicians alike are aggrieved over the D.N.C.’s revision of the primary calendar, with the secretary of state, David Scanlan, a Republican, calling the first-in-the-nation status a defining part of the state’s “culture.” It is also enshrined in state law. Iowa’s reaction has been more muted because there are so few Democrats of note left in the state after successive Republican electoral waves. Still, Iowa Democrats may sync their caucuses with the Republicans anyway, defying the D.N.C…
“The reality is that New Hampshire is going to keep the first-in-the-nation primary,” Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party and a longtime D.N.C. member, told me, “and the question only is whether or not the president is going to put his name on the ballot. They’re trying to come after New Hampshire, but it’s not going to be successful. So why go through all that pain?”
Mr. Buckley, if the best defenders you can muster are RFK Jr supporters and professional Republicans… I don’t think it’s the Biden campaign that will be feeling the pain.
Alison Rose
JFC this opening paragraph. Someone find out where Ross Barkan lives and go slap him for me
ETA: Biden has the entire party establishment on his side – does this come as a surprise to FTFNYT? Or perhaps a disappointment. HORSE RACE, DAMN IT, WE DEMAND A HORSE RACE!!!!! LOOK OVER THERE, A BIGOTED STEROID-CHOMPING NUTBAG WITH A NAME WE LIKE!!!!
Baud
There’s a widespread belief that Dems aren’t permitted to make leadership decisions that hurt anyone except other people, for various definitions of “other.”
Baud
@Alison Rose:
The common man demands that the primary schedule remain the same!
SpaceUnit
I say we get the party bigs from all three states together and allow them to hash it out. Will probably look something like this Monty Python skit . . .
Reenactment
Alison Rose
@Baud: It’s all anyone talks about ’round the Applebees salad bar.
Baud
We dealt with this in 2008, when MI and FL held unsanctioned primaries. Their delegates didn’t count in the totals. I expect something similar will happen here, and no one will care except the outrage generators because this isn’t a competitive primary.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
The funny part is the death of caucuses was a grass roots movement in favor of greater democracy.
japa21
Is RFKJr really polling 20% any place other than in his delusional mind?
Baud
@japa21:
Kay told me there was one poll but a later poll had him at 8%.
lollipopguild
@japa21: In the minds of all of the writers who want a “horse race” between him and President Biden. If they get anything else they will be bored to tears.
Princess
@japa21: He seems to poll well in polls that include Republicans but I didn’t see anything as high as 20%.
Anne Laurie
He’s this month’s novelty ‘not Biden again’ candidate. As the actual race comes closer to the finish, 98% of the ‘not Biden again’ complainers will vote for The Lesser of Two Evils, aka the guy at the top of the Democratic ticket, who will be incumbent President Joe Biden. But the complainers will have Spoken Their Minds and Made Their Opinions Clear, getting tongue-bathed by Our Very Serious Media all the way. So whatever, you do you, guys!
piratedan
Apparently the FTFNYT has a DEMOCRAT Problem and it is revealed in its coverage of the political process.
It’s a helluva frame to talk about disenfranchising the NH Primary as being first in the nation in favor of bringing in some diversity to the process to be more inclusive of all voices in selecting the Party candidate. You want to talk about change… how about what Trump did in 2020 essentially cancelling the entire GOP primary process? Any comparisons to that? No strangled outcries for why different voices that needed to be heard when offering voters a choice for a GOP candidate?
More than one potential angle to approach this story, NO ONE is surprised that the FTFNYT chose this one.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
I said earlier that I don’t let politics depress me, but the one thing that gets me down is lack of focus among Dems.
JaneE
The first gets publicity. The very first Democrats to weigh in picked John Doe. John Doe is now the front runner in the Democratic nomination.
Right. Maybe the New Hampshire Democrats are not really out of sync with the rest of the Democrats, but they are still a horribly small sample to base your predictions on. The fact that they are sort of throwing a tantrum because they don’t get to go first tells me they are not in sync with other Democrats on some very basic level.
That makes as much sense as saying Shasta county is indicative of CA voting patterns.
(For those who don’t remember, Shasta is the county that cancelled their voting machine contract and plans to use paper ballots which will be hand counted. Mike Lindell is supposed to be covering any costs relating to lawsuits that might be filed by anyone who is not able to vote unassisted. Whatever procedures they come up with have to be approved by the state, which will expect them to provide enough checks and balances to guarantee accuracy, so there was (is?) a possibility they will not have legally valid procedures opening another can of worms. And then there is the cost of just running the election that way, and possible breach of contract actions by Dominion.)
Danielx
Fucking Villagers.
Subsole
@lollipopguild:
Lol. They’ll be too busy focusing on the GOP latrine-fire to be bored.
Danielx
@JaneE:
Oh yeah, the Christian Domain of Shasta. Heard about that place in detail.
waspuppet
It won’t be a “shocking statewide defeat” if people who know something about politics write stories about why it happened. But of course the NYT won’t do that, because it would be “biased.”
Seriously fuck these people.
Jackie
@Baud: And when the poll is broken down by party, he’s polling almost double by…….
Republicans! My shocked face 😲
Kay
NYTimes has the worst politics coverage in the country.
Boring, rigidly conventional and yet also weirdly out of touch with normie voters.
FelonyGovt
Fuck these entitled people from this tiny, unrepresentative state that has this as probably its ONLY claim to fame, and who are outraged because IT’S ALWAYS BEEN DONE THIS WAY! This will be guaranteed to make them even MORE irrelevant.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay:
Unfortunately, normie voters like Ms. O get worried about Biden’s reelection when they read articles like this. Which I suspect is the intended effect.
hueyplong
It would be kind of fun to see the FTFNYT totally pretzel itself trying to explain a Biden win in NH on write-in votes. Seeing as how he is so unpopular.
FoxNews wouldn’t have any trouble at all [fraud/rigged ballot machines/etc.]
Gvg
Yeah, I was wondering a about write ins.
I expect that a bunch of NH voters may be pissed a Dems because this hurts their local pride and all the mean things we say only rubs it in, when most of them haven’t ever done anything more than have fun with the attention. I still think when they take a look at the looney choices, most of ‘‘em will pick Biden.
I don’t think it keeps Biden off the general ballot since the party picks.
Urza
@japa21: If he polls over 1% its only for name recognition and people not knowing a thing about his policy positions, sanity, or lack thereof.
The Thin Black Duke
People my age get depressed about RFK Jr because we’re old enough to remember when the name had political and cultural resonance, and we’re appalled at how this assclown is pissing on his family’s legacy. People younger than me have no fucking idea who the fuck this fucking guy is or why we should give a fuck about him.
Snarki, child of Loki
*Ahem*
My plan, which is mine, is to let each state decide for themselves when to have their primary, BUT, they will get a number of delegates that is the *lesser* of
A. their electoral vote total, and
B. 3 delegates for primaries in the first week of Feb, limit doubles for each subsequent week.
(Yes, I know that there are more delegates than electoral votes, so apply a simple scaling factor, like “5 times the electoral votes, and increase the delegate count limit by 5*3 for week after 1 Feb, doubling subsequent weeks.”)
January primary? Zero delegates. First week of Feb? 3 delegates, even if it’s California. Second week of Feb? 6 delegates, except for states that have fewer than six electoral votes. Third week of Feb 12 delegates, etc.
So the small states can go early, but any jumping ahead costs delegates. And it’s a simple formula, so everyone can decide whether earlier is “worth it” or not.
This will also make the primaries “competitive” throughout the primary season, because at each stage of the contest the “current
election” can flip the previous lead.
It’ll never happen though.
JMG
The New Hampshire primary is VERY important. Just ask former Presidents Scoop Jackson, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Pat Buchanan, John McCain and Bernie Sanders.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
the Vax denier has mid teens of the vote.
Quinnipiac and Fox have him at 17%. Emerson and Suffolk have him at 15% CNN had him at 20% but that is old. Of course FTFNYT cherry picks the one that hypes their narrative.
Meh. In 2012 Obama got 81% of the primary vote in New Hampshire with 19% casting crank votes and it didn’t hurt him come election time.
Martin
FITN laws are the state equivalent of buying yourself a championship trophy.
We really don’t mock NH and IA enough for those ‘we’re the most deserving’ laws.
Martin
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Biden came in 5th in NH in 2020 with 8.4% of the vote. That was the moment that doomed his dream to ever be President.
Captain C
@Kay:
That sounds exactly like their politics reporters, especially if you add ‘desperate to appear hip, savvy, and non-bourgeois in public’.
Jeffro
@JMG: win
meanwhile, the GOP is growing incensed that the CDC is providing guidance on how men can ‘chestfeed’, according to Fox News dot com.
Surely this is America’s #1 issue!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@JMG:
Scoop never won NH, he won Mass. I always found that odd, the Senator from Boeing strategic air command and Bremerton trident missile base won pacifist college mass voters.
Kifaru1
I went to UNH back in the early 90’s after having grown up in Kenya for 11 years (my mom worked for the UN). My first election was 1992 (Clinton/Bush Snr./Perot) and I somehow managed to get on MTV for 5 seconds when they shot a video of someone trying to vote without ID. Dorm life through that period was entertaining to say the least. As a first voting experiance, it was pretty cool. However, I agree that NH isn’t exactly a bellweather state and think SC will be a much better starting place.
RSA
With all due respect to the Kennedy name, in 2023 Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) has more relevance than the son of a 1960s Democratic icon.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Martin:
Martin FTW
Mai Naem mobileI
@Anne Laurie: Beyond a little music, I do very little YouTube but I did go on yesterday to look up some bicentennial stuff and, voila, I got an RFK Jr ad. I clicked out immediately but its got me worried that we’re going to see a repeat of 2016 with Cambridge Analytica etc. I am not exactly thrilled that Zuckerberg is developing an alternative to Twitter which will also be connected to Instagram.
Eolirin
@The Thin Black Duke: I’m probably younger than you (sub 40) and Bobby is a personal politicial hero of mine despite being dead well before I was born. Some of us exist.
But yeah I’m sure I’m not common in my age range with respect to that.
sdhays
@Mai Naem mobileI: I don’t think the FSM loves us enough, but it would be better for humanity if the Musk/Zuck fight goes ahead and the outcome is that neither man is able to run any more companies ever again.
I’ll leave the details to its noodly beneficence.
Torrey
@Alison Rose:
I would be sure this paragraph was written by ChatGPT, except for the nagging feeling that, with its access to the entire web, ChatGPT would have come up with something a bit more creative.
Dopey-o
I remember the headline the morning after, despair at realizing that nixon would be the next president.
25,000 dead American troops followed. God only knows how many Vietnamese and Cambodians.
This junior is nothing to look up to.
Jackie
I’ve never heard of this poll – it’s probably an “outier,” but it made me laugh!
“A new Echelon Insights poll finds Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential field with 49%, followed by Ron DeSantis at 16% and Vivek Ramaswamy at 10%.”
I’m all for Pudd’n Boots spiraling to the bottom!
Geminid
@Torrey: But there was clearly something fishy about the DNC’s decision. Why else would Biden wait until the day it was announced to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon? And right off of the South Carolina coast! That knocked the DNC news right off the front page.
Wheels within wheels, I’m tellin’ ya!
Geminid
@Jackie: In one sense, that’s a good poll for Trump. He’s polling 3 times higher than his nearest rival.
But 49% is not that great, considering he’s been the party’s standard bearer the last two elections. So it’s a good primary poll, but maybe not such good news for Trump’s general election prospects.
mvr
@Baud: And I don’t believe that 8% are really all Democrats.
Mai Naem mobileI
@Jackie: the poll is run by GOP pollster Kristin Soltis Anderson. She has a weekly Trendlines show on Sirius that I sometimes catch. I don’t know much about the poll but she comes across as a moderate GOPr not quite a never Trumper but I don’t get the feeling she particularly cares for tfg. I would guess the poll is legit. I caught a snippet on her show a couple of weeks ago about Mark Penn doing something new with the Harris poll but I missed the background on it. I couldn’t find anything online about it but Mark Penn is always a concern because of NoLabels.
Jackie
@Mai Naem mobileI: If the poll is correct, Pudd’n Boots is imploding almost as quickly as the Titan.
Jackie
Is Eastman next? Wood quits to avoid being disbarred.
“Lin Wood, a high-profile Georgia lawyer who embraced and promoted former President Donald Trump’s bogus 2020 election claims, told the state bar he was retiring amid disciplinary probes.”
Mart
@Geminid: That fucking chills me to the bone.
Kent
What do you want them to be focused on?
smintheus
In other words, Annie still hates everything about New Hampshire because…they have tourists I guess? Left out of this screed is the basic fact that Democrats cannot unilaterally change the date of the NH primary. The brilliant Democratic thinkers Annie praises to the sky have left the NH Republicans in the position of deciding whether to change the date of the Democratic primary.
JML
@smintheus: they can unilaterally decide if delegates elected via a primary will be seated, so NH can have it’s primary whenever it wants, but those delegates can (and will) get shut out. The party gets to decide how it’s nominee will be selected, not NH.
I love NH as a state in many ways, but they’ve decided they own the First in the Nation primary, despite being increasingly unrepresentative and uninfluential in the process. The entitlement level of people in this process has been mocked for decades (Doonesbury took pokes at it in the 80’s FFS) where literally activists expect to be courted in their own homes. That’s not healthy either.