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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Primaries 2024 Open Thread: Iowa Surrenders, New Hampshire… Hesitates

Primaries 2024 Open Thread: Iowa Surrenders, New Hampshire… Hesitates

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Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “The Iowa Democratic Caucuses As We Knew Them Are Finally Dead”:

The death rattle of the hallowed First-in-the-Nation Iowa Democratic Caucuses took a while to subside. But now it’s done. Yes, Iowa Democrats will still get together in precinct gatherings on January 15, the same day when Iowa Republicans caucus to formally launch the 2024 Republican nominating contest. But thanks to a national party mandate insisted upon by President Joe Biden, there will be no presidential preference balloting at the Democratic caucuses. A separate, mail-in ballot process will culminate in the announcement of the results on March 5, Super Tuesday, safely outside the “early state” window Iowa once dominated, and in the midst of a cascade of votes that will confirm Biden’s nomination.

Iowa’s defenestration from the early-state window was caused by three interrelated factors that came together to overcome the first-in-the-nation tradition. First, Democrats have moved decisively to outlaw caucuses as a method for awarding national-convention delegates, compared to more open and inclusive primaries. Second, Iowa was deemed far too unrepresentative of the country demographically to maintain such a highly influential position on the nominating calendar. And third, the last Democratic Caucuses in 2020 were a huge mess with the state party unable to report the results on Caucus Night (though arguably national party mandates helped make that happen). You could add as a fourth, decisive factor: Biden’s poor performance in Iowa en route to his nomination and election; certainly the White House owed the state no favors…

Now the only apparent troublemakers left in the presidential nominating arena are New Hampshire’s Democrats, who have no choice but to follow state law and conduct a presidential primary on January 23; the DNC has demanded New Hampshire give way to the vastly more diverse South Carolina as the first primary state and vote instead on February 6, the same day as Nevada’s primary. The Republicans who control New Hampshire’s legislature have refused to play ball, leaving their Democratic counterparts to hold a rogue event that will cost New Hampshire at least half its delegation to the Democratic convention in Chicago next year, while creating the possibility of an embarrassing upset of President Biden, who won’t participate in a primary that defies his own calendar rules.

Most recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has significantly reduced the risk of that happening by indicating he plans to withdraw from an allegedly “rigged” Democratic nominating contest to run as an independent, leaving Marianne Williamson as Biden’s only foe with any significant support. To be safe, New Hampshire’s Democratic leaders are planning a Biden write-in effort…


Guy I started following for his acerbic tweets about his participation the last Iowa caucus:

======

In the Granite State:

Playing cantankerous contrarian is always a popular role in New Hampshire, even if it doesn’t improve the state’s reputation elsewhere. (And, of course, for a state whose biggest industry is tourism, severely downgrading the quadrennial Running of the Journos ceremony is a nasty blow, so for once they have real reasons to bitch.) Per ABC:

… New Hampshire Democrats conceded that Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden is unlikely to be on the ballot in the Granite State’s Democratic primary, even as Iowa Democrats announced a change to their proposed caucus process that allows them to not conflict with New Hampshire.

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws committee closed out its fall meeting in St. Louis on Friday by voting that another version of New Hampshire’s Democratic delegate selection plan was non-compliant with their new White House-backed calendar– a move that likely precedes Biden not filing to be on their state’s ballot…

In a copy of New Hampshire’s delegate plan reviewed by ABC News, the state’s Democrats maintained that their pledged delegates and alternates would be allocated proportionally to presidential preferences based on a primary — of which the date is not yet set.

The state’s district-level delegates would then be selected at a pre-primary caucus that would occur at least 17 days before the not-yet-announced primary.

Despite urging from the DNC, it is very unlikely New Hampshire Democrats will push Secretary of State David Scanlan to move the state-run primary in accordance with the national party’s schedule…

Some New Hampshire voters have voiced support for their state’s decision not to move back their primary, even if it means Biden would not be a choice for them on the ballot.

“I think it’s tragic that the current administration is not willing to participate in a process that has been in place for a very long time. It’s even tougher to understand when you factor in that Joe Biden didn’t win New Hampshire the last time around,” said Stephen Ivanoksi, a registered independent from Newington, New Hampshire.

Ivanoksi used to lean toward the Democrat Party, but not with the “elitism” it is now…

Uh-huh. Sure you did. But like 85% of NH’s other ‘independents’, you somehow always ended up voting GOP.

(Apart from saying she’s ‘running into a burning building, more than anyone knows’, Williamson doesn’t talk politics in the short WMUR video clip. She’s a new, first-time grandmother, and seems more interested in talking about ‘grandma gaze’ and flying to visit her daughter’s family in London. So, I guess, she’s taking her ‘campaign’ about as seriously as the rest of us are.)

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I am just crestfallen that Iowa and New Hampshire are getting the boot. I’m in agonized pain. You’re all in agonized pain that I’m being so sarcastic.  Stephen Ivanoksi I have particular sympathy for, which is best described as sub-atomic.

  3. 3.

    Mai Naem mobile

    Since this is an open thread. I cannot fucking believe we don’t have an ambassador to Israel. It’s fucking 2023. I  assuming it’s Putin’s bitch Rand Paul who’s holding it up. Embarrassing enough we didn’t have an ambassador to South Korea when Biden was trying to create strong allies in the area. Don’t fucking tell me Turtle Boi can’t do anything about it.

  4. 4.

    mrmoshpotato

    So Shithead Sanders going to first deepthroat a corn dog in New Hampshire when he tries to fuck over the Democratic candidate in 2024?

  5. 5.

    mrmoshpotato

    she’s ‘running into a burning building, more than anyone knows’

    Is that with or without her healing crystals?

  7. 7.

    BellyCat

    The most equitable and representative solution is to make primaries throughout the entire U.S. the exact same fucking day.

    This whole “who goes first, then second, then…” is nothing more than privilege and favoritism (for states) and convenience (for candidates and the press).

    Burn it all down and let voters decide simultaneously.

  9. 9.

    Anne Laurie

    @Alison Rose: I would rather eat a meal with a pack of raccoons that someone had injected with meth.

    I’ve enjoyed meals at the Airport Diner (admittedly, not since the pandemic started).  As long as your tastes run to chicken-fried steak and smothered hush puppies, a very tasty meal can be had!

    And, while I haven’t actually shared a meal with racoons,  I have observed them eating — they’re quite fastidious, and make the most soothing trilling noises.  If only they could be persuaded not to ramble across the table and investigate my supper dish…

  10. 10.

    pthomas745

    Thank Flying Spaghetti Monster.  What a total waste of time the “caucases” were for..forever.  Whenever I tried to explain how Iowa wasn’t really “voting” in any sense of the word, and how the process actually worked…..people just zoned out.

  11. 11.

    J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)

    @BellyCat:   Agreed on having a common day for all primaries.  If that cannot be done, I could see dividing the country up into 4 or 5 regions, and have the order of each region’s primaries rotate.

  12. 12.

    AlaskaReader

    A word about feeding raccoons. It can go sideways.

    If you feed them at all regularly, they will likely eventually bring all their relatives, friends and hangers on.

    You very well may end up with a sizable crowd of regulars.

    And they will become insistent that you stick to their schedule.

    Some relatively small number of them can stand on their hind legs and rattle a sliding door right out of its tracks.

  15. 15.

    Yutsano

    I have no brain tonight for some reason, but I don’t understand why the Democratic party can’t just change the rules so New Hampshire gets counted anyway. It’s not like they’re not on board, they’re just stuck because of Republican shenanigans.

  16. 16.

    Brachiator

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    I didn’t know about the lack of an ambassador, either. From the Foreign Policy Magazine site:

    At the time of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East, the United States had no confirmed ambassadors to Israel, Egypt, Oman, or Kuwait. The State Department’s top counterterrorism envoy position has sat empty for more than two years, the top human rights envoy position—the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor—has been unfilled for the entirety of the Biden administration, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has not had a top Middle East official in nearly three years.

    The Republicans seem to shuttle between the idea that there should be no government at all, and the idea that the GOP is the only legitimate federal government. And then there is the MAGA crowd, who believe that you don’t need ambassadors and advisors when you have the Orange Menace and his vile spawn in charge of things.

  17. 17.

    CaseyL

    @Yutsano: ​

    Of course the NH GOP is being a shit about the whole thing; for the entire GOP Party, from local to national, “being a shit” is its central philosophical tenet.

    I do feel bad for the NH Democrats, whose delegation will be halved if they follow NH law or whose caucus will be a complete non-event if they don’t. But I think this would be a more important issue if there was a real contest over the nomination. There isn’t.

  19. 19.

    Brachiator

    @BellyCat:

    The most equitable and representative solution is to make primaries throughout the entire U.S. the exact same fucking day.

    I don’t have any great fondness for caucuses or the tradition of first place New Hampshire. But here’s a question.

    If you have primaries all on one day, don’t you give an advantage to incumbents and we’ll known candidates?

    Would Obama have been the nominee without Iowa or the opportunity to build his candidacy over a primary season?

    This whole “who goes first, then second, then…” is nothing more than privilege and favoritism (for states) and convenience (for candidates and the press).

    Yes, this definitely favors states, but that was the original idea, I think. That states determine who the candidate should be.

    If we had a one-day primary and also eliminated the Electoral College, we would greatly diminish the point of states having any constitutional power with respect to the Executive branch.

    Maybe this would be a good thing. But something to consider.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @BellyCat:

    There are some real, non-media reasons to want the primaries spread out.  The big one is that it makes it easier for a candidate with good ideas but a shoestring budget to win.  If you have all the primaries on one day, the only way to have a chance is to have enough money going into the primaries to afford a national media campaign.  That limits the field to establishment candidates who can raise hundreds of millions of dollars before the campaign starts.  If the primaries are staggered, and especially if they start with small states, it’s easier for small-time candidates to make a splash and build the name recognition needed to bring in the big money for the later states.  Just as an example, Obama probably wouldn’t have been able to beat Clinton in 2008 if it had been one big national primary.  This can also be good for candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, who don’t necessarily win the whole thing but are able to raise their profile and advance in the party.

  22. 22.

    cain

    @J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian):

    If you really want to fuck with the candidates, let them all have those 5 regions one day each – they’ll have to figure out which region is worth showing up at.

    I reckon that each region should have states that all add up to the same EC number.

  24. 24.

    cain

    @CaseyL: Maybe we should all start pressuring Rand Paul to give up his hold so that we actually have someone talking to Israel.

    In fact, we should be hammering this all over the media so that when these assholes show up to pontificate someone should ask why Rand Paul is holding up the post. Especially ask the candidates.. that’s going to really get them all pissy.

  26. 26.

    BQuimby

    If Republicans Said the Quiet Parts Loud to Workers
    Steve Shives portrays a Republican politician giving a speech before a group of workers. The difference is that Shives is brutally honest and says all the quiet parts out loud, from how little they think of workers to their hatred of others who are different to the fallacy of the free market. He also gives a shout out to the compliant corporate media who just go along with Republicans, no questions asked.

    WATCH:  https://youtu.be/e1JuUcPo5NQ
    So scarily spot on

  27. 27.

    wjca

    @BellyCat: This whole “who goes first, then second, then…” is nothing more than privilege and favoritism (for states) and convenience (for candidates and the press).

    Actually, I think it’s mostly inertia.  Having primaries scattered across the spring made sense when travel was more difficult than it is today.  And when there were minimal opportunities to campaign without physically showing up.

    Now, all the people who want to keep them have is, as the guy from New Hampshire said, “it’s been this way for a very long time.”  Yeah, and smoke-filled rooms were the way it was for a long time, too.  Didn’t mean we should never change.  (Although, to be fair, the smoke-filled room approach might have spared us TIFG.)

  28. 28.

    wjca

    @Brachiator: And then there is the MAGA crowd, who believe that you don’t need ambassadors and advisors when you have the Orange Menace and his vile spawn in charge of things.

    Looking at some of the folks TIFG installed as ambassadors, not having one at all (i.e. leaving the embassy in the hands of the professionals) seems like a plus in that situation.  Certainly TIFG’s ambassadors were toxic for our relations with several allies.

  29. 29.

    Spider-Dan

    Ivanoksi used to lean toward the Democrat Party

    “I used to like the race-hustling baby killers, but if they’re really going to change the state primary order, they just now lost me”

  30. 30.

    Shalimar

    I do not see how it can be an embarrassment for Biden if he chose not to be on the New Hampshire ballot.  That sounds like a massive embarrassment for New Hampshire when the Hamburgler ends up winning by write-in.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @wjca

    Rubbing shoulders with the voting public, whether face to face or metaphorically from a stage in front of a live audience (where a candidate can directly gauge reaction in real time), would be a terrible thing to lose.

    It would flip the equation for garnering support from the ground up on its head.

  35. 35.

    VeniceRiley

    Hopefully, this is the last time we cut voters ballots in half. Because Hillary would have won with the 2 large state primaries that were chopped in half. Obama won the caucus states.

    I hate caucus with a passion. It’s all peer pressure and gamesmanship. Votes should be private. Glad we are killing them.

    Anyway, it’s ultimately worth it to pry NH cold dead grasp on 1st primary. Bye Dixville Notch!

  36. 36.

    Spider-Dan

    @VeniceRiley: It’s worth keeping in mind that Hillary only won the popular vote in the 2008 primary if you count Michigan​, where Obama and Edwards had requested their names removed from the ballot but Hillary allowed her name to remain.

  39. 39.

    sab

    I hate the whole Super Tuesday one day primary, so I really like the idea of moving the first primary states elsewhere more representative of the party or/and of the electorate in general.

    But please don’t forget Iowa’s own Raygun t-shirt (and other stuff like snarky face-masks during Covid) company. I don’t know how important the Democratic primary was to their business but I hope they do well going forward.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    Iowa is going to suffer a double whammy because the Republican caucus looks uncompetitive this time.

  41. 41.

    sab

    @Baud: I will never understand Republicans. Their leader has lost them them several election cycles, he is battling 91 state and federal  indictments, and they still want him, uncontested in primaries.

    On the more familial side: my Republican RWNJ anti-Trump brother still likes Pompeo. I was very surprised.

    Then I read that Pompeo was pro-Rapture.

    I used to joke with my husband that I was very pro-Rapture when I was a twelve year old exposed to religious nut jobs in Florida in late 1960s. We had books and novels and everything.  Brave Christians facing off against lions and the godless or over-godded Romans. It was intense for an intense twelve year old. Plus we were mainstream (Episcopalians) not nutjobs except we were. I got over  it. I forgot my brother was a year younger and maybe he didn’t get over it.

  42. 42.

    Baud

    @sab:

    I think Trump triggered something in their culture that they haven’t felt for a long time, and now they’re hooked.

  43. 43.

    sab

    @Baud: My RWNJ brother was already there, waiting for a Trump.  He is racist as hell  but not a white supremecist. He is okay with Asians but viscerally objects to Blacks. I think that is his Florida Jim Crow childhood. Makes it impossible for me to deal with him now.

    The idea that he has wrapped up his bigotry into his Christianity does not surprise me at all.

    ETA : RAPTURE!

  44. 44.

    JML

    Caucuses can be really cool, a great way to build a party, and a fine expression of grassroots politics. They’re also confusing, intimidating, and exclusionary. A single national primary strongly favors those who have higher levels of fame and access to money. One of the other biggest problems with IA and NH as being “first in the nation” nominators for President is that it provided a substantial advantage for candidates that aren’t in office and functionally move to those states to campaign. Some might see that as a good thing in that it allows someone like Buttigieg to get traction…but should Mayor Pete have gotten traction in a national election when he’d never run in or won a substantial election? Should retail politics be that influential in selecting a nominee when the general election will not be substantive impacted by retail politics?

    I’d argue that the primaries should be staggered out with groups of 3-5 states in different parts of the country going on with a couple of weeks in between each leading up to a super tuesday. You can balance out large vs small states, test candidates appeal regionally, and feature more diverse states earlier than we used to. You can also rotate states through earlier stages so it’s not always the same 2-4 states that get all the early attention. It feels like we’re finally moving that way.

  46. 46.

    wjca

    @NotMax: Rubbing shoulders with the voting public, whether face to face or metaphorically from a stage in front of a live audience (where a candidate can directly gauge reaction in real time), would be a terrible thing to lose.

    A lot of us worked for a company which went virtual during covid.  Which demonstrated that, among other things, there’s no real substitute for getting together and interacting personally.  At least occasionally.  (Although, with large companies spread across the globe, it’s obviously not feasible to get everybody together.) That said, we saw in 2020 that it’s entirely feasible to run a national campaign without rubbing shoulders with voters.

    Yes, the candidates lose some valuable direct feedback.  Still, there are other ways to gauge how a particular message plays.  And it should be noted, candidates can still get out and meet voters, hold rallies,  etc.  They may do so fewer places, but the feedback opportunities don’t just disappear.

    But for the voters, the impact is extremely limited.  After all, how many voters (outside Iowa) personally speak to a candidate on the campaign trail?  We may watch snippets on the TV news, but interact ourselves?  Even among the extremely politically engaged, e.g. folks like us, it’s pretty much restricted to local candidates.

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