Should Mississippi Go First on the Democratic Primary Schedule?

[Del Tachi]

If Mississippi were the first state to vote, I see Democrats candidate running significantly to the right of where they do now on issues like LGBT rights, immigration and other social issues.  Which I'm all for.

But, to answer the question, I don't think it's a good idea for Mississippi to go first.  As was pointed out, MS is the least representative state of the national Democratic Party.  Candidates who campaigned to win the "first in the nation Mississippi primary" would risk being boxed-in by the media as strictly "Black interest" candidates without appeal to blue collar Whites or suburban/urban liberals.

There's a lot of tradition baked into the current primary calendar.  I say rotate the order of the first four every primary year so that each of IA, NH, SC and NV get a chance to go first.  If once every 16 years isn't enough (which it probably isn't, due to a lot of primary seasons being uncontested), then put the first four states into alternating pairs (i.e., IA/SC; NH/NV; IA/NV; NH/SC) and let these pairs vote over the first two weeks on a rotational basis.  Each of the first four states would get a chance to be the "first in the nation" every eight years, and pairing them together prevents any one of the four early states from having too deterministic of an event on the outcome of the primary.