Michigan will replace Iowa as the first primary contest for Dems

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Everyone's talking about how this is good news for Whitmer, bad news for Harris/Newsom, etc. Maybe, but looking more broadly, this is bad news for underdog candidates.

One of the advantages of having four small states go first is that it has an equalizer effect. Smaller states require less money to campaign in, and if you have less name recognition, it's easier to crisscross the state and put yourself out there. Not every underdog is deserving, but neither is every frontrunner, and having small states go first allows the quality of candidates' ground games and campaigning skills shine through. See: 2008 Democratic primaries.

Michigan is a bigger state by area and far, far bigger by population. Underdogs or outsiders who may genuinely be better candidates run a greater risk of getting drowned out, and I'm not sure that benefits the party on the long run.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

And as for the "Iowa is too white" line of thought, Democrats who aren't popular with minorities and particularly black voters don't get the nomination, period. Buttigieg won Iowa and  came close in New Hampshire, but he was poor in Nevada, and South Carolina ended any realistic chance of him being the nominee. Sanders came very close to winning Iowa twice, won NH and Nevada both times, but flopped in South Carolina both times and ended up losing the nomination. Biden got destroyed in the lily-white electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire, but South Carolina Democrats (probably a majority-black electorate) came through for him and changed the course of history. And of course, winning Iowa is what paved the way for America's first black president. In the last three competitive Democratic primaries, the candidate with more appeal to black voters won the nomination, despite the first two states being very white.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Everyone's talking about how this is good news for Whitmer, bad news for Harris/Newsom, etc. Maybe, but looking more broadly, this is bad news for underdog candidates.

One of the advantages of having four small states go first is that it has an equalizer effect. Smaller states require less money to campaign in, and if you have less name recognition, it's easier to crisscross the state and put yourself out there. Not every underdog is deserving, but neither is every frontrunner, and having small states go first allows the quality of candidates' ground games and campaigning skills shine through. See: 2008 Democratic primaries.

Michigan is a bigger state by area and far, far bigger by population. Underdogs or outsiders who may genuinely be better candidates run a greater risk of getting drowned out, and I'm not sure that benefits the party on the long run.

yeah..agree. That's why Nevada made lot of sense..it's a diverse state but also not a big state.

Yes, plus Nevada's minority population is more diverse than Michigan's. There's a better cross-section of Hispanic, Asian and black voters. Hispanics are the largest of the three in Nevada - they're also the largest of the three nationwide, and they're the ones who Democrats should be the most worried about.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

One of the advantages of having four small states go first is that it has an equalizer effect. Smaller states require less money to campaign in, and if you have less name recognition, it's easier to crisscross the state and put yourself out there. Not every underdog is deserving, but neither is every frontrunner, and having small states go first allows the quality of candidates' ground games and campaigning skills shine through. See: 2008 Democratic primaries.

Michigan is a bigger state by area and far, far bigger by population. Underdogs or outsiders who may genuinely be better candidates run a greater risk of getting drowned out, and I'm not sure that benefits the party on the long run.

Come join us in the 2020s where any weird rando with a social media presence can raise 10s of millions of dollars and end up on national debate stages despite having literally 0 name recognition before announcing (looking at you Andrew Yang). This idea that bigger stages hurts gadfly underdogs is just so wrong...if anything there's never been a better time to be a random nobody gadfly candidate.

To the extent that larger primary states shuts weird novelty boutique underdogs out, well, good.

Yeah and how did Andrew Yang do in the Iowa primaries again? Right.

I'm not talking about gadfly underdogs like Yang. I'm talking about underdogs with real potential like Obama who benefited tremendously from Iowa being a state where he could show off his strengths without being drowned out by a rival who initially had much more funding