Democrats prepare to boot Iowa from “first in the nation” status

[Pres Mike]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/29/democrats-primary-calendar-00071074

The DNC is going to vote this week on the 2024 primary calendar. It’s highly likely that Iowa will no longer be first. The front runner to replace Iowa seems to be either Nevada or Michigan. But a lot is up in the air, with Minnesota making a big last minute push.

The DNC will also vote to have a fifth state. Maybe have two states go first.

I’m glad. I’m opposed to any one state picking the nominee. I think every state should vote on the same day. Why should the primary be decided before half the country votes?

But if a state must go first, Iowa absolutely should not be first. First, the whole concept of a caucus is very undemocratic. How is a single mother working two jobs suppose to meet for hours in some school gym on a random Tuesday night in the Iowa cold?

Plus, Iowa is incredibly unrepresentative of the country. Pete Buttigieg “won” the Iowa caucus but failed spectacularly in the rest of the country. Can you imagine if the media had crowned Buttigieg the presumptive nominee based on Iowa and New Hampshire alone? (I do think the media would have done this to stop Sanders). Only to be demolished in South Carolina? Buttigieg would have lost in a landslide to Trump.

Plus, how dare Iowa make us wait days for the results after their spectacular failure in 2020. They had a good app developed by Microsoft in 2016. But they decided to go with a random third party company in 2020…

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

A one-day national primary with ranked voting is what's needed.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Iowa isn't a battleground anyways , there is not any Senate race in 24

[Beet]

It seems like Iowa and New Hampshire haven't been deciding much recently. Once Super Tuesday votes, the conservative establishment candidate always romps up like 400 delegates.

[rhg2052]

A one-day national primary with ranked voting is what's needed.

Ranked choice yes, but I think a one day nationwide primary would be a mistake. It makes it so that the only candidates who have a chance are ones who have the resources to campaign across the entire country simultaneously. Those kind of resources make sense in the general when you have the whole party apparatus backing a candidate, but at the primary stage it makes a grassroots campaign a lot harder and Bloomberg types winning because they have an unlimited amount of cash to spend easier.

My preference would be somewhere in the middle. Something like a group of 5-10 states holding their primaries every other week, with each group having a mix of different types of states and changed every cycle.

So for instance the first primary day would be something like:
Michigan
Nevada
New Hampshire
South Carolina
Iowa
Maryland

And in 2028 none of those states would be allowed to be in the first group, subbing out for a similarly well-rounded mix of states.

[justfollowingtheelections]

A one-day national primary with ranked voting is what's needed.

Personally I would prefer a national primary, and if no one gets 50% of the vote, have a run-off election for the top two vote getters (to give a chance to the 2nd candidate who may not be as well known).

But regardless, this is a major improvement.  It's ridiculous that the same two states get to vote first every cycle.

[Suburbia]

Iowa should be in the middle of the nomination process

Too white, too Republican now.

Obama must be shamed at the decline of the state that put him on the map

[John Dule]

The first state should be the one with the closest margin from the previous election.

[prag_prog]

I think Nevada would be a decent option if you are looking for a more diverse electorate as your first primary state. Also it would be better if the first primary state is a relatively smaller state.

[It’s so Joever]

Alaska and Hawaii should go first on the same day. Really quite simple.

[Landslide Lyndon]

It's the right decision but I doubt that Republican trifectas in Iowa and New Hampshire will just sit idly and relinquish their coveted position in the primary calendar. It will be up to the DNC then to discourage the candidates from campaigning in these states.

[emailking]

It's the right decision but I doubt that Republican trifectas in Iowa and New Hampshire will just sit idly and relinquish their coveted position in the primary calendar. It will be up to the DNC then to discourage the candidates from campaigning in these states.

For New Hampshire yeah, but aren't the caucuses run by the party?

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

It's the right decision but I doubt that Republican trifectas in Iowa and New Hampshire will just sit idly and relinquish their coveted position in the primary calendar. It will be up to the DNC then to discourage the candidates from campaigning in these states.

For New Hampshire yeah, but aren't the caucuses run by the party?

Correct. The Democratic and Republican Caucuses can simply be held on separate days in IA. This already routinely happens for NV.

For NH, the DNC can simply strip it of its delegates and then it just becomes a non-binding beauty contest. They can hold a caucus or something at some later date, or just not allow NH to vote at the DNC at all.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Nevada is a bizarre state that is wildly divided between old-school union Dems and powerful far-left forces. It wouldn't be a good test. Michigan's size and diversity make it a great choice. And please, do away with caucuses.

[Vosem]

Makes sense that they're doing this now; the reason IA has kept being first on the Democratic side was for a while that it was a vital linchpin in Senate and presidential strategy, but after Republican successes there in 2022 (picking up the last House seat and the AG office) there's essentially no fat left on the bone and no reason to keep giving the state weird privileges.

MI/NH/NV would be a really good run of early states for 'progressives'; three states in a row that have been won by Sanders? (MN also doesn't really work here). If they want a replacement for IA that's rural Midwestern, I'd suggest KS; if they're fine with an urban one I think IL has a pretty good cross-section of the Democratic party. MI or MN would both be very strange. (OTOH, I think a big part of the point here would be strengthening state Democratic parties; if MI or MN keep getting influxes of Democratic money while Republicans stick with the more traditional IA/NH/SC/NV, they'll probably trend Democratic. If they're trying to only consider swingy states, what they're doing makes more sense).

[emailking]

It's the right decision but I doubt that Republican trifectas in Iowa and New Hampshire will just sit idly and relinquish their coveted position in the primary calendar. It will be up to the DNC then to discourage the candidates from campaigning in these states.

For New Hampshire yeah, but aren't the caucuses run by the party?

Correct. The Democratic and Republican Caucuses can simply be held on separate days in IA. This already routinely happens for NV.

For NH, the DNC can simply strip it of its delegates and then it just becomes a non-binding beauty contest. They can hold a caucus or something at some later date, or just not allow NH to vote at the DNC at all.

They always restore those delegates at the convention though.

[Mr. Illini]

Michigan would make a great new First in the Nation.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

It's the right decision but I doubt that Republican trifectas in Iowa and New Hampshire will just sit idly and relinquish their coveted position in the primary calendar. It will be up to the DNC then to discourage the candidates from campaigning in these states.

For New Hampshire yeah, but aren't the caucuses run by the party?

Correct. The Democratic and Republican Caucuses can simply be held on separate days in IA. This already routinely happens for NV.

For NH, the DNC can simply strip it of its delegates and then it just becomes a non-binding beauty contest. They can hold a caucus or something at some later date, or just not allow NH to vote at the DNC at all.

They always restore those delegates at the convention though.

Nope. When they took away some delegates from disobedient states in 2008 they held firm and those votes were not cast. In 2016/20, all states eventually complied with DNC demands.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Iowa should be in the middle of the nomination process

Too white, too Republican now.

Obama must be shamed at the decline of the state that put him on the map

Iowa jad Tom Harkin back then

[Fancyarcher]

Good riddance. As long as Iowans continue to prove that they refuse to live in the 21st Century, they are more deserving of losing the only reason that anybody really cared about the state in the first place.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

Michigan would make a great new First in the Nation.

It would bode very well for a future presidential run for Whitmer.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Nevada is a bizarre state that is wildly divided between old-school union Dems and powerful far-left forces. It wouldn't be a good test. Michigan's size and diversity make it a great choice. And please, do away with caucuses.

Size is actually the problem with Michigan. Iowa and New Hampshire have been long held up as states that aren't expensive to compete in and provide benefit to candidates who aren't just mega-funded.

Truthfully there isn't a very good replacement for Iowa that's of a respectable size and winnable for Democrats besides Nevada, Hawaii obviously isn't going to work, New Mexico is weird and not very demographically representative either, New England already has its representation and every other state is either too white or in a very expensive media market, and there's absolutely no good reason and plenty wrong for Delaware to be the first test. In terms of a workable diverse non-Republican state that isn't too big, Colorado is probably the best choice, Denver might be a pricey media market but it's not like a coastal one at least. Vosem's suggestion of Kansas actually isn't insane either (crazy we're now talking about that as more winnable than Iowa although yeah it has a D Congresswoman and Governor at least), although that's still the state with the longest streak of never sending a Democrat to the Senate, at this point probably still too Republican to work.

If we're going to ignore size and go just based on demographics and strategic importance than I think the choice for the first state is blatantly obvious: Georgia.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The first state should be the one with the closest margin from the previous election.

It's unlikely to happen again, but this would have meant several Florida-led primary seasons.

The previous tipping point state seems more relevant than the one with the closest margin (they're not usually the same thing).

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Iowa isn't nearly as relevant as it once was, but I'd rather Democrats have the first primary there than in a large state (hopefully, NH keeps its place). Well-funded candidates already crowd out those with low profiles who might make for better nominees, and this would only get worse if somewhere like Illinois went first.

[Frodo]

I will be happy if the DNC ultimately ends up with these first three states on the primary calendar, satisfying my concerns about both reflecting the growing diversity of the Democratic Party and to enable candidates to continue to engage in retail politicking in states that aren't too expensive to compete in:

1. Nevada

2. New Hampshire

3. South Carolina