National Primary? More Like End Game

With California and Florida considering moving their presidential primaries to February and Hillary Clinton's wholesale abandonment of the public financing system, our system for electing Presidents is now finally and completely broken. The McGovern-Frazier/public financing system set up in the 1970's is now quite irretrievably dead.

I am a liberal, and therefore think that change need not always be for the worse. But when it comes to nominating Presidents, every new system seems worse than the one before. I wasn't in love with the current system, but this new development is just a disaster.

If you thought that wealthy interests and the press had influence over the campaigns before, you'd better strap yourselves in - because you ain't seen nothin' yet. The new "national primary" will make money and media attention the sole criterion for political success. Sorry Kos, but you're dead wrong about this:

I know lots of people cling to some romantic ideal of the "retail politics" that early small state primaries and caucuses allow. Me, I want a nominee who 1) can wage an effective media war, and 2) can raise gobs of money. That's how a general election is won, and I want a candidate that has the proven skillset necessary to win the November contest. And people-powered politics means that a true grassroots candidate (e.g. Dean) can compete with establishment candidates.

Kos is the one engaging in romanticism. His guy lost, remember?

The system Kos is supporting would allow the mainstream media and big party donors to have complete power to pick the nominee - a fact betrayed by Kos's own emphasis on "waging the media war" and "raising gobs of money". Funny, I thought the "netroots" hated those people.

A grass roots candidate would only have an opportunity in the new system if he or she was the only one running, and could monopolize a source of support in the way Dean did. That's a heck of a gamble. It's just as likely that we'll have one "establishment candidate" competing against multiple insurgents - precisely what we are seeing now.

Even if there were a "brokered convention," it wouldn't be the grass roots that would pick the nominee, but the very establishment Kos so loathes. That's the way the old "open" conventions always worked.

The new money primary + national primary system being created combines the worst of the pre-1960's and post-1960's systems. It will combine all the insiderism and backrooms of the party boss era with the big money and media influence of today.

Sounds like heaven - if you're a Republican.