California Moves 2020 Presidental Primary Date Earlier

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...20-democratic-presidential-race-idUSKBN1OD191

...
The nation’s most populous liberal state has moved its presidential nominating contest to early in the 2020 calendar, a shift its leaders hope will give it maximum impact on the selection of a Democratic nominee and push candidates to address progressive issues such as climate change.
...

Interesting! California has a lot of votes and is now quite Blue and leaning progressive. With California's Big Thumb on the election primary scales, this could mean big changes from allowing a few early voting small East Coast states to anoint the front leader and end the hope of others. The future big news will be who is leading in the polls in California. Will this favor progressives over DCCC favorites?

Texas will also be voting earlier. The 2020 primaries will be much more different than the last election.

 

[Derec]

There needs to be a national agreement on the primary dates. This jostling by states for position is stupid. And so is Iowa going first, and not only because of corn ethanol boondoggle that gave us!

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The main problem with this is that California is expensive to campaign in, so a lot of the first votes are going to be going to the main candidates who can afford to get out the vote. There isn’t an opportunity for lesser known candidates to get the some name recognition to actually have a chance of getting into the race, so it’s handed to the big money people from the get go.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

A big problem with a national super Tuesday is that it means running in large and expensive states, California and Texas. This means only candidates with very large amounts of money have a realistic chance of running a competitive race. Among other things, this means billionaires and favored candidates such as incumbents with backing of powerful large states political parties have a real chance to make it past super Tuesday primaries. Party activists will be far more important than the usual soft votes where swing voters make up their minds late in a long campaign season. It could mean that a late campaign surge of wedge issue attack ads will no longer be a viable strategy. Pre-super Tuesday campaigns will become nastier, meaner and more vicious as a result.

 

[Politesse]

I don't like the jostling game, but I am not surprised; just from my ear to the street, it is plain that Californians are generally in a mood of "tired of having their votes ignored". Quite a lot of our population is made up of social or religious refugees from other states, especially those favored by electoral politics.

 

[Trausti]

A big problem with a national super Tuesday is that it means running in large and expensive states, California and Texas. This means only candidates with very large amounts of money have a realistic chance of running a competitive race. Among other things, this means billionaires and favored candidates such as incumbents with backing of powerful large states political parties have a real chance to make it past super Tuesday primaries. Party activists will be far more important than the usual soft votes where swing voters make up their minds late in a long campaign season. It could mean that a late campaign surge of wedge issue attack ads will no longer be a viable strategy. Pre-super Tuesday campaigns will become nastier, meaner and more vicious as a result.

And the media rejoices!

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

A big problem with a national super Tuesday is that it means running in large and expensive states, California and Texas. This means only candidates with very large amounts of money have a realistic chance of running a competitive race. Among other things, this means billionaires and favored candidates such as incumbents with backing of powerful large states political parties have a real chance to make it past super Tuesday primaries. Party activists will be far more important than the usual soft votes where swing voters make up their minds late in a long campaign season. It could mean that a late campaign surge of wedge issue attack ads will no longer be a viable strategy. Pre-super Tuesday campaigns will become nastier, meaner and more vicious as a result.

And the media rejoices!

I know Faux will rejoice and dive in with both feet.

 

[Elixir]

A big problem with a national super Tuesday is that it means running in large and expensive states, California and Texas. This means only candidates with very large amounts of money have a realistic chance of running a competitive race. Among other things, this means billionaires and favored candidates such as incumbents with backing of powerful large states political parties have a real chance to make it past super Tuesday primaries. Party activists will be far more important than the usual soft votes where swing voters make up their minds late in a long campaign season. It could mean that a late campaign surge of wedge issue attack ads will no longer be a viable strategy. Pre-super Tuesday campaigns will become nastier, meaner and more vicious as a result.

And the media rejoices!

I know Faux will rejoice and dive in with both feet.

It will be a wonder if they even notice, what with that big fat orange albatross around heir necks.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There needs to be a national agreement on the primary dates. This jostling by states for position is stupid. And so is Iowa going first, and not only because of corn ethanol boondoggle that gave us!

I think the only real answer is to assign them by known-fair lottery. Say, just after the election take the last two digits of the DOW and assign them to state #1. The next business day state #2 and so on. Sort the states by these numbers. Use the same system to resolve ties. Now you have the order in which the primaries should occur in the next election. Legislation provides a list of primary dates (there will no doubt be plenty of dupes in this, no problem), assign primary dates in order from this list to the states. Do it again for every election so the advantage moves around, it doesn't stick with one state.

The reason for using something like this is that there's no question the drawing isn't rigged.

Don't like the DOW, take any other such number that's the composite of so much noise it can't be manipulated. Perhaps the last digit of the 3 biggest stock exchanges in the world to make it even harder to mess with, then use the last digit of a 4th exchange to say which order to use these three.

 

[Opoponax]

I don't like the jostling game, but I am not surprised; just from my ear to the street, it is plain that Californians are generally in a mood of "tired of having their votes ignored". Quite a lot of our population is made up of social or religious refugees from other states, especially those favored by electoral politics.

Speaking as a fellow Californian, I think you hit the nail on the head. Our votes for President count less, and by the time things roll around to us, we haven't had much of a say. We're the wealthiest, most populous, most diverse, and largest agricultural state in the union, but states like Iowa and New Hamphshire have a bigger influence than we do during presidential elections. It's bullshit. I'm fed up with states like Wyoming counting 3X as much as us in the electoral college. On top of all that, we're a donor state (we give more than we get in federal $). And at this point, I much more identify as a Californian than an American. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the orange lard-bucket and his drooling followers are so willing to openly express their hatred of us.

It's about time we began to throw our weight around.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

All of this means Super Tuesday in March next election cycle is going to lead to some truly manic politicking prior to that date. 2020 is going to be a bizarre election year. The next election starts in 2019. The race to raise vast sums of cash and to fire up a base of die hard supporters. A vast clash of the tribes. After March, the GOP vs Democrat campaign starts in earnest. And being mean and nasty to tear down the other candidate may be a bad move as people will rapidly tire of that. The usual horse race reporting will no longer push out issue based politicking.

And the unknown and unknowable. Will Trump be indicted or not before this all comes to pass? Will Trump be out of the running officially or practically?