QotD: Primary Follies

This is aneurism-inducingly stupid. No, Arizonans, the candidates are not going to think about Arizona as much as they would have if you held your primary when baby Jesus wanted you to, three weeks later. By the first week of February the two parties' candidates will be recovering from the Florida primary on Jan. 29. They will have exactly one week to campaign in twenty states, most of which they've never really campaigned in because they were concentrating on the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. So the candidates will be in triage mode, giving up one state here or there (Hillary ceding Illinois to Obama, Romney ceding New Jersey to Rudy) and stumping in, probably, California, because no one will be able to continue on without winning there. The rest of the states will become irrelevant, handing their votes to the frontrunners... who might not look so strong after California, but by then it'll be too late.

And all of that assumes that someone talks Michigan out of its tantrum and gets that state not to hold a primary on Jan. 15 like Sen. Carl Levin wants to.

This whole process has been a joke, an Otis-the-Drunk-worthy bender of stupidity by the country's most craven political minds. We could put L. Paul Bremer in charge and still come out with a better system.

David Weigel, "Stop. Please. Just Stop.", Hit and Run, 2007-08-22