Iowa and New Hampshire have lost their rationale

for being the first states, at least on our side. Because we have allowed campaign spending to veer out of control, we have the worst of all possible worlds. We have two tiny, unrepresentative electorates voting for fantastically monied candidates. The whole rationale of these states getting this huge say, is that people like Biden, Dood, Richardson, and Kuchinich are supposed to get hearings and have honest shots of winning. Instead it became a two or at most three person race. All three of those candidates had way more money than the fourth place let alone the seventh and eighth place candidates.

If we are going to have virtually unlimited funds in these races, then we should go ahead and use a more expensive and more representative state or states to start off in. I would suggest places like Ohio, Wisconsin, Maryland, Missouri, or Pennsylvania. There are other possibilities but any of those would be far better demographically represenative of the whole US than places like Iowa and New Hampshire. Not only are African Americans virtually non existent in those states, so are Jews, Hispanics, Asians, and to some extent gays. All of those are major constituencies of our party.

I know this will be viewed as sour grapes. But I am not terribly invested in this race. I am decidedly opposed to Obama but really don't care much about the other candidates. I was vastly more invested in 2004 but you didn't see this being posted by me then. Kerry's win didn't thrill me by any means but it surely wasn't because he outspent his opponents by a factor of 10. Those states let candidates make their cases and money didn't virtually decide the race. They served their purpose even if I didn't agree with their decision.

I don't know how we will fix this. But it needs to be fixed.

Its about time all states have an equal opportunity to influence the presidential nomination process. That is why Michigan and Florida Democrats are all but at war with the National DNC.

Now, here's a question I have. In theory the small-states, town meeting stuff would favor the issues candidates, or at least give them a shot. Clearly that didn't happen.

Seems to me, part of the problem is that the candidates are able to spend money that they collect all over the country - to pay for jets, food, gas, signs, TV ads, newspaper ads, what have you.

There has to be some sort of public financing or in-state-only fundraising....

but would have a total fit over in state only funding. That would make the non representative nature of those states even worse. Not only would the groups I mentioned not have any votes they would lose any say.

I guess what worries me is that it probably is money from the big states mostly (NY, CA) fueling the race - and I don't know how many strings are attached to that. The whole thing is a mess.

I'm thinking I need to pour all my frustration into learning more about and fighting for public financing. Unfortunately, I don't have much energy for the candidates who are left.

If we'd go back to the primary calendar that we had in the 70's and the 80's, Iowa and New Hampshire wouldn't decide our nominee. They would merely be a place where unknown candidates could make themselves known.

I think your ideas are pretty good.