Some Democrats Displeased With DNC

You know it's getting bad when even staunch Democrats are criticizing the DNC for its decisions in regards to the upcoming 2008 Presidential Primary schedule.

Changes in the process made by the DNC has forced more front loading of the primary schedule, which in turn will seriously cripple that process by giving an even bigger advantage to the wealthier, more well financed candidates.

"If the DNC had any real courage, if (DNC Chairman) Howard Dean really wanted to solve the problem, he would stand up to Michigan, he would stand up to California, he would stand up to Florida and say, 'No, you've got to go further back in the process so that all states are important,'" [New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathy] Sullivan said. "He hasn't done that, the DNC hasn't done that. Frankly, I'm a little bit fed up with the DNC at this point and how they've addressed this."

Incentives offered by the DNC to larger states in an effort to get the larger states to push back their primaries may not work, according to New Hampshire State Republicans.

"We had a rule like that in the (Republican National Committee) maybe three cycles ago," New Hampshire RNC committee member Tom Rath said. "Everybody said, 'We don't need the delegates. What we want is to participate in a meaningful way in the process.'"

I'm not sure how the DNC will be able to promote something that has been proven not to work, unless somehow they've taken up an attitude of “Just because they couldn't make it work doesn't mean that we can't.” They are intent on proving the saying “Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting the results to be different this time.”

It seems that far too often the DNC chooses to overlook a major factor when making some of their policies, that factor being human nature. (I'm not saying the RNC doesn't do that, too. But they aren't doing it this time.) The various states will do what is to their advantage, regardless of the incentives to do otherwise.

Unless the DNC decides to step up and tell the larger states 'Back off!', the primary schedule will become skewed and there will be a huge gap between the last primary and the party convention. That rarely works well under any circumstances. All one needs to do is look at the 2004 campaign as an example – John Kerry ended up with the nomination when he was the worst possible candidate the Democrats could have chosen. Kerry's advantage was the large campaign war chest he had, much of it his wife's money. He bought his way into the nomination, something made possible by the front loaded primary schedule. Better candidates were crushed by his financial superiority. That's no way to choose a possible president.