Presidential Primaries

I think the 2004 Presidential election has validated the much-maligned system of state primaries in that it demonstrated that candidates low in resources with which to compete nationally - specifically, John Kerry and John Edwards - can gain momentum by proving their candidacy sells in a single state. If we did have a national primary system, chances are either Howard Dean or Wesley Clark would be the nominee as others simply lacked the funding base with which to compete. However, the latest Zogby poll results show that the system probably does need some sort of major reform. Winning Iowa and/or New Hampshire should be a mechanism for launching a candidacy, not choosing the nominee outright. Yet for whatever reason - media spin, the compressed schedule, a nation of bandwagon-jumpers, something - huge numbers of Democratic voters are changing into his column. Just last week, Kerry was winning hardly any February 3 states; now, it looks like Wesley Clark's Oklahoma campaign is the best if not the only hope for slowing him down. If New Mexico, Delaware, and North Dakota look the same as these four states, we'll have a nominee selected by a small, unrepresentative sample of Democrats - a huge percentage of whom work in his home state - that was merely ratified by another small sample of voters elsewhere based partly on self-fulfilling perceptions of his inevitability.

UPDATE: By the way, in case you were wondering, I'm still for Dean.