TWELVE YEARS OF COMPLAINING ABOUT THE WAY WE NOMINATE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. My post on January 23, 2007 inveighed against our nomination process for presidential candidates. I said that: “there are almost a dozen other potential candidates in the two parties — senators, congressmen and governors well known in their home states, but strangers to the national electorate — who would be severely handicapped by a massive [early primary.]”.
Here we are again, twelve years later. There are a large number of Democratic candidates for 2020 and no rational way of sorting through them. How do you stage a debate? How can you reduce the importance of name recognition of candidates and of Iowa, New Hampshire and other early primaries?
The best way to do this would involve having a two stage process—say, with up to eight leading candidates qualifying for a second round of primaries or with an open convention. Canada uses a process something like this.
I don’t see it happening.