NEWS: Screw You, New Hampshire

POLITICS: Screw You, New Hampshire

The primary election system of the two major parties in the US has been a mystery to many for a long time. The result of spreading out the primaries over several months gives a disproportionate amount of power to the first few states that participate, since candidates who do well in those states end up generating more campaign contributions and media attention that can quickly snowball to the point where they're the "assumed" candidate and subsequent primaries have become meaningless. And all long before more populated states (like, I don't know, California, New York, Texas and Florida for example?) even get a crack at having their say as to who should be the candidate. So despite the fact that their aggregate populations are only slightly over 4 million people, and 94.3% and 91.7% of New Hampshire's and Iowa's citizens, respectively, self-identify as non-Hispanic white (compared with 67.4% for the rest of the country), these two states often have the most say in who gets to stay in the run for president.



But things are about to change. Starting in 2008 Nevada is set to jump in between Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primaries, and will hopefully allow a more representative sample of the US population have their say in the Democratic presidential candidacy.

This also plays well with the Kos championed strategy that seemed to work in the midterm elections, pushing centrist, libertarian candidates like Jon Tester (the senator-elect for Montana) into the Democratic party. Western states like Montana, Colorado and Nevada had been Republican leaning for years, and all voted for Bush in 2004. But if recent trepidation about Bush's expanded role of govenment and infringement on civil liberties is enflaming libertarian sensibilities that are more prevalent in the West, then this should be a good chance to let those voters gain some influence in the Democratic party.

How convenient that a non white potential candidate is potentially running right now. Everything is politically motivated. even racial "equality".

I can guarantee you that moving Nevada's primary up was set in motion long before Obama decided to run for office.

Do you think it's a bad thing that a population more reflective of the overall makeup of the country now gets an earlier (and thus, more weighted) say in who the Democratic nominee is?

Kos strategy was to pushing centrists libertarians into the Democratic party? Kos has always struck me as definitely left of center and I have read quite a few times on that website articles that blast people moving towards the center.

I'm glad someone here can identify the minority conspiracy behind all this.

Letting Las Vegas have more influence over American politics doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Environmental concerns seem likely to slip down the agenda, somehow.

I could be wrong. Maybe that's just my impression of how things work there. Or maybe it's a problem with all that publicity Vegas generates. Perhaps they're really socially responsible, and environmentally sound. Who knew?

Yeah... we're not

Those damned sneaky coloreds. Always up to something. Now they'll sell our elections to the Mexicans!

For what it's worth, Nevada is but 7.5% black. 22% Hispanic. And growing. Too many fucking Californians. Please, take some of these assholes back.

Las Vegas is in the top five fastest growing cities in the country. Two of the others are right next door (Henderson and North Las Vegas).

If what you know about the town is what you've seen on TV and in the movies, or even what you've experienced in person on The Strip, you honestly don't know shit about Las Vegas.

But how are we supposed to learn if what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?

Step away from the tinfoil.

OK, that was really funny.

They can pass them along to Arizona or Florida like everyone else.

I don't. Which was part of my point.

Also, growth and environmental soundness are not generally good neighbours.

Well, that would depend on your definition of "environmentally sound."

There's a lot of land in Nevada that development can't even touch. 91.9% of the state is owned by the U.S. Federal Govt.

Granted a lot of the rest isn't all that desireable anyways. Las Vegas is very densely packed. We have postage stamp front yards, and back yards that are just large enough for the obligatory pool (unless the H.O.A. or condo complex has a communal pool). This is for two reasons. Land is VERY EXPENSIVE here. Which besides everyone wanting to move here because there's lots of jobs and the taxes are low, is because it's a valley and you can only build out as far as the mountains and gov't owned property allows you to. And then there's the difficulty of running water and sewage to the other sides of said mountains.

Outside of certain people who like tearing up the desert in their dirt bikes and ATVs, Nevadans are pretty good about protecting our land, desert tortoises, and burros. There's a few issues with the wild horses but that's Bush's people in charge of that.

Quite frankly, the bulk of what's out there is a desert wasteland. A beautiful desert wasteland in many places, but yes, a desert wasteland. Up North (where they actually have seasons) people vote almost exclusively Republican and mining is just about the only local industry, so yes, their ecology is probably for shit.

Not to mention that, at two years before the primaries, there is always a non-white candidate potentially running.

Las Vegas/Clark County struck me as fairly corrupt when I did some contract work there a number of years ago. I don't know much about the politics at the state level, but I would suspect the same.

Yeah ..............Where the Fuck is New Hampshire?

Im sorry I'm from California and I am ignorant of boring, uncool places

I hardly think that the more populous states are being denied their voice in the electoral process (which is what the tone of this article seems to be implying, in parts). The problems with our electoral system and/or our presidential nomination process are not a result of the fact that these two small states have had the earliest primaries/caucuses, and the solution to the problems with our electoral system and/or our presidential nomination process is not to give even more influence to places like New York or California. I think they do pretty okay as far as having a say in national politics.

As far as the actual news event here, Nevada's more than free to knock itself out to get its primary in before NH's--it's got as much right to an early primary as any state, which is to say, none really--but I can't see what evidence there is in this article to say that that would automatically make the nomination process more "representative," however it is that representation is being assessed here, which as far as I can tell seems to be solely by counting white people. Tallying up the number of white people in a given geographic location doesn't single-handedly determine whether that given geographic location is an appropriate or inappropriate place to be having an early primary. It's ill-informed, poorly reasoned, and blindingly tunnel-visioned to run around declaring a state to be "too white" to be worthy of having such influence over the nomination process--as if race is THE one and only important, deciding factor in determining who an American wants as president. There's a hell of a lot more demographic information about any given state that just might be worth considering when assessing whether or not the citizens of that state have enough in common with citizens of other states in America for that state to be considered "representative" enough to qualify for having an early primary (whatever the hell one chooses to mean by "representative" and however the hell one chooses to measure that, anyway). Could you possibly have mentioned ANYTHING else, AT ALL, that would factor into an assessment of how representative a state's population is or isn't (like socioeconomic status, maybe? or education level? or anything else, for that matter?) aside from "lookit how many white people they've got"?

While the statement here of the racial diversity or lack thereof of those two states is not something I'm challenging, and while I acknowledge that race is one demographic factor that often influences how represented or not a given group of people is, and while I'm not arguing that either of these two states is necessarily "representative" of the rest of America, just to say "those states are too white" and leave it at that excludes and leaves unaddressed such a stunning amount of relevant information as to render such a statement pretty much worthless.

I'm kind of frustrated by this article.