density

I put two and two together and came up with four. Smart boy. There’s a lot of complaining, and rightly so, that this presidential electioneering is getting out of hand. With a November 2008 election, and primaries still ten months away, we are already getting our faces filled with candidate decoupage projects. The Hagel announcement, and the fact that he’s waiting, brought a gust of wind over the file folders labeled primary dates that had been gathering dust in my often wandering mind. A quick tally from 2004, and a look to the changes set for 2008, shows that the primary season will be very short. The infighting and longer nomination roads of the past are gone – there will be no time to recover and hope to fight another week. Here is the reality, in 2004 there were two primaries completed by February 5th, Iowa and New Hampshire. As the weeks rolled by and March 2nd appeared on the calendar, 25 state primaries were complete. Super Tuesday in mid-February has always been a landmark day for candidates trying to recover from poor Iowa or New Hampshire outings, looking for traction and hope to make it to March 2nd and the California / New York set of primaries. With the changes in the primary calendar we will see 20 states in the books by February 5th, including California, Michigan, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Both parties will have their candidate by the night of February 5th – no one should be planning on waking up February 6th and launching the comeback plan for the next 30 states: there won’t be any comebacks.

There are two ways to think about this: spend tons of moolah now and get your name on the top line as early as possible (where you can wait to be jumped by everyone else), or wait awhile and stock up enough money to push hard from late Fall through February 1st. Being a senator and all helps – you’re on the news all the time, you’ve got committee hearings, you can be a part of partisan ranting. I believe a candidate can make a very short, intense run over three months and win a nomination. The war chest for the general election is irrelevant at this point. If you get the party nomination the powers that be will make sure you have the money to run that campaign, after all, you’re the only horse left.

There’s nothing like instant feedback and we’ll get it come February.

Peace.

T.