It's a disgrace that only FIVE states had any real say in our nominating process.

[Ken Burch]

Those first five states, in which less than 10% of Democratic voters had the chance to vote or attend caucuses, reduced our choices to two candidates. Whatever you think of these candidates(and fine, either of them would be a competent president), there is no way that this is acceptable for a party that uses the adjective "democratic" as its name.

There's no excuse for the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters being denied the right to vote for the candidate of their choice.

Their's no excuse for three rural states(Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina)having this kind of power when New York and California will once again be irrelevant.

We have to fix our process and we have to abolish the "money primary".

This pathetic farce must never be repeated.

Money politics will end up killing our party.

[DJ13]

1. Repeat after me

No PACS

No lobbys

Public financing of ALL Federal elections

No excuses.

[Unsane]

5. How does one determine who receives gov't funds?

If I run for federal office, would I therefore receive federal funding? Should I have to reach a 5% threashold first? If so, doesn't that essentially reward the people with high name rec? Isn't that the same problem we have now as it is?

Lots of questions...

[my2sense]

2. kicked n/t

[busymom]

3. I absolutely agree...

and it's also such a shame that the other candidates...Dodd, Biden etc didn't have the opportunity to get their own messages out their more quickly.

It would be nice if "super Tuesday" was the only day that the primary vote happened....so there were no ups and downs with Iowa/New Hampshire, etc. One day for all states to vote...make it later in the season, give all candidates the chance to campaign....and then make it a one time deal. Of course, that would be boring and the MSM would have nothing to really get all excited about day after day...so it won't happen. LOL

[sellitman]

4. Yes! I have been making this point to my friends here in CT.

The process is broken.

[frogcycle]

6. k

[never_get_over_it]

7. Its really worse than that

its more like 20,000 people in IA and the M$M

on edit: if I did the math correctly 20K is 1/10th of 1% of the total Presidential vote in 2004 - it is ridiculous for so few people to have SO MUCH influence.....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4318736&mesg_id=4319404

[NoBorders]

8. What's your fix?

In a sense, having a few states at the beginning allows a less well-funded candidate to make an impact. But did you have some other solution in mind?

[Ken Burch]

9. One would be having the PARTY enforce its own spending limits for the primary

(at least until after somebody has a lock on the nomination, when they can be allowed to spend more to boost their position).

All candidates should sign a pledge that if ANY of them is barred from a televised debate, all of them will boycott that debate. It is NOT the MEDIA'S place to decide which of our candidates is and is not viable. That belongs to the voters and the voters alone.

I would also change the caucus process, lowering the viability levels so that you don't have a situation where only two or three candidates can survive a caucus. We don't NEED to winnow it down that fast.

And I think we should go to straight overall PR for delegate distribution in primary states.

Also, lose the superdelegates. They've never really served a positive purpose other than giving a bunch of bigs and wigs free passes to the convention.

I don't have all the answers myself.

[NoBorders]

10. Those are all good ideas

I was just curious what you thought might be better, and those all sound like good ideas, especially not eliminating anyone from the debates. I don't have the answers either, but I completely agree that money plays way too big a role.

Thanks.