Primaries: more rescheduling and changes needed:

[Ken Burch]

We've had our process geared towards small states and getting a nominee decided as early as possible.

I think we can now say these goals haven't given us the best results:

We've established our nominees early, but this has mainly had the effect of giving the GOP extra time to trash them. Moreover, when it's become clear that those nominees weren't the best choices(Carter in '80, Mondale in '84 and Kerry in '04 arguably being the most egregious of these)we've found ourselves stuck with losers.

Also, we've alienated a lot of our base in big states by not letting them have their primaries until the nomination contest was effectively over.

Therefore, I'd suggest

1)Putting either New York or California on the same day as Iowa or New Hampshire, which would mean a candidate could only become the nominee apparent if he or she showed strong support in big states as well as small;

2)Making delegate selection fully proportional by vote total again in all primaries. It hasn't helped things that candidates could do well in a few primaries and then get nominated even though they lost heavily in later primaries(Carter in '80 was a prime example of this. He was a good president but by the time we renominated him we knew he couldn't be reelected.)

3)Making it easy to pass a motion releasing delegates to vote their conscience on the first ballot if it was clear that the apparent frontrunner had become unelectable by the time of the convention.

We need to include more of our rank-and-file activists in the primary process again and we need to make the primaries AND THE CONVENTION actually matter all the way to the end.

Anyway, these are my ideas. What other suggestions are out there?

[Chipper Chat]

1. A national primary.

1 month before the convention.