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Presidential primaries in 2012

By Jack M. Balkin

Dan Balz has an interesting story in the Washington Post on attempts by the Democratic and Republican Parties to create a saner process of choosing presidential candidates in 2012. Not surprisingly, issues include trying to limit the exaggerated importance of the early states (especially Iowa and New Hampshire), delegate allocation (an interesting idea some Republcians are floating is that early primaries have to be proportional, whereas later primaries can adopt the traditionally Republican winner-take-all rule). There is no discussion in Balz's article of open- versus closed-primaries, and, of course, I'm assuming that Texas will continue to operate under its unique mix of primary and caucus (that Clinton's operatives didn't figure out, to her detriment). It will, of course, be extremely interesting to see if either (or both) of the parties can actually effectuate any signifciant changes. Presumably, for better and worse, President Obama will exercise undue influence in any decisions of the Democratic Party--at this point, does anyone foresee a serious primary challenge to Obama (I don't)--whereas the Republican contest should make the 2008 season look like a tea party (so to speak). I assume that the Republicans, if they are to act, must act very, very soon, while they can be said to be behind a quasi-Rawlsian veil of ignorance regarding who the actual candidates are and who will be helped or hurt by any particular change.

In any event, it will be interesting to see if either party is actually capable of engaging in serious structural change. (Neither party seems interested in addressing the egregious electoral college, which generates some of the most pathological features of the final campaign and its concentration on the relatively few "battleground states.")

Full post as published by Balkinization on July 15, 2010 (boomark / email).