Kos He's an IdiotPatrick Hynes gets on
Markos Moulitsas' case.
Markos Moulitsas is a slow-witted hate-monger with almost no clue about anything. Take, for example, his recent screed on the Democrat Party?s commission to examine the shuffling of the 2008 primary schedule.Now, I don't have any particular attachment to the current system where Iowa has its caucus and New Hampshire its first-in-the-nation primary. But Kos is way off base here:
If the issue really is "retail politics", there are other states that fit the bill -- states small enough to allow for that retail politicking much more in sync with each party's base supporters. It's high time we stop letting Iowa and NH decide our presidential nominees. There are far more than two states in the union.In point of fact, those two states
do not decide our presidential nominees.
Iowa has done a poor job of picking nominees, with Ed Muskie winning there in 1972 and nowhere else. In 1980 George HW Bush won Iowa but lost to Reagan for the nomination. In 1988, Bob Dole and Dick Gephardt won Iowa but did not represent their parties. In 1992, Tom Harkin won his home state but did not get to make the speech of his life at the DNC.
And if anything, New Hampshire is even worse. In six of the last nine presidential elections, one of the winners in the Granite State did not represent his party in the fall. Pat Buchanan took New Hampshire in 1996 and John McCain in 2000; for both candidates that was the high water mark of their campaign.
So what's this really about? Kos is one of those bitter Deanie Babies, with no knowledge of history. If he knew a little more about politics, he'd understand that the real problem with the Democrats right now is people like him, pulling the party leftwards even as the population moves to the right. If Kos really wanted the Democrats to start winning, he'd recommend some obvious changes, like putting the process more in the hands of the party bosses rather than democratizing the primary process (which will probably lead to more liberal candidates, who keep losing).
Read "The Making of the President: 1960" sometime. Its description of the primary process sounds like something from a foreign land. The primaries were not the way you got the nomination back then; they were just exercises to prove to the party bigwigs that you could get people to pull the lever next to your name.
