All tongue in cheek aside: my God this election is lasting forever, isn’t it? Please tell me it never used to be like this, and that these are exceptional times, and that after this election we can resume normalcy for maybe 3.5 years. Please.
What I find interesting is that nobody talks about the fact that many of the major candidates already have jobs they’re supposed to be doing, which they’ve apparently more or less abandoned. Can Obama, Clinton and McCain possibly be spending much time being Senators?
I feel like we’ve been in election mode since the summer of 2000.
Obama and Hillary were definitely in D.C. last night for the State of the Union. Bush’s comment to Obama was something along the lines of “Hey, buddy, how’s it goin’?”
Every election cycle it starts earlier. Back in 1980 the candidates weren’t determined till the convention. Then it was all locked up by June, then by May, now it looks like the nominees will be determined by March. I wish things would go back to the way they used to be.
The Senate was in session for 164 days last year. A Senator’s time is largely spent campaigning for reelection so they can spend another six years not doing much of anything.
Seriously, except for a few who serve on a lot of committees, there really isn’t much for them to do. There are few votes per day, and if it wasn’t for the quorum they probably wouldn’t attend them at all.
I was reading some commentary about Fred Thompson’s failure and it was making this very point. The major candidates set the wheels in motion 2-3 years ago.
That is untrue. Ronald Reagan had locked up the Republican primaries long before the convention was held in 1980, and Jimmy Carter was of course the incumbent Democratic nominee. The last time there was a national convention with an undetermined nominee was in 1972, I think.
There are two reasons that this particular election cycle has become ridiculous:
- Both parties have contentious races, since there’s no incumbent,
- Several states decided to be little bitches and moved their primaries up by several months, causing Iowa and New Hampshire to movie their caucuses and primaries to the thoroughly ridiculous month of January.
As for reason number two, the bitchy states are being punished by the national party organizations for their intransigence. It remains to be seen whether the DNC will make good on its thread not to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan. The RNC has halved the number of delegates from several disobedient states.
Hopefully, they will stick to their guns and the unclefuckers responsible for this mess will move their primaries back to a reasonable time. There have been some good proposals for consolidating the whole mess into a shorter period by holding several “super tuesdays” over four or five weeks, instead of having a months-long trickle of primaries followed by the super duper one this year.
This was a huge problem for him, yes. He entered the race at a normal time. This meant he was actually “behind” for this particular race. Likewise, many early political firgures had already pushed endorsements one way or another, which made it harder for him. And he had to come from behind (Huckabee, too) in the quest for cash.
In my lifetime, the first primary has advanced from March 12 (1968) to January 8. And because the primaries now determine the nomination, as opposed to being trial heats, they attract a much greater degree of pre-election-year campaigning and fund-raising. So yeah, we start a lot earlier now.
But the flip side is, after next Tuesday, we’ll have a long lull. Chances are, both parties will have determined their nominees, and it’s still nine months until the fall election. So there won’t be much news for a few months, until the campaigns rev up in earnest in late summer.
It used to be, we didn’t have that lag–the primary season would run from March to June, then there were somewhat significant conventions in July and August, and then the fall campaign. So we will take whatever break we can get.
this has been an unusually long race.
rickjay, there are a few states that have laws against running for one office while holding another. pennsylvania is one of them. you must resign from office then run for the other one. a bit more of a challenge that way.
it depends on who the next pres. is and how the numbers and states work out. if it is like 2000 and 2004, the next race will begin on nov. 5 (guy fawkes day) 2009!
I don’t think any either party will have it’s candidate determined on Super Tuesday.
I transcribe some Congressional hearings (why yes, I do have a strong stomach, why do you ask?), and some months back a recently-former congressman testified before one of the committees that when a congressman is on the Hill, they spend at least 50% of their time on fundraising. Even cynical little ol’ me was horrified by that number. But nobody in the room disagreed with him.
Yeah, the word on the street is that this election Super Tuesday won’t determine much. It’s going to be a long braul into the spring up to the conventions, just like some of you would like it.
Also, while the election process may have started earlier, what’s really changed is that people started to care earlier. Everyone is so staked in the election, that they’re paying a lot of attention to the primaries and to all the stuff that happened last year.
P.S. Fred Thompson didn’t lose because he entered the race late. He had a huge amount of momentum as soon as he did and not entering even gave that to him. He lost because once he entered the race, people found out how bland and unappealing the actor was as himself.
There’s not much comparison for “normally.” The 24-hour cable news environment isn’t that old, the Internet hasn’t been part of popular culture for very long. But this is a historically wide open election. It’s the first time since 1952 that neither an incumbent President nor Vice President is running, so there are large races on both sides. The 'net allows for more active outreach on a large scale. Some of the candidates this time are particularly well-known. And there’s the fact that everything started earlier because of the primary disputes.
Try 1928. In 1952 the sitting VP did run for President, but failed to win his party’s nomination. It’s been 80 years since the VP didn’t run at all.
There’s a reason no VP is contending in this election. The past 7 years this country hasn’t had a VP. It’s had one president and one puppet. Cheney is just honoring the tradition started by Washington and stepping down. What an honorable man.
I didn’t know that. Wow. So it’s that much more rare.