The Handful of White People Who Choose Your Presidential Candidates

It's an insane system. Mitt Romney will probably win Iowa and then New Hampshire. At that point the race will be over. No one whose won both of those States has failed to win the nomination. The remedy is one national primary. Better yet, one national primary involving all political parties and then a general election. This is already done in some States. The Presidential campaign should only last for 6 months, not the current 2 years:

Supporters watch as Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks during a campaign stop at the Fainting Goat in Waverly, Iowa, Friday, Dec. 30, 2011. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

On a two-day trip to New Hampshire last week I attended three campaign events with a total of roughly 600 people. I tried to find an African-American in the audience at all three events, but I couldn’t. To be fair, I did spot two Latinos and five or six Asian-Americans. The U.S., according to the 2010 census is 72.4 percent white. The first two states vote in the presidential primaries, Iowa and New Hampshire, are 91.3 percent white and 93.9 percent white, respectively.

The Iowa caucuses, which will be dramatically covered by the news media on Tuesday, are especially pernicious. In a caucus instead of a primary the Iowans who get to participate are even smaller in number and less diverse than the state’s already unrepresentative electorate.

Worse still, the Iowa caucuses aren’t subject to the same spending disclosure deadlines as primaries. An obscure 1979 ruling from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) held that Iowa’s caucus is not an election. The reasons are as muddled as they are unpersuasive. According to the FEC primaries are elections, and caucuses are elections if they have the authority to select a candidate. Since, as a technical matter Iowans caucus for delegates to the state convention who will stand for a candidate, it’s not considered an election. Now, thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v FEC, there are organizations called Super PACs that can raise unlimited contributions to take advantage of this loophole. Politico explains, “the decades-old caucus exemption allows candidates with robust super PACs in their corners to enjoy the benefits of unprecedented spending through the early contests without enduring the potentially damaging stories that can accompany the revelation of who’s behind it.” (The information will eventually be released, but not until later.)

Read the full article from The Nation