Candidates face bad primary timing

According to CNN, holidays and comparatively obscure sporting events could be of more importance to the American people than the political process that will dictate the directions of their lives for the next four to eight years.

In what my esteemed colleague cleverly coined the "Overprotective Boyfriend Act," the Republican and Democratic parties decided to hold their Iowa presidential caucuses in conflict with the holiday season and the Orange Bowl in what some call bad timing.

Maybe there is merit to their allegations – maybe American voters are more likely to sleep in from their holiday shopping hangover and not do their homework for the most intensely combative political event in 36 years and then abandon their caucus to watch the Orange Bowl (what is that again?).

But I would like to think that Iowans will be slightly more concerned with their country’s future than with the triviality of holiday shopping and watching athletes compete in bright shirts 1,000 miles away.

But the revamped timing of the caucus poses a more real problem for the candidates – especially the underdogs – for future state elections, however.

New Hampshire was forced by a desire to keep its status as the premier primary state in the country and state mandate to push its nomination date up to Jan. 8. New Hampshire legislation requires that the state hold it’s primary at least a week prior to any other state.

But the majority of primary states planned their elections on Jan. 15, making the Jan. 8 the last day New Hampshire could keep their top spot.

So as the presidential candidates have focused their campaign energies on impressing their prized Iowa voters over the past months, they will hardly have time to regroup in the five days after the Iowa caucuses and aim at issues that matter to New Englanders.

And candidates who will not place in the top three slots in Iowa will have to figure out what they did wrong in Iowa and reconfigure their entire campaigns, even though what they may have doing wrong in Iowa could be just what the doctor ordered in New Hampshire.

Thank God for the poll cushion.

But the front runners also face their own set of challenges.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee recently took an unprecedented lead in Iowa, running on the conservative fuel of his vehemently proclaimed religious convictions and hunting savvy-ness, while Mitt Romney is head of the pack in New Hampshire, playing the low-tax card.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton just lost top pick in Iowa and, more recently, New Hampshire, to Barack Obama as this last bad week was highlighted with vague positions on issues, according to NH lawyers who say her campaign has "no clear message."

And the sleeping giant who no one seems to pay attention to, John Edwards, is quickly and quietly catching up with the top dogs who are constantly at one another’s throats.

Obama gained even more support in Iowa today as he dispelled the rumor of his alleged faith-without-action technique, when he left his podium at a public appearance and hugged a voter who pleaded for better health care for war veterans.

So as the front runners are juggled from first place to second place to up in the air, they lose momentum in New Hampshire while underdogs, especially in the Republican Party, find solace in New Hampshire’s and other states' ignored prominence.

The convoluted nature of this competition between states is sure to put immense pressure on the candidates as the most confusing and diverse election since the founding of our country unravels.
-A.H