Columnist Donald Lambro doesn't like the increasingly front-loaded primary schedule:
That development has sent campaign strategists for the presidential contenders back to the drawing boards, trying to figure out how this affects the race for the White House and whether they can turn it to their advantage. Certainly the accelerated nominating calendar puts more pressure on the front-runners to nail down their victories early because the race will be all but over in a high-speed blur that favors the better-funded, better-known candidates.
But it's also renewed political debate over the nature of an increasingly front-loaded system that can choose a nominee before most voters know that much about them -- forcing the contenders to campaign on television in a number of big states in a shorter period of time, without meeting many voters face-to-face.
Lambro has indentified the problem, but doesn't propose a solution. Perhaps because there isn't yet a good one. Unless all 50 states hold their primaries on the same day, there has to be a first primary and a last primary - and the state or states that go first will have more influence over the final presidential nominees of each party than the states that go last, and so the rush is on in many states to move their primaries earlier and earlier.
We could set the primary calendar by picking states and dates out of a hat every four years.
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