Enough with the traditional opening shot of the primary race from Iowa, Joe Biden wants them to leave South Carolina in 2024. The president has in fact asked the Democratic National Committee to implement a small ‘revolution’ in the primary calendar – which every four years is at the center of struggles and disputes between the various states – by following South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada, and then Georgia and Michigan.
“We must ensure that black voters have a voice very early in the electoral process and throughout its course,” Biden wrote to party leaders illustrating his proposal, which is most likely destined to obtain the assent of party leaders , is motivated by a desire to bring greater variety—demographic, geographic, and economic—to the early stages of the White House candidate selection process. The change would end the traditional leading role that Iowa, a small agricultural state with an overwhelmingly white majority, has had by holding its characteristic ‘caucuses’ first.
It should be noted that the new calendar puts in the lead the states that were crucial to the election of Biden in 2020, therefore suggesting that the 80-year-old president is really thinking about re-election. In any case, the president expresses the conviction that “the calendar should be reviewed every four years, to ensure that it reflects the values and diversity of our party and country”.
Obviously, the proposal is bound to meet resistance from states that will be disadvantaged. Obviously starting with Iowa: “this is just a recommendation, we will defend Iowa’s place in the primary race”, said one of the state representatives.
Even New Hampshire, which would lose the distinction of being the first to hold a full primary, is complaining. “It wasn’t the Democratic committee that gave New Hampshire this role and it’s not up to them to take it away,” said New Hampshire chairman Ray Buckley, recalling state Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, said the primaries will always be called a week before any other state.
The fact is that Democrats not only in New Hampshire but also in Georgia and Nevada – which from next month will also have a Republican governor – to move the date of the primaries must obtain the support of Republicans who have already spoken out in favor of the old calendar .
