There are several things about the protracted election season I could complain about: primaries vs. caucuses (cauci?), the candidates trying to look superior by speaking ill or lying about other candidates, the media that has every incentive for chaos in order to have something to report, etc.

The two things I dislike the most are the staggering of the contests and the openness of some of the contests. Political momentum is useless outside of the election season. Have the sub-basement approval numbers of Congress or the President changed their behavior? Hardly. Yet someone wins a couple of early contests and suddenly that person has this “momentum” that makes them more desirable than other candidates.

By “openness” I mean that some primaries allow people registered with one party to vote in the primaries of another party. Why a national party doesn’t throw that primary result out is a mystery. Letting your political enemies pick your leaders is insane. All the Republicans in New Hampshire should have voted for Bill Richardson in the Democratic primary, for all the irrelevance that contest should have had.

How many people would vote for the candidate that best represented their views, if the results of early elections didn’t bias the vote of later elections? How many people wouldn’t be so fatigued with the political process if all the primary elections happened on one day? How nice would it be if we had a three-month electoral season, with room for two run-offs if necessary prior to the general election?

This is a nasty symption of faction, which the Founding Fathers warned about (The Federalist Papers, No. 10). That could make for a post all its own.