Is It the End of the Road for Iowa and New Hampshire? – By Lauren Camera (US News) / Feb 12 2020
The first two nominating contests don’t represent the makeup of Democratic Party – or the nation. Some think it’s time to change the process.
Former vice president Joe Biden fled snowy New Hampshire for the warmth of South Carolina Tuesday afternoon – making an early and unexpected exit from the Granite State at the conclusion of the second primary contest in the 2020 election, where early returns were not in his favor.
He tasked his sister with thanking New Hampshire campaign supporters on his behalf at a previously scheduled event in Nashua, and instead headed south to headline a campaign rally.
As the results came in late Tuesday evening showing Biden had performed worse than expected – failing to even meet the threshold for delegates – he fired off this Tweet: “99.9% – that’s the percentage of African-American voters who have not yet had a chance to vote in this nomination process. You cannot and should not win the Democratic nomination for President without the support of black and brown voters.”
The New Hampshire primary, coming on the heels of the bungled Iowa caucuses last week, have led some to say what they’ve long been thinking: New Hampshire and Iowa don’t look anything like the rest of the country, let alone the Democratic Party, and perhaps their positioning as first and second in the primary process does a disservice by propping up candidates that aren’t the first choice of many Democrats.
“I think the debacle in Iowa last week really opened a window for this,” Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for the social policy and politics team at Third Way. “Iowa has had a stranglehold on the process and obviously doesn’t want to give up its first-in-the-nation caucus status, but everyone can now see how messed up caucuses are and how unrepresentative this process is, particularly because there is such a divide between the white secular left and people of color on display.”
According to the U.S. Census, New Hampshire is the fourth whitest state in the country, with 90% of its residents identifying as white. Iowa is the sixth whitest, with 86% identifying as white. That stands in contrast to the U.S., where about 40 percent of Americans identify as racial or ethnic minorities.
Continue to article: https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-02-12/is-it-the-end-of-the-road-for-iowa-and-new-hampshire
