Joe Biden is trying to make significant changes to the Democrat Primary process in time to be ready for 2024. He is trying to change the sequence of the primaries to insert South Carolina into the number one position bumping the Iowa Caucus and the traditional First in the Nation Primary, New Hampshire. This action is not going to happen, it is a futile effort, and he should no better than to try. Let me tell you why.
I have lived in the Granite State for nearly as many years as Joe Biden has been in Washington, D.C. We in New Hampshire have been proud of our First in the Nation status for over 100 years. The first time we were number one was in 1916. Some say it is too much status for such a small state, but that may be the best reason to keep it so.
New Hampshire is perfect for old-fashioned shake-your-hand-and-look-in-my-eye politicking, where every candidate gets to hit diners, restaurants, and town halls or just walk the streets to meet and try to make supporters out of New Hampshire’s voters. It is a spectacle every four years, and the media and country look forward to it. This schedule is tradition; more importantly, it serves a purpose and works. It gives candidates more time to present their platforms and people all over the country more time to size them up. Iowa and New Hampshire are at a different pace than the primaries to follow in South Carolina and the other Southeast states.
The motivations are clear as to why Joe Biden wants these changes:
- Suggesting the plan further proves he intends to run for re-election.
- Joe does not do well in face-to-face campaigning, which is why he performed so poorly in both states in 2020.
- He wants to pay back Jim Clyburn and South Carolina for saving his campaign and catapulting him into the White House.
Every action in Washington has to be done to pay back someone, and Joe Biden knows this better than anyone.
Biden’s plan will not happen because New Hampshire signed an insurance policy into law many years ago that protects its number one position. In 1975, the New Hampshire state legislature passed a bill allowing the Granite State secretary of state to set the presidential primary date earlier than any other similar contest by seven days if necessary. The law has permitted the Secretary of State to fight off challenges to New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status from other states. If Biden were successful in moving the South Carolina primary, New Hampshire and Iowa would move ahead of them on the calendar.
This exercise is an amateur move by Joe Biden, who has enough experience to know it will not happen. Then again, it may all be for show. He is showing South Carolina he is trying to reward them, and sometimes a plan does not have to work to be successful. It just has to be made public. It is tantamount to the Student Loan Forgiveness Act. Joe knew he had no legal right to present that plan, but it worked. The promise helped put him in the White House. And that is how we got to what we have in this country today.
