Tuesday’s primary in this Northeastern state may mark the final day of nearly 50 years of unparalleled influence for Iowa and New Hampshire as the one-two kickoff contests in the Democratic presidential nominating process.
In this year’s presidential campaign, the distorting effects of providing such power to two virtually all-white states in an increasingly diversifying party have grown impossible to ignore. The vote-counting meltdown in Iowa’s antiquated and haphazard caucus system — a process used partly to circumvent New Hampshire’s law requiring it to hold the nation’s first primary — has further underlined the flaws in the existing order.
For both of these reasons, the states seem less likely this year than in any recent contest to play their historic role of definitively winnowing the field of contenders. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN