It amazes me that primaries are held this late in the year. It’s only four months or so until the election.
Only in America. Other counties campaign for a few weeks. The US turns it into a 12 month fund raising and media spectacular, with primaries at the halfway point.
A while back, HR 1 For the People Act promised to remedy much of the issue but it never got a vote in the senate because Republicans held the Senate Speaker until the next congress was formed.
And because, having gotten back in power, Dem leadership didn’t take it up again as they too are getting rich from the current system.
Why make election season much longer than needed?
Printing ballots can be done quite quickly.
And is 6 months of campaigning really better than 2 months?
Ffffuuuuuuucccckkk no its not better. It’s just that our system predated most parliaments, and as such the founding fathers made some stupid choices that made it utterly impossible to amend basic quailty of life changes for our democracy.
What did the founding fathers decide that made it impossible to have short election seasons in the US?
Just in the spirit of pedantry, its not really true to say that the US system predated most parliaments.
Like, maybe its technically true now due to the expansion of democratic and republic systems in the post-colonial era, but parliaments in Western Europe were plentiful and long-established in 1776.
The first American government was notable in that is was completely divorced from a hereditary Monarch, and I don’t wanna downplay that, but a system in which a representitive body of land-owners is elected by an enfranchised class to decide policy and even pass legislation existed in, for example, Iceland since the 10th Century, Catalonia since the 12th, England since the 13th. It was arguably the standard during the enlightenment in Europe.
My two cents, the US system does seem to be remarkably inflexible. I guess it’s complicated to unpack why exactly, but a combination of myth-making, bad-faith originalists, and the sheer size of the country probably all play a part in it
Well no, it’s better for the politician’s campaign’s wallets. If people could spend campaign funds however they wanted then Donald Trump would have quite a few less pending felonies.
The Dem presidential primary still has like two more months.
Biden and his pick for DNC chair set the date, they could have made it whenever.
They choose after the deadline to get on all 50 ballots for some reason.
It’s pretty recent that campaigning started so early. Even Obama didn’t campaign as early as trump and Biden do.
