Political Skullduggery

David Broder of the Washington Post is disappointed in the Democratic party for adjusting their caucus and primary calendar.

Well, the Democrats have gone and messed it up again.

I came back from a one-week vacation, out of reach of the news, to learn that the Democratic National Committee in its wisdom had further muddled the calendar of events for choosing the 2008 presidential nominee.

At a meeting in Chicago Aug. 19, the committee decided by voice vote to insert Nevada between Iowa and New Hampshire and to follow New Hampshire with a contest in South Carolina.

The revised calendar, at least tentatively, has the Iowa caucuses on Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, with Nevada holding its caucuses five days later, on Saturday, Jan. 19. Then it would be back across the country for the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Jan. 22, with South Carolina voting in a primary one week later, on Tuesday, Jan. 29.

All this effort to force-feed four contests in four different parts of the country into a two-week period at the start of the year is designed, the sponsors say, to make the presidential nominating process more "representative."

What they mean is that Iowa and New Hampshire, which have led the nominating process since 1976, are overwhelmingly white -- and notably short of the African American and Latino voters on whom Democrats depend in the general election.

Broder goes on to bemoan the lack of careful examination of the candidates by New Hampshire voters, and warns of a holiday season rush to judgment in the Democratic party.

What he is implicitly saying is that the black and Latino voters of South Carolina and Nevada will choose an immoderate candidate who will avoid the centrist positions that are so beloved by fossils like Broder.

The real risk is to the status quo -- reliable Democrats who vote with the Republicans on asinine war authorizations and hysteria-inspired "war on terror" legislation.