As Townhall has covered since Democrat party bosses decided to upend their party's 2024 primary schedule last December, President Joe Biden's party might have taken action that will see the incumbent president lose the first two contests of the looming primary season.
In February when the DNC voted to formally approve the new schedule, Townhall noted that "there's still an uncertain and rocky road ahead for Democrats due to state laws and other yet-to-be-fully-determined problems."
As it turns out, that rocky road included bumps that turned out to be insurmountable for the national Democrat leaders who sought to remove first in the nation status from Iowa (caucuses) and New Hampshire (primary) and give it to South Carolina, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada a few days later and rounded out with Michigan and Georgia primaries earlier in the cycle.
In a reality that is looking "increasingly likely" according to an Axios report last Thursday, Iowa and New Hampshire will still be the first states to hold their contests before South Carolina's primary, states where "Biden's team is indicating he won't be on the ballots" if they end up bucking the DNC's officially sanctioned calendar.
The DNC's new schedule — an apparent attempt to use its muscle to force a change to the primary order that's been the standard for decades — mirrors its previous efforts to protect favored candidates from fair competition. This time, though, it looks like the DNC may have handed an embarrassment to Biden and his re-election campaign as state parties ignore the DNC's threat to strip convention delegate spots from those which go against the DNC.
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Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire could defy Biden and move ahead with their contests — even as the party warns it will strip them of their national convention delegates if they jump the gun.
That sets up a scenario in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or another long-shot Democrat could win those states — and embarrass the president...
Since Biden’s surprise decision last December to make South Carolina the first state in Democrats' 2024 season with a primary on Feb. 3, New Hampshire Democrats have openly bashed the White House and the Democratic National Committee...
Iowa Democrats haven't been as publicly hostile over Biden's move. But in the past two months they've quietly moved to hold their contest the same day as Iowa Republicans — in January, but with a mail-in option for ballots...
Biden also has fond memories of South Carolina, where his primary victory in 2020 propelled him to the Democratic nomination. He has struggled in Iowa and New Hampshire contests in the past, and his team saw political security in pushing for South Carolina to vote first...
Biden’s proposed calendar stunned many top Democrats — even DNC chair Jamie Harrison, who is from South Carolina, said he wasn't given a heads-up before the decision.
Last week, the DNC met to consider primary and caucus proposals from state parties, but without promising results. For Iowa, national party bosses rejected its plan to hold caucuses on the the same date as Republicans "at least eight days before any other state’s presidential nominating contest," according to The Gazette. Democrats in New Hampshire also didn't have their plan to hold the primary as statutorily required "a week before any other similar contest," but DNC rule-makers gave Granite State Democrats until September 1 to move its primary after South Carolina's — a resolution that's not likely to happen, according to Politico.
Axios noted that the likely absence of Biden's name in Iowa and New Hampshire means that "some Democrats have floated a write-in campaign" in those states, but the president's re-election campaign "declined to say whether it would support such an effort."
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