John Rapley - Foreign Focus NEXT WEEK, the United States presidential primary season kicks off. Over the following six weeks, states will hold elections to select delegates for next summer's Democratic convention. Because the delegates are chosen according to the presidential nominee they will support, the primaries will effectively determine the Democratic nominee in next November's presidential election.
President George W. Bush is running unopposed for the Republican nomination. The Democratic field, by contrast, is wide open. Nine candidates are vying heatedly to win the party's place on the ballot.
The primary season effectively begins on Monday, when Iowa holds its caucus (slightly different from a primary). Then, on 27 January, New Hampshire will hold the first primary. After that, primaries will be held in one state after another from now until early June.
However, the Democratic Party leadership has packed most of the primaries into the next six weeks, hoping that the selection process will finish early so that the party can turn its guns on its ultimate target, President Bush. The ideal is that by the time New York and California complete their primaries in early March, someone will have locked up the nomination.
Each state party decides how its delegates are selected, so the way in which primaries are run varies. However, as a rule, when Americans register to vote, they must select the party to which they will belong. That gives them the right to vote not only in the national election, but in the party primary as well.
If the frequency of elections were an index of democracy, the US would be the most democratic country in the world. The two-stage presidential election, coupled with the large number of officials chosen by voters, results in frequent elections that turn off those citizens with only a limited interest in politics. Accordingly, primaries tend to attract the more committed partisans.
This can favour candidates who appeal to the party's core voters. The conventional wisdom in American politics is that a successful presidential candidate is one who runs an ideological campaign during the primary season, but then moves towards the centre when the presidential campaign comes around and he (or she) must appeal to non-committed voters.
So far, this logic has operated to the advantage of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who has emerged as the clear front-runner in the Democratic primaries. With his opposition to the Iraq war, attacks on President Bush's tax policies, and implicit criticisms of former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Dean has energised Democratic voters who were alienated by the party's move to the right during the 1990s.
In some respects, the Dean campaign may prove historic. Mr. Dean is the first presidential aspirant ever to have recognised the immense untapped power of the Internet. While other candidates stuck to the conventional focus on television campaigning -- at which Mr. Clinton excelled -- Mr. Dean saw that alienated younger voters comprise a post-television generation, whose social life is played out largely on the World Wide Web.
Therefore, Mr. Dean devoted his campaign's resources to reaching out to these people. In the process, he created a maelstrom that even he might not control. Campaign contributions and volunteers have poured into his offices, and a whole movement is emerging at the grassroots.
With his momentum so strong, Mr. Dean has now started reaching out to the party establishment, securing high-profile endorsements of his candidacy. What appears to have opened the floodgates was the decision by former Vice President Al Gore to back Mr. Dean.
Mr. Gore's old boss, Bill Clinton, cannot be happy. The Dean insurgency promises to turn the party back to the left and wean it away from Mr. Clinton's influence. But many in the party establishment, including Mr. Clinton, were caught off guard by Mr. Dean's surge. While his supporters speak out against Mr. Dean, Mr. Clinton himself has turned surprisingly silent of late.
The best hope for the anti-Dean forces may lie in the candidacy of retired General Wesley Clark (who apparently enjoys Mr. Clinton's quiet support). General Clark's poll numbers have been rising lately. But if Mr. Dean pulls off wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, his advance may become unstoppable. Thus, time does not favour his foes.
John Rapley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
