I admit the idea of a caucus makes no sense to me, but Iowa does retain the advantage of close quarters. Rotating primaries might make sense, but no one seems to want to press for it.

With regards to roast turkey, one is so tired of leftovers that it takes a year to want to eat turkey again. Turkey fatigue if you will.

Election fatigue is what I suffer from now. And the election hasn’t even begun.

Insomnia and the thought of loose Pakistani nukes keeps me up at night.

Thanks for lightening the mood.

I do not understand why primaries don’t all occur on the same day across the country.

It’d be awesome.

Candidates don’t need to actually show up anywhere, thanks to the miracles of television and video.

(My car reads “Bumperstickers are not the answer” as well as “Mario/Luigi 08″).

Then answers his own question with “In the general election, those two states will account for a total of 11 electoral votes.”

In other words, it’s cheap to campaign. If you have a campaign budget of $12.95 then you can talk to each resident of both states 173 times. If your message doesn’t “resonate” with the voters after that much face time then you don’t have a resonating message.

The system has three additional advantages:

- The states are small enough that the goofball candidates can’t really damage the parties because nobody in the other 48 states pays any attention to anything but the result.

- The small states provide an additional benefit as the winning candidates get to try different approaches and fine-tune their message before any real public scrutiny occurs. Again, nobody in the other 48 states pays any attention to anything but the result.

- The system discourages 3rd party candidates because visiting each potential voter 173 times takes a lot of organization. 3rd party candidates may appear later but showing up 8 months after everybody else just guarantees a loss (see Thompson, Fred).