Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound.
I hope you had a nice long and safe Fourth of July weekend.
We only get one day off, but I took Friday as a vacation day, since the following day is usually dead anyway. I guess the presidential election has finally started in earnest. Well, I guess it never really ended, but we now have all the players on the playing field. We have two dozen Democratic candidates on one side and the incumbent president on the other.
What I can find on Google: only five sitting presidents have ever been refused a second term bid by their parties, but four of them were fill-ins when the elected president died in office. So that pretty much leaves the focus on the Democrats. They have a big mix of old, current and new candidates, so large that they have to break their debate into two nights. Obviously, they are going to face the same issue that the Republicans faced several years ago when they fielded 17 candidates. Despite the fact we are looking for leadership and solutions, money is going to help drive the candidate to the front of the pack, and it takes a ton of money to run for any major governmental office. One of the reasons it takes so much money is that our election cycle for president runs almost two years. In the past, that could be understood since we did not have the 24/7 news coverage that we have today; the candidate had to really get out there to meet-and-greet to develop a following.
So these are my ideas to cut that timeline down to something more manageable. You have to make your announcement in January. You cannot launch a pre-election study before that, and if you miss the deadline, too bad. Then we divide the country into two sections: the West and the East. The Mississippi River seems like a good place to draw the line.
The next three months all of the candidates campaign in one section; one month of campaigning, then one month with at least three debates, and then all of the states in that section hold elections in the third month to nominate their representatives to the national convention. Repeat for the other side of the country, and in the seventh month the national convention convenes and picks a final candidate. The two political party’s candidates repeat the process for two months with at least three debates before the elections in November.
I think 10 months is about all we can tolerate of non-stop politics, plus this should cut the money trail in half while providing us enough information to make an intelligent choice.
That is all I have for today. As always, be good, do good, and remember: if we are unhappy with our government, we have the opportunity to change it.
