Parties need a new nominating process

Hillary Clinton was visibly exhausted when she arrived on stage at Highland High School in Albuquerque on Saturday.

She paused to cough a few times during her 30-minute speech. Her voice was slightly raspy. After she left the Duke City, the cold got worse. She lost her voice during an appearance in Connecticut on Monday, MSNBC reported.

Barack Obama’s voice was also slightly hoarse when he visited Santa Fe on Friday.

Despite their exhaustion, both candidates managed to give rousing speeches and motivate their supporters to make one last push to get out the vote on Tuesday. The campaigns – Democratic and Republican – made a valiant effort to compete in more than 20 states on the same day.

After attending the Clinton and Obama events, it was apparent that the campaign workers are as exhausted as the candidates. Having Democrats and Republicans go to the polls in so many states on one day forces the candidates to race across the nation at a frantic pace that isn’t good for them, their campaign workers or the Americans they’re seeking to represent as president.

The campaigns had trouble coordinating Tuesday’s coast-to-coast get-out-the-vote effort. For example, the Clinton campaign erroneously announced last week that the senator would be in Las Cruces over the weekend, then sent out a revised news release an hour later stating that she would be in Albuquerque, not Las Cruces. Times for other New Mexico events changed frequently.

The states that moved up their primaries and caucuses to Feb. 5 intended to have a greater say in the process. Many are getting more visits from the presidential candidates, but they’re quick, sometimes superficial trips by exhausted candidates who aren’t at their best.

My biggest concern, however, is not that the pace physically wears on the candidates. I wonder what it does to their resolve. These candidates are fighting not only against each other, but also to retain their integrity in a system driven by corporate money. They’re under constant pressure to sell out, to compromise their morals, because they need money to compete.

The chaotic, new primary calendar has caused the process to start earlier and drag on for too long, which only drives up the amount of money it takes to be successful. The process must wear on the candidates’ ability to hold true to their beliefs and act maturely. Perhaps that’s why the contest between Clinton and Obama degraded into a childish exchange of half-truths and cheap shots that set off racial tensions. It’s more difficult to act with integrity when you’re exhausted.

New Mexico was one of a handful of states that moved up its caucus date to early February in 2004. As a result, the state had multiple visits from candidates and other national attention that year. Other states copied the idea this year, and New Mexico didn’t get the same level of attention. In fact, national polling companies didn’t do a single survey of New Mexico voters before Tuesday, as the state’s caucus was lost in the shuffle.

After November, Democrats and Republicans must turn their attention to devising a new primary system that puts an end to the chaos. The candidates, and the people they seek to represent, deserve better.

A version of this article was published today on the Diary of a Mad Voter blog published by the Denver Post’s Politics West and the independent Web site NewWest.net.