The Fall of the Independent Candidate

South Carolina today has decided to move forward its primary voting day from February 2nd to January 19th, as this New York Times poliblog states. This is a direct competition to the "importance" of the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primaries, two voting days that display some of the wide variety of opinions towards the current frontrunners.

The problem with this is that it gives far too little time for those without the political clout or monetary resources to spread their message to the mainstream. If we, as a political party, are choosing who will represent us without letting the smaller candidates (I'm looking at you, Joe Biden and Ron Paul) campaign as long as their larger brethren in order to actually be a known choice for primary voters, it only further cements control by the oligarchy of the rich and powerful.

The primary season has effectively been running since this January/February, and virtually earlier for the Democratic candidates whose names have been getting hyped over and over again, but really, few, if any of the voters hitting the polls at the beginning of 2008 have even started to pay attention, let alone get any news on the candidates outside of those favored by the MSM (Obama, Clinton, McCain, Guiliani, and perhaps Edwards). The debates have been few and far between among the candidates, taking us by surprise at best (YouTube debates) and flying completely under the radar at worst.

The change for South Carolina means that voters have a scant 5 months to dig up all the information they possibly can on these candidates, as well as for these candidates to publish the points they want these potential voters to discover.

Is this the type of schedule we want to give these small candidates; that they must be prepared to start running a full 21 months before the election even happens to even be heard of? Is this how we want our brightest and best candidates selected?

I'll be over with Biden and Paul's supporters, with the rest of the political blogging community that's been paying attention.