| Let's do this one more time: Yes, the early-voting states are still where much of the fight over the Democratic nomination will take place. No, they're not all-important.
Increasingly, pundits and strategists have been arguing that social media and other changes are producing more of a "national primary," in which candidates can spread their message and chase donors nationwide, rather than focusing so much on the early states. But, as Nate Silver says, the candidates have in fact been all over Iowa and New Hampshire (and Nevada and South Carolina), just as they have been for decades now. The thing is: Both of these things are true.
The nomination contest is a national process. Candidates seek valuable resources – money, endorsements, staff and more – in a national setting. That's been true for as long as the current system has been in place; it's changed some over the years, but fundamentally it's the same as it was in the 1980s. Fail to gather enough resources? Then your candidacy might die long before voters in Iowa get involved. Remember, a dozen or so politicians who did candidate-like things have already dropped out of the 2020 race; Iowa and New Hampshire didn't knock them out.
After each early state votes, moreover, what matters isn't so much how many delegates each candidate won, but how the results are interpreted nationally. How party actors react will be critical, and how the national media covers the results in Iowa will affect what happens in New Hampshire.
Also important: How these events are interpreted diminishes the extent to which each state is an outlier. Observers will take demographics and geography into consideration. Candidates expected to do well with black voters may have lower expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire. Senator Amy Klobuchar, from Minnesota, needs to do better in Iowa than candidates from California or Massachusetts do. But the latter better do well the following week in New Hampshire. People deride the "expectations game," and when it's based on spin it can certainly be silly. But the basic idea of interpreting results based on context is perfectly reasonable. Indeed, the way people react to the results in one state can be a resource for candidates in the next one.
As a result, while voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina certainly do have autonomy and can make decisions on their own, the resources that the candidates devote to those contests will still have a significant effect on the outcome. In that context, skipping or not fully contesting those states is sort of like not showing up for a ball game: No matter how prepared a player might be, she can only win if she actually plays. Those early states are still absolutely central to the process; it's just that they aren't independent voices to the extent that some might think.
1. Danielle Lupton at the Monkey Cage on satellites, social media and D-Day.
2. Fred Kaplan asks whether President Donald Trump will spark a nuclear arms race.
3. Greg Sargent on the strongest case for opening an impeachment inquiry, which is that doing so would strengthen the House's position in the courts as it fights against Trump's stonewalling.
4. I strongly agree with Jamelle Bouie on one thing: The courts are always "political." They may or may not be partisan, but they're always political, and trying to find a cure for that is hopeless.
5. And Andrew Witherspoon runs the numbers on Trump's cabinet vacancies. Hey, remember when people started harassing Trump for not nominating anyone for secretary of defense and so he nominated the acting secretary, Patrick Shanahan? Nope. Never happened. Trump announced his plan to nominate Shanahan almost a month ago, on May 9. He hasn't actually nominated him yet. Is something going wrong? Did everyone just forget? No idea, but it's now been more than five months since the U.S. had a Senate-confirmed secretary of defense. Unreal.
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