Stephen Bainbridge, guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan, really dislikes New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina’s role in the presidential nominating contest:

How is it that we persist in allowing these unrepresentative, yahoo infested, pissant states decide who gets to run for President? The notion that the Ames straw poll matters would be preposterous were it not so pernicious.

He also seems to imply that contemporary South Carolinans are sympathetic to the mid-19th century political climate that resulted in South Carolina’s racist secession from the union (including, it would reason, the black majority that makes up the Democratic nominating class).

Bainbridge is upset his home state of California doesn’t have a larger pull over the nominating calendar, given that California’s “population is over 37 million, representing 12% of the total US population. Indeed, if we were a separate country, our population would be larger than that of all but the 34 biggest countries in the world!”

Which is exactly the reason California shouldn’t have a large role in the nomination process. The smallness of the early states is exactly why they work; candidates are forced into small-scale, retail campaigning, connecting with voters directly and in person in order to garner support.

A leading Californian primary, on the other hand, would take place entirely over the airwaves, via incredibly expensive advertisement and tabloid-baiting media stunts, thus eliminating whatever semblance of pure democracy we have left in the whole sorry system.