For several election cycles, states have been pushing, more or less politely, toward the front of the primary-season queue. This time, all semblance of good manners has been abandoned. We’ve stampeded ourselves over a cliff into a yearlong primary campaign climaxing next February 5th, when as many as twenty-two states, representing sixty per cent of the nation’s population and a like proportion of the two parties’ Convention delegates, will hold their primaries all at once. Eighteen of those states have moved their primaries up to that date or are on the point of doing so, including eight of the eleven biggest—California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, and New Jersey.
This development has two aspects, both of which have been widely deplored. One is the bunching of primaries, which magnifies the need to raise very big money very early, pretty much guarantees that dark horses will stay dark, and makes it harder for someone to enter the race late. The other is the time gap between de-facto nomination in February and de-jure election in November—as lengthy as a full-term pregnancy, and offering similar opportunities for fatigue, boredom, irritability, and nausea (in addition, of course, to ample chances for joy, kicks, and that certain glow).
Pileup (Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker)
And then a baby president is born—naked, screaming, and covered in blood.
and half a proud nation passes out