Is Going First Good for South Carolina?

Playbook: “On the one hand, the state will receive more attention and advertising dollars. Its restaurants and hotels will experience mini-booms around primary season. Its local issues will become national ones, the same way that Iowa’s ethanol policy became sacrosanct. (Jonathan Alter suggests that reparations for slavery may be the new ethanol.) There’s a reason New Hampshire protects its first-in-the-nation primary status in state law.”

“But it’s not all upside. Generally, Iowa and New Hampshire’s role has been to winnow the field of candidates, not pick the nominee. That’s an important and worthy function, but over time South Carolina developed what is arguably a more significant role: it watched the early-state results and had the ability to either reject or affirm the decisions made by the overwhelmingly white — and more liberal — Democrats in the midwest and New England.”

“South Carolina was perhaps the decisive state in the last three contested Democratic primaries.”