This Is Not News

Pennsylvania is going to hold hearings about moving its primary up to Feb. 5, along with, oh, roughly every other state. On the one hand, I would certainly love to have the chance to actually vote in a contested presidential primary. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing that makes people say these primary campaigns may be looking at spending $100 million each. Those fundraising issues apparently motivated Tom Vilsack to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination today. Which, perhaps paradoxically, suggests that all of us have a vote to make this year. If a candidate can’t make the case that he or she is financially viable, that candidate might not even make it to Iowa. So small-donor contributions from the Web in 2007 might heavily shape the 2008 race.