Calendar gets even more messy

If this is even thinkable at all, the primary calendar is getting more messy. Michigan Democrats now have a new plan: Make their contest a caucus, and move it to whatever day New Hampshire holds its primary. This is pushed in particular by Senator Levin, who has always been particularly eager to destroy Iowa and New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation role.

The problem with this plan is that the NH primary will be scheduled quasi at the last minute by Secretary of State Gardner. He does have to schedule it early enough for the ballots to be ready and polling places to prepare... which would probably be a four-week span. So Michigan will have trouble scheduling itself the same day as NH, but it can venture a guess and see what happens. If anything, this development increases the odds that Garder will wait until the second week of November and announce a December primary. He even told the Politico today it could go as early as December 4th!

Meanwhile, the RNC added a twist by sanctioning all 5 early voting states, i.e. including NH and SC. The DNC is not sanctioning these two but granting them exceptions instead. This has prompted an angry reaction from Republicans from those two states, in particular from NH Senator Gregg. Gregg just announced he would no longer participate in a fundraiser for the NH Republican Party because the RNC Chairman who punished the state was also scheduled to appear.

For those trying to keep track, we now have three states (IA, MI, SC) in which Democrats and Republicans could hold different voting dates. Here is where thing stand now:

• New Hampshire: Primary on Dec. 4th, Dec. 11th, or January 8th. If Gardner goes for December, the state parties might dump the primary and go for January caucuses which they can control.
• Iowa: GOP set on January 3rd. Democrats likely on January 5th.
• Michigan: GOP primary on January 15th. Democrats could stay there, or jump to an earlier (December?) caucus.
  
• Nevada: GOP and Democratic caucus on January 19th.
  
• South Carolina: GOP primary on January 19th. Democratic primary on January 26th.

As for how this all affects the primaries, it is now impossible to predict anything. The bottom line is that the earliest the voting starts the better for the frontrunners, so for Hillary Clinton in particular. In the Republican race, it is unclear who this would favor since Romney's NH lead is particularly fragile, and Romney probably wants to start things off on January 3rd with Iowa.