Short Primary Success?

Was the Democrats' shortened primary a success? Kevin Drum says yes. He cites three reasons: 1) it ended early, giving the nominee (Kerry) plenty of time to prepare for the race to November; 2) it forced the candidates to get on message early, making them seem relatively polished by the time anyone starting paying attention; 3) it was exciting, which resulted in lots of good news coverage for the Democrats without giving Bush a chance to really fight back or control the news cycle, which has traditionally been one of the incumbent's greatest strengths.

My intuition says Kevin is essentially correct, but it is really too speculative to know. It's been a decade and a half since the Democrats had a well-contested primary season, and even then there was no incumbent to challenge. So it's not very easy to disaggregate all the changes which have taken place, including not least the Internet. For example, I don't think the "electability" issue which seems to have so strongly favored Kerry is a result of the shortened primaries. But whatever the reason, I think Kevin is right to suggest this new primary system worked out almost perfectly.

Whether it will end up being much help to the Democrats is another story. There are probably as yet undetermined costs to the process. I can think of one. As a good Democrat, Kevin failed to mention what many consider evidence of a potentially fatal flaw: it resulted in a candidate named John Kerry.