A total of 23 states may hold primaries on February 5, 2008. By the end of the day as many as 50% of the delegates will have been chosen. The end of the long primary season is changing the game plans of all candidates as they figure out how to put their resources into the larger delegate rich states and to assess if Iowa and New Hampshire will have as much impact as they had in the past.
The presidential primary system as we have known it for 35 years is dead. History books will record that the era that began with the Democratic National Committee’s post-1968 reforms ended Aug. 19, 2006 at the hands of the very same DNC.