The New York Times-20080129-Florida-s Phantom Democrats- -Editorial-

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Florida's Phantom Democrats; [Editorial]

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Perhaps the most telling moment before Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary in Florida, came last week when Senator Barack Obama's supporters carried around a cardboard cutout of their candidate to smile, stiffly, at potential supporters.

Because Florida's legislators insisted on leapfrogging their primary to be one of the first in the nation, the Democratic Party took all of Florida's convention delegates away. And the real Mr. Obama and his chief rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, agreed to limit their efforts in Florida to fund-raising, and forswore campaigning there -- at least in the flesh.

Things are slightly better for the Republicans, whose Florida winner will gain only half of their party's normal delegates. Voters have seen more of their G.O.P. candidates (we'll leave it to them to say whether they liked it or not). All this is merely the latest kink in a presidential primary season that is far more messed up than usual.

What is extraordinary is how enthusiastic about this primary election Florida's voters appear to be. By Sunday, more than 400,000 Democrats had already cast early ballots -- four times more than voted early in 2004. The challenge for the leadership of both parties is to ensure that such passion continues through the conventions and November, whether or not the delegate ban -- or in the Republican case, the semi-ban -- remains in place.

Right now, most political experts figure that eventually the parties will relent, and that the full slates of delegates from all states will be seated at the conventions. That would be good for the enthusiasm factor.

But we can see other troubles ahead. Suppose that going into the Democratic convention, no candidate has enough delegates for a clear win. A bitter fight by the candidates to seat their delegates or unseat their rivals' won't do the party or the nation any good.

The fault here, of course, lies with the legislators and the party leaders who insisted on pushing to the head of the pack. There is a bigger problem, and that is with the whole state by state -- Iowa and New Hampshire always go first -- primary system. The most sensible method for organizing these primaries would be to cluster them by region. And then take turns every four years for selecting the region that gets to vote first.

Perhaps it could be another early test for presidential nominees. If candidates could figure out how to make the primaries regional and rational, that should be a good predictor of how they would lead the nation.