Illinois Moving Up?

I like the idea of the Illinois primary moving up to Feb. 5th. The presidential primary vote up until now has always been symbolic, though of course still good for lots of post-election analysis.

It might be harder though to get judges and voters out in February weather.

And Lincoln Day dinners by the parties can perhaps return to the true meaning of the day.

UPDATE: Discussion at Capitol Fax. I would just say, if Illinois is going to do this, it would be truly horrendous if we had TWO separate primaries for the presidential and other offices, as some other states do. One commentator makes the point that this might hurt Obama with other primary states, as they would feel he and his backers were dissing them as not representative. And another interesting comment here, from Vanilla Man (excerpt, full comment here):

Which Chicago pols are going to appear with Barak when he announces? Who would you want to drag out of Barak’s past onto the national stage? Just how closely do we want to see Barak’s Chicago connections? Gee, these guys are so “squeakly clean”, it will be tough to decide, won’t it?

Will there be any of his old Chicago Aldermen friends? How about his great Chicago Congressmen friends? Everyone knows what a great organization the Chicago Democratic Machine is to raise a future president!

Just how far will Obama need to run from his roots? Illinoians have become pretty immuned to the Chicago Democratic scandals slithering out of the Loop daily. But what about voters outside Chicago? Will they take a look and really believe that Obama is a miraculous petunia growing in a dumpster full of rotting onions?

And you can bet Hillary, with her Illinois connections, will selectively stir the stink from behind the scenes.