According to the most recent data gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau, Iowa is home to 2,944,062 residents. This population data, tabulated last July, places the population of New Hampshire at 1,287,687. These two states, whose combined inhabitants number slightly below 4.25 million, are in reality a small percentage of the national head count. Yet it is these two states where many campaigns go to die, despite the fact they only have a combined 11 electoral votes in the general election. Every four years, presidential campaigns enter a vicious battle over two states that only yield four percent of the 271 votes needed to win in November.Tens of millions of dollars are poured into Iowa and New Hampshire. While it is undoubtedly a boon to the local economies, strategy applied in the early primaries can often be in vain. After raising over $40 million in 2003, Howard Dean has not only dismissed Campaign Manager Joe Trippi, once revered as the herald of Internet campaigning, he has requested that his paid staff forgo their salaries for at least two weeks.

Combined with much scrutiny-both critical and comical-over his infamous Iowa scream, the financial drains of Iowa and New Hampshire have added even more jolts to Dr. Dean's wild ride.

Iowa went for Al Gore in 2000, and it will most likely go Democratic again. New Hampshire voted for George Bush, but the Granite State's political leaning is murkier and harder to predict than other states. But the fact most often overlooked in the fights over these two early battlegrounds is that there are 48 other states in this union. Seven of those hold their primaries today, and therein lays the second problem with the primary cycle.

As it does every four years, the South is rising again. Of the seven states with polls today, six are overshadowed by the South Carolina primary, often seen as a candidate's gateway to many southern delegates. Many have said that a candidate like Dean is wholly unelectable because of his very limited appeal south of Maryland. A more accurate judgment might be that no Democratic candidate-be they a veteran like John Kerry or a southerner like John Edwards or a conservative like Joe Lieberman-is viable at all in the South.

Since John F. Kennedy in 1960, the only Democrat to win South Carolina was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the Civil Rights Act, is popularly credited with saying, "we [Democrats] have just lost the South for a generation." In fact, as Timothy Noah wrote on Slate recently, it has been two generations. Only two Democrats have been elected since Johnson, and both hailed from the Deep South.

Kerry even said that Democrats should look to the North in a speech in Manchester, N.H. on Jan. 24. Despite the apparent wisdom of this sentiment, Kerry has played the veteran card ceaselessly in South Carolina, including his own day on an aircraft carrier (the U.S.S. Yorktown) last August. Southern Democrats may be more inclined to line up for a decorated veteran like John Kerry, but that doesn't mean the South will return to Democratic hands as it did for so many years.

There are many good political creations of that region, including Edwards, Clinton and Carter. But in a presidential election the Republicans will take the South, and frankly, they can keep it. Dean-most likely out of recent financial constraints-is taking Kerry's advice and moving his resources away from today's primaries to focus on Saturday's contests in Michigan and Washington. Those two states routinely vote for the Democrat in November, and there are almost as many convention delegates up for grabs on Saturday as there are today.

The GOP doesn't need to reaffirm its strength in the South; that is why it confidently tries to recruit new voters in the North. For the Democrats to compete nationally, they should disavow the "Southern Strategy" advanced by the centrists at the Democratic Leadership Council and reaffirm their strength in their home turf. It might be cold and snowy here, and the people may be slightly less cordial, but Northern hospitality will always be more receptive to the liberal cause. If that isn't just cause enough, the North also happens to be more populous and more prosperous, two qualities that are never hindrances in fattening the campaign wallet.

If Iowa and New Hampshire are such financial burdens and the South is eventually a lost cause, perhaps the solution is to overhaul the primary cycle and replace it with one national ballot instead of the state-by-state process. The people running for office are supposed to be president of all the states, not just Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. A single national primary could allow all voters to see the candidates' platforms and ideals without forcing those in the race to pander to local identities. It would also make the slew of polls in the months leading up to primaries a bit more relevant.

The Democrats obviously have to pick up one or two states this year, but they should focus less on where their candidate comes from and more on the eventual message and platform. Karl Rove knows that the South is Bush country, but the Democrats don't seem to have realized that the North should be their. If the GOP has to be firmly entrenched in a part of the country, I'm glad it's not mine. The Democrats should have nothing to fear about embracing their ideological base.