Some people online were watching the cone of probabilities as though the balloon were a hurricane. Wagers were placed on what would happen if it entered into Florida airspace and how long in number of minutes it would take for Ron DeSantis to take the shot himself once it crossed the border.

But while everybody this weekend was looking skyward and listening to Nena (in either English or the original German) on their AirPods, the Democrats had a little get-together in Philadelphia. President Biden, obviously, was the keynote speaker at the conference, but as we’ve become accustomed over the last couple of years, he wasn’t the source of the biggest news. It was the party’s recalibration of the order of states holding primaries, the effect being the knifing of Iowa and New Hampshire that will reverberate much more than Biden attempting to talk about recalibration.

So we all know how this has worked for half a century, right? Iowa holds the first caucus every four years, and then the first in the nation primary vote goes to New Hampshire. Thus has always been so, regardless of whether each party at one time or another thinks it’s fair or politically wise for that process to continue. New Hampshirites are pretty serious about their place in line, so much so that they’ve passed a state law demanding that they will always be first in the nation, even if they have to move their primary date up a year to maintain that status. The DNC just basically overrode that law, or at least they’re trying to gently.

By granting South Carolina the first in the nation place in line for the 2024 presidential cycle, the Democrats have given their Granite State party leaders until June to fix their calendar and pick a new date or face unspecified sanctions if they violate this newly-adopted sequence by sticking to their own state law. And New Hampshire isn’t the only state facing a major headache caused by this weekend’s antics, either. Iowa, and especially Georgia, are in for a rough patch since they’re all governed by Republicans who are not going to do them any favors by going out of their way to accede to their reordering request.

Chris Sununu, the very popular governor of New Hampshire who just eked out a 16-point win in November for his fourth two-year term, has been making the rounds of late, putting out feelers about a probable presidential run of his own for the Republicans in 2024. But also included in framing what might be the selling points of his own presidential aspirations, he has been very firm and consistent in what the Democrats were proposing to do and what the response would be from New Hampshire if they indeed jumped that first in the nation shark. Here is he is about two weeks ago on with Hugh Hewitt.

Well, it’s, we always make our first in the nation primary as early as it has to be. Traditionally, it’s in mid-January, early February, something like that. But our law says we have to come first. We will come first. America wants us to come first. We are the right, the best first filter. We have such incredibly high voter turnout. Our system has integrity. We can actually count votes and get a winner that night. A lot of states are having trouble with that lately, but we can actually do that. And you don’t need money and name ID to win New Hampshire.

It’s not hard to see why Biden and the Democrats are trying to take New Hampshire out of the mix. Biden finished 5th there in 2020. Granted, 2024 is going to have the power of incumbency attached to it, but if anyone were to challenge Biden in a primary in the ’24 cycle, New Hampshire’s a place that will very likely give Biden a black eye he doesn’t want to be sporting in public. It took until Jim Clyburn handing South Carolina to Biden in 2020 before the nomination fight was settled. Biden and the Democrats don’t want the fight to even have a chance to begin this time. By holding the first primary in South Carolina, there’s every likelihood that he’d win the state’s delegates by acclamation, without a primary challenge or even an election.

By doing this, however, Biden is playing a very dangerous game, and one that can backfire and ultimately make it a lot easier for Republicans in 2024. When asked about what consequences Biden and the Democrats would face in 2024, Governor Sununu made this bold prediction in the same Hewitt interview.

Of course. No, and it’s not just, he won’t even get, he’s going to, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to have an early state like South Carolina, right? They want to move the first in the nation primary to South Carolina. South Carolina is likely not to even hold a primary. They didn’t hold one for Trump in 2020. They just said the incumbent is anointed. So they’re probably going to do the same thing for Biden. It’s going to be a huge open door for left-wing progressives that want to challenge Biden that clearly have no respect for him and don’t see him as the future of the party, the old, out of touch white guy, as they called him in the primary debates of 2020. They’re going to have that same attitude. So there’s going to be a huge opportunity not for a knucklehead, but probably for some substantial candidate to run here in New Hampshire, garner all that momentum, all that free media, all that press, come out of the first in the nation primary with a win, and really with that political momentum blow right through South Carolina where they won’t even hold a primary, right?

HH: Yeah.

CS: And so now, Biden will be in trouble. He will lose.

HH: A quick question for you, Governor. If he does follow through with his threat and skips New Hampshire, will the Granite State vote Republican in the fall as payback?

CS: Absolutely. No, absolutely. The four, those four Electoral Votes go to the Republican in November of 2024.

Before you write off Sununu’s political analysis of what would happen to Democrats because it’s coming from a Republican, here’s former New Hampshire state House Speaker, Democrat, and 2020 Biden delegate Steve Shurtleff.

Even Senator Maggie Hassan recognizes this is bad politics, and she just got reelected, so she’s safe for six years.

Our First in the Nation Primary makes our entire country & democracy stronger. Regardless of the DNC vote, New Hampshire will go first.

The DNC's primary proposal asks us to violate our state law & puts Democrats' future success in our state at risk—it is deeply misguided. #FITN

— Maggie Hassan (@Maggie_Hassan) February 4, 2023

Over at the very popular site 270ToWin.com, or at least very popular quadrennially, the current map, with the revised electoral votes after the last Census, is posted for anyone to play around. Any state that was decided by less than 10% of the vote is in the toss-up category right now. Their baseline is Democrats taking a guaranteed 209 Electoral Votes in 2024, with Republicans having a lock with 125. Now here’s where we go to work. Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Texas, and North Carolina will vote Republican. Why? Come on, man. Now it’s 234-209 Republicans. If the GOP nominates anyone not named Trump, Georgia and Arizona vote Republican. Now they’re at 261. Again, given that Joe Lombardo just won as Governor of Nevada, if Trump isn’t the nominee, Nevada could be had. Now you’re at 267. Give the rest of the map – Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to the Democrats, at least for the sake of this exercise. Personally, I think Virginia is now much lighter blue nationally after Glenn Youngkin’s work there. But if you leave New Hampshire as the only state undecided on the map and toss in others where likely, it’s 268-266 Republicans. New Hampshire is worth four. Think if it comes down to it in the fall, the Democrats in the Granite State are going to forgive Biden and the Democrats for screwing them over? Not likely.

I understand the ‘why’ for this move by the DNC. I just posit that this is being a little too cute by half. Biden got elected during a pandemic by hiding in his basement, and because he wasn’t Trump. Now that he’s had four years to screw everything up on full display seven ways to Sunday, I’m not sure hiding from Democrat primary voters is the best strategy to deploy before Biden’s even committed publicly to running for reelection.

Republicans should support New Hampshire’s maneuvering to go first and make the Democrats face the prospects of either caving or punish their own in New Hampshire for not breaking New Hampshire’s law. It’s easy messaging, and might just gain them the White House in the process when everything’s counted.