Good Things Came to States That Waited

North Carolina and Indiana could have done what a bunch of other states did, and rushed to the front of the line and had their primaries on February 5th.  They could even have done as Michigan and Florida and "taken cuts" and broke through the DNC's approved sequence of early primaries.  Instead they decided to have late primaries.  They got a lot more attention from the candidates than they would have had they gone on Super Tuesday, and certainly more than had they broken the DNC rules and gone early (thus resulting in a candidate boycott).  The state parties benefited from the extra voters, the extra activity, the extra excitement.  And North Carolina and Indiana get the distinction of being the states that, if not concluded, then essentially conclusively settled the nomination battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
But that's not all they got.  To keep states spread out and not all clustered in February, the DNC offered bonus pledged delegates to those states that went late in cycle.  Thus, instead of only getting 66 pledged delegates to the Democratic convention in Denver, Indiana gets to send 72.  And North Carolina went from 89 delegates to 115.  Those extra delegates put Indiana ahead of Tennessee and Maryland and gave it as much voting strength as Minnesota and Missouri.  And North Carolina bypassed Massachusetts and New Jersey.  

When the primary system is reworked, maybe some states will remember that going late was great for North Carolina and Indiana.