Last February, Unity08 Celebrity Spokeseyebrow Sam Waterston informed us little people about how politics really worked:
Did you know that 99% of American voters have NO say in who is picked to run for president on the party tickets? Unless you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you’re left out in the cold. And everyone knows, these two races (and how filled the campaign coffers are) dictates what happens in the rest of the country.
But as this February comes around, the little people aren’t following Waterston’s script. In both the Democratic and Republican primary races, there’s no clear frontrunner for the most sheeplike among us to follow. This means that the voters in the 22 states with February 5th primary elections will have to decide for themselves which candidate they prefer. The elections of February 5 states won’t affect each other because voting will happen simultaneously, which makes it likely that there won’t be a blowout winner on February 5. This is especially true for the Democratic primaries, in which delegates are awarded proportionate to the vote and not in a winner-take-all fashion. Voters even after the massive votes on February 5 will have a determinative role in choosing the candidates to run as the Republican and Democratic candidates in the fall.
Expect to hear some pundits and some citizens expressing tiredness: “can’t we just pick two candidates and get it over with?” But for my part, I’m very happy to see that we’ll have a democratic process not just on but after February 5.
I just wanted to make an interesting observation about the South Carolina primaries. In this staunchly Republican state, fewer than 450,000 people participated in the Republican primary on January 19. More than 530,000 participated in the Democratic primary on January 26. I would think that this is a rough measure of the way people will vote come November. With over 50% of the vote, Obama has certainly struck a chord with the people in South Carolina, and I think he has an excellent chance to carry his message and his spirit through to a win in November.
Yes Mark, I agree – and exit polls show that Barack Obama got the majority of votes among those Democrats who said that electability is an important issue.
That’s a big reversal from the earlier era of Clinton inevitability.