Towards the end of the glorious Red Sox game yesterday, I asked my mom (A diehard Obama supporter), when she would begin to get nervous about the democratic primary. She said that she wouldn't be nervous, because there wasn't anything she could do about. Now if you know me or my family, you know that is she didn't mean that voting in general didn't matter, or that one vote is not important. What bothered me was that her attitude wasn't just a way of saying, "Hey, he's getting my vote, what more can I do?". It was actually a pretty dead on take to the situation and a strong indictment of the problems of our primary system. Being registered to vote in Maryland, my vote on February 12th is over a month after the first states and a week after "Super Tuesday" and will very likely have no impact at all on the race.
The ridiculousness of Iowa and New Hampshire being so influential has always bothered me, but there was something about hearing it in those stark terms that hit me.
Although if we had a national primary, the Bill Richardson wouldn't have given us
this defense of Iowa importance:
"Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord, should be the first caucus and primary"
I'm glad Bill cleared that one up for us.
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