Primaries

Well I'm watching the coverage of the SC Republican primary. Of course as you probably know Romney and Clinton already took Nevada. Even though McCain is up by 5% they haven't called it yet. I guess some of the areas which haven't reported are potential Huckabee strongholds. In any case I'm definitely a political junkie, and I find the primaries particularly interesting because they're so disorganized. Since the Constitution doesn't cover political parties the whole primary process is extra-constitutional and as a result there's lots of weirdness.

Of course not all of the weirdness is interesting and amusing, some of the weirdness is downright infuriating. In particular New Hampshire and especially Iowa piss me off. I'm very sympathetic to arguments that smaller states do a better job of vetting candidates than larger states, but it shouldn't be the same two states every time. Numerous bad policies can be traced back to Iowa's power in the primaries. And then there's the actual process of the caucus, which ends up being a democratic process only in the most vague sense of the word.

In the time it took me to write this they called the race for McCain. I think that pretty much means the end of Huckabee. If he can't win in the south he's basically done for because he's definitely not winning in the north or west. I was kind of hoping that Thompson would pull it out somehow. I know that a brokered convention would make the ugliness of Iowa look like a supermodel, but it would still be incredibly interesting, maybe we'll still get lucky.

Democracy is like sausage making...