You have seen every movie in the theater. You have cleaned out your TiVo and there is nothing left but reruns of the Dukes of Hazard. You would watch a podcast or two on your iTunes, but your computer is so riddled with trojans and worms you cant get Windows to start. Football is done and lets face it, real men don’t watch basketball. So now what? There is always Politics. Did you know it is an election year?
Thats right this coming Tuesday is SUPER TUESDAY. The name alone should get you so excited you will want to run out of your house to the nearest polling place to cast your vote. This Tuesday 20 states will hold primaries to chose a candidate for both parties for President of this fair land. What do you have to do to vote you ask? Is it as easy as voting for American Idol? I wish. I think a lot more Americans would vote if they could vote from their phones and if someone cool like Orlando Bloom was running. To tell you the truth it is kind of a pain in the ass. Having to register, find the poling place, leave your house, deal with the old ladies and use a touch screen voting system that in most cases will have you voting for the wrong guy or gal. In the end you are left with someone you most likely will never meet and might even get you into some kind horrible war, leaving your children to pay for in the end. Please do not let my cynicism stop you from casting your vote for the next leader of the free world. I have provided links at the bottom of this post to help you find the who/where/when on election day. I really do care. Please vote!
So you know where to vote and how to vote, maybe? Now who to vote for? Good news for those of you who are not fans of change. Since 1988 there has been either a Bush or a Clinton on the ballot for President and this year is no different. Keeping in the tradition of the way you have voted or not voted over the last couple of decades the choice for you few should be fairly easy. For the rest of us however, I think the decision might just be a bit more complicated. Lets take a look at the parties and the candidates this year.
In America we have two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. Sure there have been others throughout the course of our short history, but this is what we are stuck with this year. Truthfully these days the difference between the parties is so few, I think you could say we have a one party system in this country. Lets save that argument for another day. A Presidential election is the big game for the political parties in this country. Having your party control this powerful position in government allows you to guide the agenda for four long years. Each party fields a number of candidates for President, some hand picked and others who have crawled out of dark and scary holes to provide entertainment to the serious candidates. (Hi Ron Paul) The process of the Primary is to weed out the good and the bad candidates. Each state is awarded a number of delegates, those delegates are then awarded to the candidate that wins the state. After the last Primary it is off to the party convention to added up the delegates and declare a winner. The winner of most delegates, in most cases, is then that party’s candidate for President. It is now February and we are now more than halfway through the process. Some early primaries have taken place and the field is beginning to narrow. Super Tuesday which last year only represented seven states has ballooned to 20! Some calling this year’s Super Tuesday the first national Primary. In the past Super Tuesday allowed momentum for candidates but didn’t always lockup the nomination of the party. Some are saying with so many states voting it will be easy to declare a winner after Tuesday. I tend to agree with this theory. Although much like everything else in life you could wake on Wednesday morning, next a half naked women and still have an open field of contenders. This race could go down to the wire, all the way to the convention. It might be kind of fun! So, are you lost? Remember there are links at the bottom of this post that will provide further clarification. So if the Primary’s are in place to weed out and setup a candidate for President. Lets talk about who is left.
The field of candidates is still pretty thick at this point at least on the Republican side. The Democrats have got it down to just two, John Edwards dropped out last week, leaving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to battle it out. The Republicans however have four remaining candidates, with the leader John McCain followed by Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. Still quite a few to chose from?. Now I cannot tell you who to vote for, I could but I am not going to, I am going to give suggestions and maybe even some facts? In my post tomorrow, I will provide a short run down on each candidates likes/dislikes, platform, what they eat for breakfast and so on. I might throw in a prediction of two.
LINK TO PART II (coming tomorrow)
Links: Primary Elections, Super Delegates, Primary Dates, Super Tuesday, Delegate Counts, Where to Vote?
