But not a rant on all quitters and losers. No, I’m talking about a rant on quitters and losers among the 2008 presidential candidates. I know that although I’m a person who has strong political opinions, I don’t usually talk politics very much on this blog. But I’m just fed up with what we’ve been seeing in the past four weeks–that’s right, it’s ONLY been four weeks since the ridiculously early Iowa Caucuses–that I want to get this out of my system.
Let’s go back to the very beginning of this year: January 1st. Not that long ago. The Democrats had eight people running for president (in alphabetical order): Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. But then, three days later (January 4th), after the Iowa Caucus, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropped out of the race. Bill Richardson dropped out on January 9th, after the New Hampshire Primary. I mean, only two primaries go by and already a third of the Democrats drop out? New Hampshire and Iowa combined only represent about 1.3% of the population of the United States–”cold white people” as Jon Stewart describes them.
But since then, Dennis Kucinich (last Friday) and now John Edwards (today) have both dropped out, leaving us with essentially three Democrats left, none of whom I particularly like very much.
The Republicans, too, have already seen some of them calling it quits (though most of them have had the backbone to keep going), such as Duncan Hunter on January 19th, Fred Thompson on January 22nd, and Rudy Giuliani today.
What’s dumb is why these people drop out so quickly. I mean, folks, Super Tuesday is February 5th, which is still about a week away, which decides 52% of the Democratic delegates and 41% of the Republican delegates. Things can change up VERY quickly with such wide margins. Not to mention that California, the state with the most delegates, is holding its election that day as well, but I’ve yet to see any of these candidates do any kind of meaningful campaign in California yet.
I mean, it just seems to go against all reasonable logic. Why would you put so much work during the year 2007 running for president (particularly given how ridiculously early all of the debates started happening), and then quit as soon as a small sliver of the country votes for someone else? What is the point? Doesn’t that really just alienate the choices that the rest of the country has available to them? Democracy can only really work when citizens have a true choice on the ballot; when these others drop out so early, it cuts this choice out of the equations. On the Democratic side, there were some Democrats that I liked, but because the early votes went to the so-called “front runners”, these other guys dropped out. Now all the Dems have left are Clinton, Gravel, and Obama, none of whom I like very darn much.
Back in the old days, before all this big media, it was not the primaries and the caucuses that determined the president; they did nothing more than determine which delegates were going to the party convention. The convention decided who the nominee would be, not the primaries. Now, we’re getting to the point where the nominee is decided even before all of the primaries are over, meaning that the last few states are down to having virtually no choices to make whatsoever, and practically making the whole point of “delegates” useless. This is where the whole thing about states wanting to move up their primaries so they can “be more important” then being rebuffed by the already-first-in-line states, and that’s why we ended up with half of the country having its primaries on February 5th, and Iowa and New Hampshire holding their primaries in the dead of winter in the beginning of January. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the beginning of the next batch of primaries being held in November or December of 2011. I would probably advocate for having a fixed date that all of the state primaries are held on–the general response to that is the claim that it’s not possible for candidates to campaign everywhere at once. However, my response would be that first of all, candidates for the November general election already have to campaign everywhere at once; second of all, things like planes and the internet and the like make it much easier to be in multiple places at once; third of all, twenty-four states are holding primaries or caucuses on February 5th, so we’re already halfway to having a single day for primaries already!
All I can say is, I think that it’s a very dumb system. In thirty-three days, from the January 3rd Iowa Caucus to the February 5th Super Tuesday, only a third of the Democratic runners are left in the running and just over half of the Republican runners are left in the running. It’s ridiculous and a very sad example of our very sad system. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or one of those third-parties that the media completely denies the existence of; it just feels like this whole 2008 election is a big joke.
Tags: 2008, article, caucus, Democrats, election, losers, nominees, president, primary, quitters, rant, Republicans, runners
