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captainsblogAfter months of saturation media coverage of the presidential campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire, and heavy week-long analyses since then of the contests in booming places like Nevada and South Carolina, just over eleven percent of the Democratic race is over (the top three now holding 443 out of the 4,049 total delegates to the Democratic convention). The GOP race is even less settled, with only seven percent (148 of their 2,380 delegates) decided on.
So you'd think that next week's New York primary, holding the second-biggest prize of all the Super Tuesday states, would be a big deal. The Republican winner-take-all race offers 101 delegates, while the Dem side offers a proportional share of 281. Those totals are each more than the current leaders have accumulated in all of their heavily-publicized wins to date.
Why is it, then, that even though we haven't gotten to the meaty part of the campaign yet, you'd barely know we existed here?
Primary Day is a week away, and I haven't seen or heard a single campaign ad. Not that I'm complaining, but we haven't received a single robo-call. And even those grassiest-rootsy of showings of support, campaign signs? Except for the frighteningly omnipresent ones for Ron Paul and one Mitt Romney sign I saw on a 290 off-ramp only within the past week, there's nothing. Not three months ago, the streets of this neighborhood were a thicket of signs for County Executive and Town Board, so it's not that people are unwilling to have the litter on their lawns.
No debates. No rallies. There's more excitement coming out of yesterday's news about our Republican state senator retiring in ten months than there is about a potentially nation-changing vote that's one week away.
Now we've been used to this in general elections. New York is considered too blue-state, and its GOP statewide organization too dysfunctional, for any Republican to have wasted any time campaigning here for most of my lifetime. Similarly, since the Reds have written us off, the Blues generally don't waste their time and money here. (I attended a Jimmy Carter rally at the Nassau Mausoleum in 1976, and that's as close as I've ever come to any candidate since.)
This should be a different story, though. We do have state natives (well, one real one) in each of the races for the first time in my memory, but polls show both of them to be eminently beatable here.
So where are these people? Are they all duking it out in California for their slightly larger prizes? Up in North Dakota freezing their tuchuses off for their dozen or so caucus votes?
Will Bill call me even once?
And where are the party organizations? We've been enrolled Democrats here for 14 years, with 100 percent voting records and even appearances in some primaries. Why aren't the candidates' supporters reaching out to us to post signs or make calls? I've really zeroed in on my candidate of choice in the past few days and I'd be willing to do it, but who do I call? The downtown party headquarters? The town's? It's not like the candidates are in the phone books.
This is the first election in my lifetime, and probably yours, where neither party is running an incumbent. It should be the crowning moment of participatory democracy, and couldn't be coming at a better time. And yet all the media seems to be doing is focusing on these early, and largely irrelevant, "horse races" and writing about "momentum," when the "race" really isn't out of sight of the starting gate yet.
::makes mental note to remember to vote next week, since seemingly nobody else is gonna remind me::
So you'd think that next week's New York primary, holding the second-biggest prize of all the Super Tuesday states, would be a big deal. The Republican winner-take-all race offers 101 delegates, while the Dem side offers a proportional share of 281. Those totals are each more than the current leaders have accumulated in all of their heavily-publicized wins to date.
Why is it, then, that even though we haven't gotten to the meaty part of the campaign yet, you'd barely know we existed here?
Primary Day is a week away, and I haven't seen or heard a single campaign ad. Not that I'm complaining, but we haven't received a single robo-call. And even those grassiest-rootsy of showings of support, campaign signs? Except for the frighteningly omnipresent ones for Ron Paul and one Mitt Romney sign I saw on a 290 off-ramp only within the past week, there's nothing. Not three months ago, the streets of this neighborhood were a thicket of signs for County Executive and Town Board, so it's not that people are unwilling to have the litter on their lawns.
No debates. No rallies. There's more excitement coming out of yesterday's news about our Republican state senator retiring in ten months than there is about a potentially nation-changing vote that's one week away.
Now we've been used to this in general elections. New York is considered too blue-state, and its GOP statewide organization too dysfunctional, for any Republican to have wasted any time campaigning here for most of my lifetime. Similarly, since the Reds have written us off, the Blues generally don't waste their time and money here. (I attended a Jimmy Carter rally at the Nassau Mausoleum in 1976, and that's as close as I've ever come to any candidate since.)
This should be a different story, though. We do have state natives (well, one real one) in each of the races for the first time in my memory, but polls show both of them to be eminently beatable here.
So where are these people? Are they all duking it out in California for their slightly larger prizes? Up in North Dakota freezing their tuchuses off for their dozen or so caucus votes?
Will Bill call me even once?
And where are the party organizations? We've been enrolled Democrats here for 14 years, with 100 percent voting records and even appearances in some primaries. Why aren't the candidates' supporters reaching out to us to post signs or make calls? I've really zeroed in on my candidate of choice in the past few days and I'd be willing to do it, but who do I call? The downtown party headquarters? The town's? It's not like the candidates are in the phone books.
This is the first election in my lifetime, and probably yours, where neither party is running an incumbent. It should be the crowning moment of participatory democracy, and couldn't be coming at a better time. And yet all the media seems to be doing is focusing on these early, and largely irrelevant, "horse races" and writing about "momentum," when the "race" really isn't out of sight of the starting gate yet.
::makes mental note to remember to vote next week, since seemingly nobody else is gonna remind me::
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 07:02 pm (UTC)The only candidate I've seen hide or hair of yet is John Edwards, who's going to a rally tonight in St. Paul. Maybe it's because we're right next door, but I'm a little bitter that I don't get my hand shaken by every Tom, Jane, and Crazy Loon running for the presidency every time I go out for groceries this week. You know, like they do in Iowa. Fucking Iowa.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-30 02:23 am (UTC)I actually still don't know who I'm voting for, believe it or not.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-30 11:20 am (UTC)