On Super Tuesday I Wanted To Die.

Happy Votesmas, people!

I hope you all managed to find some time to give up for our political process today, or will whenever your community has it's primary election. Or if you're an independent, never mind.

I'm not an independent. I'm a Democrat. I have been since my 18th birthday. There's no way that I wouldn't join the party of FDR. I'm just not sure that it is still his party or not. But let's leave that aside for a moment. New Deal or not, the Donkeys are my people. Represent.

Now, when I went to represent this morning, I walked into a roomful of disappointment. It started when I signed in to vote, as I have for the last 12 years. The sweet old woman with the book looked up at me and asked "Republican?"

Heart. Break.

How could she know that I want a single-payer health care system, increased funding for the arts, a complete redeployment from Iraq to Afghanistan, and mountains of money thrown at our public schools? For whatever reason, she looked at me and just assumed I was there to kill Medicaid.

I told her that I was, in fact, a Democrat, and it sounded far more defeatist than I had intended. I signed in, was handed a ballot and asked to return the pen after I was done. I walked to a booth, readied my pen and looked at the ballot.

Heart. Break.

Staring back at me, top of the list, was "Dennis J. Kucinich."

DAMN YOU! It was like getting a voicemail from someone who just died in a car accident. That shouldn't be there. There's nothing I can do about it now. All it can do is remind me of what could have been, if only the world had turned a little bit differently.

Tempted as I was to throw my vote away just to say that I had voted for him, I did not. This is too important a task to waste my time making statements or scoring private moral victories. I'm not going to say who I voted for, but I will say that I am not happy with Dave Letterman right now.

I await the results of today's contest with anxiety and trepidation.

Happy Votesmas.

By the way, where was Gravel? And who the hell is Jim Rogers?

Somebody Told Me

Friday evening I found myself with a strange hunger for pizza. My brother, one of his friends and I had dinner at a relatively new pizza place here in the city, Wedge, and I make a point of pointing out the restaurant's newness so that it doesn't seem strange when I say that none of us had previously been there. But we'd heard it was good.

Word of mouth is extremely important in this world. We trust what our friends tell us, mostly, because we trust them. So when someone says "yeah, that place is really great," we'll go and see for ourselves. We'll sit outside in the cold for 40 minutes waiting for a table and then wait another 40 minutes for the food to arrive. By the way, it was fantastic. Our friends didn't lie, and if you do go, try the hot Earl Gray tea. It's the best I've ever had.

And that's what makes Presidential politics so difficult for me. It is impossible to really know what we're getting into when we throw our support to a candidate. Even if you manage to dig through election coverage which is... okay, I'm going to digress here for a while.

*NEW TOPIC: WHY DOES THE NEWS MEDIA SUCK BALLS?*
Please note, this is not a new condition. The news media has always, and will always, completely suck balls when it comes to covering the Presidential campaigns. The problem as I see it is the process story. Process stories focus on campaign strategy, poll numbers, endorsements, and idiotic things human beings manage to say when they're under constant scrutiny from an entourage of press professionals. They tell us nothing of policy choices, of plans, or really even of the character of a candidate. Instead we're left with a glut of information in the vein of "well, if 42% of 35-44 year olds in South Carolina like her, she must be pretty good." That's great, glad they made up their minds. Now why the hell should I like her? Oh, because she's focusing now on a late-state strategy for Super Tuesday and she's got James Carville advising her on Southern States? That sounds like a great strategy. WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT TELL ME ABOUT WHAT KIND OF PRESIDENT SHE'S GOING TO BE? It doesn't tell me anything. And in a day that story probably won't even matter any more. But what's even worse is the transitive conferral of credibility that comes from these stories. If we spend all our time talking about three candidates, those are the important ones, right? So, if someone is polling in the single digits, we probably shouldn't spend any time discussing his or her ideas, right? Whew! Thank goodness. I was *this close* to thinking about new and different ways of solving our nation's problems. Thank God that's over! Now, I know that sounds simplistic, but there is some very solid research in the area, and the indication is pretty much "out of sight out of mind."
*END TOPIC*

Now we can't lay everything at the feet of the news media, as worthless and contemptible as they often are, because there's another heinous factor at work here to obscure the truth about candidates, their positions and their characters. I am speaking of course about the candidates themselves. Sure you can call yourself "Compassionate Conservative" or tell me you want to make America strong again, but what the hell does that mean? And is it even true?

It's not like I can't make a decision for myself (and on February 5 if Kucinich is still in the race I'll be voting for him) but it would be nice to have some information I could use from a source I can trust.