HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
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HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
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Thursday, August 09, 2007Primarily We Roll Along This is getting fucking ridiculous, people. What is up with this severely retarded need that states have to have their primaries be the first in the nation? New Hampshire and Iowa have been first for a long, long time. Has it made them cooler places to live? Has anyone ever overheard any distinguished college grads trying to decide where to take their bright futures saying something along the lines of, "Well, Dad, New York is the financial capitol of the nation and Virginia is home to an array of high-paying tech jobs, but I'm really thinking that I want to go to Iowa, so I can vote first."Seriously, what do these states get out of holding earlier primaries? Candidates are forced to spend more time there? Yahoo! I know that, if I was a state legislator, my priority would definitely be to try to secure more face time with Sam Brownback and Dennis Kucinich. Maybe the idea is that these states want to lessen the amount of time they're forced to deal with fucking televised campaign ads. I guess I can sort of almost see a point to that one. Maybe. But there's a downside that far outweighs the beautiful notion of fewer shitty commercials. One part of that downside is that we lose all the good bits of a long, drawn-out primary season. Opinions of candidates can change over time. As the country gets to know a candidate better, we can come to the realization that they might make a much, much shittier president than we'd initially thought. If we take our time with the primaries, we have the opportunity to see the full flower of a given candidate's shittiness and deny them our vote. With a rushed, compressed campaign schedule, we're more often casting our votes based on first impressions. That's not good. Hell, Charles Manson might make a good first impression. But, give the man some time and you know he's going to carve that swastika in his forehead. I worry that we're not giving these candidates the opportunity to carve their own forehead swastikas. Then there's the fact that a compressed primary schedule really plays into the hands of the money people. You know, the ones that are truly choosing our nominee, by virtue of controlling the purse strings. You shorten the primary season, these scumbags will be even more likely to agree in advance to whom all their money's going to go. Bottom line is this: states' rights aside, the federal government needs to make primary scheduling a big part of a massive overhaul of the election system. Otherwise, these fucking states are going to continue to act like seven-year-olds setting up competing lemonade stands and we're going to see the first primaries for the 2012 election coming sometime around 2009.
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