Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Not-so-usual suspects

Back in the day, all us political junkies were crying foul about the compressed schedule: "Iowa, New Hampshire, and maybe Nevada will decide the nomination!" we said, "by the time those small states are done, we'll have a clear frontrunner! With about 1% of the population having voted, the choice would effectively be made by our ADHD media." Heh...good times, good times.

Fast forward a bit. Remember how this sucker was tied after Super Tuesday? The day when, as somebody put it "an irresistible force will meet an unmovable object". So the only normal thing in such circumstances came about: almost a dead-even split. Wow! Two great candidates in almost a perfect tie!

Sooooo....after surprising wins in Washington, Maine, and Virginia, what do we hear?* That Obama is the frontrunner, almost guaranteed to win this thing. There are already people whining that Hillary should get out of the race...because she's trailing by a whopping 50.3%-48.6% of delegates committed with over a third of them still to be decided.

I figured a few contests in small states would give the media their frontrunner, even though such nomenclature would short-circuit the democratic process. I didn't think those states would turn out to be Maine, Washington, and Virginia.

*No, Obamaites, Maryland and Louisiana weren't surprising wins.

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