the show goes on

Frankly, I'm glad that it's going all the way to February 5, and perhaps beyond. I still have little confidence that our votes from Texas will matter, but I wasn't quite so bugged as I expected to be last night as I watched Edwards (who, finally, somewhat belatedly, became my choice two days ago) say what losing candidates who aren't dropping out always say after New Hampshire-- that 99% of the people haven't voted. Four years ago, the same words were said, allegedly too loudly-- but Dean had to scream to be heard over a crowd of pundits already forming their narrative that the primary season was over. That didn't just hurt Dean, it hurt all of us who were ordered in the coming days to fall in line and get behind Kerry if we wanted to beat Bush.

Four years ago this morning, some Kerry staffer somewhere had already coined the imbecilic phrase, "Dated Dean, married Kerry," and was trying to figure out how to troll those newfangled blog thingies.

This time, however, the pundits, the pollsters, even the campaigns, were blindsided by vox populi and the race will go on.

Democracy is dead, they said. Long live democracy.

spacedark