Take It Back

DON'T get me wrong; the carnival's got to come to your town every so often, and it's gonna be loud and Hair Metal-y, and the rides will be of questionable maintenance, and the games will all be fixed. Under the circumstances it might just as well be democracy, since it probably treats the animals a little better.

But Indiana is no place for this sort of thing. Indiana is a place where other people's enthusiasms are always unfortunate.

Last night one of the screen readers for the local CBS affiliate tossed to some veteran CBS streetwalker so he could inform us that this was the first time in forty years Hoosier votes in a Presidential primary would actually count. Apparently he was just there to check our math, since that's been the point of every other sentence uttered on local news for the past month. Or maybe he was using his Hypno-vision to try to convince Hoosiers it made sense.

If so I'm immune. "You're a veteran CBS newsman, whoever you are, and I'm trying to recall one example of anyone at the Tiffany Net in the last forty years complaining that Indiana wasn't involved enough in the process," I told him, but he didn't seem to get it. "Indiana suddenly matters? Indiana's been a reliable Republican state for those same forty years (which is every other every-other-sentence we've heard the last four weeks). Is there a Republican race still going on? I must've missed it. There are two nominal Democrats nominally left in the race, and as I understand it (if you'll forgive my natural disinterest in other people's enthusiasms, or in Government By The People Who Pay Attention To Such Things) a substantial win in Indiana could, potentially, make the other one cry. Also, if I recall correctly, Iowa and New Hampshire got to choose from among twelve or sixteen Democrats, and we're supposed to be excited about two. Indiana has a statewide inferiority complex, but it's not about Iowa or New Hampshire. This is like getting excited because you're the fourteenth caller and you get to father Madonna's next child.

Leave us recall that the Indiana Voter was already discounted by the Times weeks ago; after six PM tonight no one is going to be analyzing what Hoosiers have to say to the nation, because the answer is Could we get some more breadsticks when you have a minute? We're not selecting a Democratic nominee, we're getting a chance to register which candidate's skid marks we dislike the least.

There's a simple fix to all this, an easy way to make the major party primaries equally accessible to all, and to make the votes of every American count toward the selection of our next President.

Do me a favor and don't look for it.