Jan 29
Dean takes 2nd in NH
… and I’m sitting here wondering, “who cares?” I like Howard Dean as much as the next geek, he seems like a straightforward guy with a pretty decent set of values and a damn large following, and he can’t win a fucking primary.
So we’re boned. We’ll probably end up with Bush v. Kerry. Granted, that’s an easy call for anybody with more than 2 braincells to bang together, but it’s still the same 2 evils calling again.
In my poli-sci class we discussed several possibilities as to why voting is still around - and is still considered a core democratic value. If you don’t vote, somehow you’re a second-class citizen. Yet when you vote, you usually just end up choosing between one joker who sucks and another joker who sucks slightly less. Neither is a good candidate, or even a good compromise; but you’re stuck with them anyway. So why in the hell does society care?
One of those possibilities was that voting is a placebo - it’s the political equivalent of a pacifier, something that the government gives the people to suck on every two years so that we can feel better about being good little citizens. This opinion wasn’t particularly popular in class, but I’m thinking that it’s pretty much spot-on. I honestly can’t recall the last time a candidate that I really thought deserved to get into office actually got elected.
It’s not too surprising that an anti-business, anti-war candidate isn’t doing too well, though. Actually, the more I think about it, the more surprised I am that he made it to 2nd place.