Stay Involved!

The turnout was great at the Colorado caucuses yesterday. Participatory democracy at it's best. Now, let's hope we have a real choice in November.

Both parties will be putting up candidates that propose change. But how much will really change?
Only Obama says he will pull out of Iraq quickly. Once fully advised by his Joint Chiefs, he'll probably change his mind, and explain it away to the populace. And, we'll cut him some slack because he's so "genuine". Clinton would probably stay in Iraq longer than McCain. What will change?

The economy chugs along under it's own power. And, does that better when there is little government interference. Read up on the 1970's when the feds tried to control the economy with wage and price freezes. It wasn't pretty, and probably was the biggest cause of the moribund economy in the 1980s. Most economists will tell the new President to give lip service to the economy and assure people that everything will be OK, but that's it, don't do anything. No government interference. What will change?

Immigration reform? Nobody wants to tackle that one. They understand the problem, and deep down would like to fix it, but don't want to alienate the Hispanic vote, which will put them in power. There will be no drastic changes in immigration reform. What will change?

The real focus needs to be on the Congressional elections, not the Presidential. Congress has a lower approval rating today than Bush. They spend our money like drunken sailors on pet projects. Remember, the Dems who promised change when they were elected in 2006? What's changed?

We need the hope of change, we want things to be better. But, we need to do more than go to caucuses. We need to repeatedly contact our Senators and Representative and show our displeasure until things start to really change.

Point is - if you want change, you need to stay involved. Not just this year, but constantly.

No to a National Primary

The concept of a national primary for selecting party candidates for the U.S. presidential election has been brought up from time to time. It's being discussed even more this year because of Super Tuesday, today, on which there are 24 states having primaries or caucuses.

We need to back away from a national primary concept, and even back away from a Super Tuesday concept. As voters, we need to see the candidates up close and personal to make our choices. Lumping several states, or worse - all states, onto one day prevents the candidates from getting to many of the states to woe voters.

We've seen this year where results have surprised pollsters. Those surprises then impact upcoming primaries. If we had all of the primaries, or most of them, on one day there is no room for a surprise candidate to shift voter opinion.

One big primary day will shift the media attention to the big prizes of the day, the big states. The smaller states will take second fiddle to the big states. Small state primaries should get as much attention as the big ones. Those votes count, too.

Let's reverse the trend toward Super Tuesdays and a national primary.