A Confederacy of Dunces

I used to wonder why these primaries mattered. Since considerably less people vote than in the U.S. elections proper, it didn't seem like a good way to figure out which of your candidates would win the election. That's because that isn't the point. After reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, I had a much better idea of how this whole process is supposed to play out and how it can be stolen by political pros with some knowledge of the system.

Not all of the primaries are proper elections. A good deal of them are like Iowa, which is a caucus, just a formal show of hands among the party's voters in the state, usually the local party heads and however else shows up. You could call a caucus on any issue as well, nationally or in that state, usually to force candidates to debate fringe issues that wouldn't adress if they could avoid them.New Hampshire was the first real primary, and as such, has slightly more realistic results compared to a caucus.

The real point of these primaries is an ongoing opinion poll/rallying cry/cash call/platform negotiation depending on where your weakness is. You might have to win a couple of primaries just to get noticed, or to secure better financial backing or to convince a popular politician to endorse you in his home state and nab crucial votes that way. This means you're pretty much going to have to compromise at some point. Once the primaries are over, you go to your party's convention with a potential piece of the vote and any delegates you won in the primaries. The party has a large number of delegates themselves which they will throw behind a candidate for whatever arbitrary reason or sleazy back room deal. These days the Democrats have opted for the same model as the Republicans, announcing the party candidate long before the convention, so that the convention becomes a formality and merely ratifies the candidate.

This is mostly because of the televised chaos of the 1968 and 1972 conventions. In the HST book, guaranteed front runner Ed Muskie does things the old-fashioned way. He secures endorsements from every Democrat in the country that's not running themselves and specifically from Richard J. Daley, the union-maffia connected Chicago mayor and de facto head of the Democratic party. This is the power base that got Roosevelt and Kennedy elected and seemed like the smart choice. But he burns out long before the primaries end and the front runner from that point on is George McGovern. McGovern is technically just left of the center but is also the only one appealing to the youth vote and other progressives, Vietnam veterans and feminists.

Not coincidentally, George McGovern was heavily involved in reforming the convention rules after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 made the nomination of Hubert Humphrey possible, despite him never winning a single primary. All kinds of unheard of national caucuses were being voted on, the delegates needed to be representative of the population for the first time in U.S. history and there were at least two distinct blocs besides McGovern. The Daley group of party cadre types and traditional Democratic constituencies and George Wallace's ancient racist Democratic vote, believed to be the only way to win the south. McGovern beat them all, by using the rules he came up with to full effect, only to be run into the ground by the Nixon Machine a few months later.

The current democratic race is a good deal less interesting, seeing as we'll never know who played it best until one of the candidates walks out of the secret negotiations smiling for the press. It is developing along similar lines in terms of voting blocs, though. Hilary Clinton is obviously backed by the old party system (different, but the same), but does well with badly-informed progressives. Barrack Obama has the left of the centre and most of the fickle youth/progressive vote this time. John Edwards might appeal to anyone, but has no chance, except for another vice-presidency ticket if he gets enough bargaining power. He does have a decent chance of carrying the south, but this has been such a Republican stronghold since the Reagan years, there's really no point to that. The other candidates don't really matter, and never did. Mike Gravel's campaign has the stench of death worse than Joe Biden had and Dennis Kucinich is never going anywhere, despite his fantastic outrage at being kicked out of the NBC debate. The sad thing is, while in America he's a dangerously insane lefty, in Europe he would be a remarkably dull social democrat with 20 year old ideas.

Hillary is demonstrably left/liberal on every issue, but will probably be the most bought- and-paid-for president in the history of the United States. She also doesn't seem like a likely candidate to reduce the absurd powers of the executive office in her term. Obama, though less beholden to business interests will probably fuck up the negotiations at some point, and have to accept the VP nomination or try again 2012 or 2016, at which point he'll be considerably more corrupt than he is now. There is also virtually no comprehensive data concerning his voting record, seeing as he's only been in office two years, half of which was spent campaigning for the presidency.

On the Republican side, things are a lot more entertaining even though they're well aware that they need a miracle to win the election.

Rudy Giuliani still hasn't realised that America needs a president, not a mayor. But after the elections will probably get the bipartisan nod and become the new head of FEMA (I have my fingers crossed, he might actually be good at that.)
Ron Paul is this year's charming oddball whose internet presence is vastly overestimated as real world votes, though his return of the gold standard plan is completely insane in execution, it does bring up the uncomfortable fact of the semi-private ownership of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, a staple of post 9-11 conspiracy thinking and genuinely chilling fact.
Mitt Romney's appeal is largely based on his Mormon hair and teeth. I forgot who said it, but someone mentioned that if it came out that he was a cannibal, most people would just shrug and go with their gut anyway. He's trying to appeal to the religious right, which will never generate the same turnout as for Bush, no matter how much of his personal fortune he spends, Utah is the only state that's in the bag.
Mike Huckabee has that 'aw shucks' thing going for him and of course the lame Chuck Norris endorsement, but he's counting on the same voter base as Romney and is more likely to get it, but not before throwing half of it to McCain. He's also the out of touch senior citizen in this campaign, somewhat more earnest and predictably naff than the others.
John McCain will probably win the nomination if he keeps his cool after Super Tuesday, which would make him by far the most reasonable candidate to vote for in the general election.

Rest assured that the always dependable American public will be galvanised by the excitement to turn out in droves, unless of course they 'have a thing to do' on election day, which will make it difficult to reach anything resembling a mandate. But if 2004's 64% is topped, this might be the first election since 1972 in which more than half of the country actually wants the president they get. They wanted Nixon, though.