Getting on the political bandwagon

I haven't really felt much of an urge to blog before now. What inspired me? Politics. I will never claim to know very much about politics, but as a former NH resident I felt a suddent pang of guilt for having done little to no research on the candidates so late in the game. Yup that's right, for NH residents it's late in the game as the Iowa caucuses are over and the NH primary is next week. However, as a current resident of one of those big west coast states, I've learned that primary season means much less here. It is January 3rd and I have seen only one political commercial out here. One! During the week that I spend back in NH I probably saw about 5 for every half hour of television that I watched. I just recently learned that my state of residence has not only a primary, but also caucuses. Why both you might ask. I know that was my question. And then I learned that the democratic primary here is a waste of time and money. Again you might ask why I say that. The reason is that the democratic party pays absolutely no attention to the outcome of the primary. The caucuses, however, they pay attention to. Weird. In contrast, the Republican party chooses 51% of its delegates from the primary and 49% from the caucuses. Weird state.

So despite the apparent ridiculousness of participating in the primary process here, I'm going to try. That is if I can figure out what the differences between Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are. Their stances on the issues seem awfully similar. Somehow though, I seem to keep leaning towards Obama. And now, having just read about his impressive victory in Iowa, I see that many other people are experiencing the same inclination. Is it just that after 8 years of Bush we want someone as different as possible? I mean, a young, inexperienced, african-american man campaigning on the promise of change is about as different from George W. as one could find in politics in this country I imagine. I've been watching some episodes of of The West Wing in the political spirit of the time. Matt Santos for president anyone?

Huckabee also won in the Iowa. I'm not sure what this means for the possible Republican nominee. A little too hard to say this early I guess. All I know about him is that he is evangelical and got that vote out in Iowa, and that his is the only political commercial I've seen out here on the west coast. It was a commercial with Chuck Norris supporting him. It was ridiculous and funny and definitely clever. It's really nice to feel like the Democrats might actually have a viable candidate to put against whoever the Republicans nominate. In fact, I think they might have several.