So it's been one hell of a primary season.

The most interesting thing about it, of course, is that things continue to be interesting. Hillary Clinton, who at this point is widely regarded as a long shot, picked up an impressive win in Pennsylvania, which--coupled with a handful of damaging stories about Senator Obama--has kept things up in the air, now, into May. The polls indicate a somewhat disturbing trend for the Man in Black, including an Insider Advantage poll that gives Clinton a (statistically-insignificant) lead in North Carolina.

Predictably, the response from the DNC has been angst and hand-wringing. "Why can't it be over?" they ask. "Why must we have all this competition?" One presumes the Democrats heard the phrase "presidential race" and focused on the "get it over as quickly as possible" aspect as opposed to the one where it's about people running against one another.

This made some sense to me for awhile, until I actually sat down and thought about it. Now, it just perturbs me. What kind of instant-gratification low have we sunk to here where, in effect, we want a political campaign decided before the vote actually takes place? (Contrary to the implication of the news media, the primary actually concludes with the national Convention, which is--though you may not have realised it, given the incredible pressure to get it all over with--in August, not in New Hampshire)

It's true that our society now wants things faster, cleaner, and quicker. Social theorists have written this up as the "snack culture"--a society where we don't want to have to think about things too hard, and everything's better if it's in an easily-digestible chunk. We have a short attention span, and so every political pundit in the country has been bitching and moaning about Clinton's audacity to keep the primary going until, you know, it's over.

Even more troublingly, Democrats themselves keep trying to flip to the end of the book. Recent polls suggest that 34% of Democrats want Clinton to drop out of the race. What they're asking for is Overnight Delivery on their candidate. They want to be able to offer what I would term premature congratulations. Actually, I have a better term: electile dysfunction. These Democrats want, as Demi Moore says in A Few Good Men for this case to be handled in the same fast-food, slick-ass, Persian bazaar manner with which we seem to handle everything else--and something's going to get missed.

Why should Clinton quit now? Because Obama v. McCain is going to be any cleaner, any more revealing, any more productive than Obama v. Clinton? Does anyone really believe that? Of course not. I suspect, realistically, that the real motivator is fear. Democrats are realising, at this point, that neither candidate is really particularly outstanding, and there's the nagging worry that they're going to lose in November in spite of a decade of the Bush presidency (I'd be worried about that too). So they've started telling themselves that it would be better if it was 1 on 1 cross-parties, as opposed to 1 on 1 within the party. This is silly, for the same reason I said above. The arguments are going to look the same--McCain, Clinton, and Obama have so few substantive differences between them that I've seen more than a few people wanting to switch between all possible alternatives.

Asking for the race to be over quickly--or suggesting, as more than a few have, that the "best outcome" for the DNC was an early, undefeatable frontrunner--is basically a tacit admission the SSDD mentality that people constantly deride in American politics. It's admitting that the race is going to come down to the same baseless mudslinging, baby- and ass-kissing, empty-promising fight that it was in 2006, and 2004, and 2000. "So why not get an early start on it?" is what the "quit now" Dems are saying. How inspirational.

Why not get an early start? Because this primary is exciting. It continues to bring up new revelations, both substantial and salacious. It's kept us engaged for quite some time now, and given that the pendulum swings have been dramatic (I see people now saying they wish they hadn't voted for Obama, and I'm certain there are just as many in the other camp) it promises to continue to be exciting. Did you know that there was a time when people cared about primaries? When the national convention was interesting? Inshallah, it's going to be interesting in August.

This is how politics is supposed to be. This is how all good tests of skill are supposed to be. Almost nobody would say that a baseball game is "better" if it's over by the 1st inning. How fucking depressing it is that that's basically what so many Democrats are calling for--indeed, not just calling for, but arguing it is the best option! So I hope they take it down to the wire. I hope they fight to the Convention, and I hope the Convention itself is interesting--if nothing else they've picked a city I have some fondness for, and so I want fond memories of it.

But since I've been so optimistic, let me offer a bit of balancing cynicism. Considering they're virtual clones, in terms of American politics, McCain - Obama is a tossup. So it's possible (perhaps, given some troubling racial overtones, even likely) that Obama is going to lose in November. In which case, a contentious primary all the way into August is what the Democrats secretly, unconsciously, crave. What they need. They need to be able to wake up, the day after the election, and pat themselves on the back and say that it wasn't their candidate's fault that they lost, it was The Other Guy. It was Nader. It was Florida. It was Ohio. Anything that keeps the DNC from having to take a good, hard look at itself. Anything that keeps the party from having to reevaluate its strategy for going after voters, its message, its core principles.

Because that, after all, would sate our hunger for a different kind of politics.

-Alex

PS: Happy May Day