This irritates me to no end:
Florida could move its presidential primary to as early as Jan. 29 -- a week before the "Super-Duper Tuesday" date of Feb. 5 that California set this month and that New York, Texas and a flurry of other states are eying -- after the State House of Representatives approved the change this week. Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday that the State Senate should follow suit.
Florida is doing this, I guess, because they feel they don't already have enough say who becomes the next president. No state has suffered more than Florida from the indifference of presidential nominees to non-swing states. If Florida didn't have an early primary, it is highly doubtful that the presidential nominee of either party would ever spend a dime in the state, much less visit. It has been decades since Florida was the deciding state in a presidential election. This is truly a shame, because the air-tight voting systems in Florida fuel more confidence in the hearts of voters than those of any other state in the nation. While in other states, there really isn't a way to ever know who won an election, when people take office in Florida, you know that that person truly has the will of the electorate behind him or her. If more of our elections were like Florida's, then there wouldn't be any need for further election reform in the United States.
The truth is, that after the 2006 wave, Florida is the only state where the power-grabbing Republican political infrastructure survived more or less unscathed. A Republican succeeded a Bush in the Governor's office. Democrats made minimal gains in the state legislature, leaving enormous Republican majorities intact. Another election was stolen in Katherine Harris's old district. A child sex predator was outed, but Democrats still barely won his seat even though he remained on the ballot. Despite the consequences felt virtually everywhere else in the nation for six years of destructive, Republican power-grabbing, Florida remains an isolated stronghold of the acien regime.
For a state that already has so much sway over presidential elections, and which has such a horrendous track record of verifiable electoral infrastructure, a decision to leap ahead of virtually all other states in the primary calendar can only be characterized as a power grab in the tradition of Bush, DeLay, and Gingrich. It is also almost certainly an attempt to stick it to Howard Dean of the DNC, whose new primary calendar finally allows minorities such as Latinos, African-Americans and union members to have a say in determining the next president, which is an anathema to Florida's elites who have done everything in their power over the past decade to make sure that those groups are not even allowed to vote. The move is also a huge boon to the frontrunning campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, both of whom have tremendous advantages in Florida. If Florida is on January 29th, it will be extremely difficult to see a path for any other candidate as long as Clinton or Giuliani manage to come within a close second in New Hampshire. As I type this, that is a criteria both candidates meet quite easily.
So, if you want to have a say in who becomes our next President, basically you are shit out of luck, unless you live in Florida. Then again, considering Florida's track record on elections, you are probably shit out of luck even if you live there. But don't worry: Jeb Bush's cronies will tell you who the Democratic and Republican nominees will be. And then, come November, they will tell you who the next President is. Relax. You can trust them.
