Joe Perticone of The Bulwark called it "Snoozer Tuesday." I like that. I can think of nothing that came out of the primary on Super Tuesday except perhaps a chance for media outlets to take a practice run in multiple state for their work next November. We've known the presidential candidates since perhaps last May; the rest was mostly expenisve noise.
Erika D. Smith of the LA Times aptly describes what it felt like to be a California voter in this oh-so-predetermined exercise:
We used to hear: “Vote for who you think is the best candidate for the office or who best represents your interests.”Now it’s about the mass gamification of elections.
More fantasy football than rooting for the red or blue home team. More chess than checkers. There’s a slow shift underway from thinking of voting as a simple act of civic duty. Instead it’s becoming a series of strategic decisions and complicated calculations made in a desperate attempt to create a government of politicians who will actually improve our lives.
In practice, gamification looks like obsessively reading polls in an attempt to gain an edge or dispel rumors about your party. Or “wasting” your vote on the candidate you want to win, even if the polls say they won’t win, because you want to send a message to the political establishment. Or, my favorite, voting for a candidate you don’t like in a primary to help a candidate you do like win the general election.
Sure, not all of this is new. We’ve been told to “vote for the lesser of two evils” for decades. This country’s electoral process has always been imperfect. ...
Smith ended up following her heart and voting for Barbara Lee in the US Senate contest, knowing this was a sort of protest vote against calculated decision making. I applaud her, even though I did not take the same tack.
In the Washington Post, Robin Givhan hopefully speaks to what is meaningful amid the clutter and noise of an empty primary season; she reminds that there are a deep rights at stake here.
Voting isn’t merely a zero-sum game that ends with the winners crowing over their victory and the losers slinking away in defeat. That’s part of it, but not all of it. In a free and fair election, it’s sometimes not even the most important thing.
The vote itself is proof of faith. The person casting it believes that it matters. Denying them the opportunity is a callous dismissal. The depth of meaning in a single vote comes from our troubled history, our collective ability to effect change and the dignity inherent in expressing our singular desires to the lofty state, as well as to our next-door neighbor.
... As a country, we like to speak about the right to vote as a sacred act. But in the next breath, we characterize it as a tedious chore that must be accomplished in a blizzard or downpour. And when candidates dare to linger longer than electoral math suggests that they should — we liken voting to an enabling act in service to a narcissist.
But a vote has never only been fundamentally about wins and losses. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, the lack of access to the ballot box was characterized by activists as something that was humiliating, degrading and unjust. In contrast, the act of choosing one’s representative was an expression of dignity and respect. Victory wasn’t assured. Progress was elusive. How long would it take? Not long. But justice wouldn’t be instantaneous. It wasn’t a matter of a single election or the success of one candidate. The work was in the voting, which is to say, the work was in making one’s voice heard. Again and again.
It matters if one’s candidate wins or loses. Profoundly. Today, it matters more than ever.
But there’s nothing quite as searing as a loss in which a voter had to stand by in silence and watch as it happened.
People have died for the right to have a say; even when our choices lose, our vote shouts "we are here."
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