Not to be overly cynical, but if we strip the grandeur from yesterday's so-called "Potomac Primary" - if not the entire 2008 primary process - does it not become increasingly clear that the system itself is incredibly undemocratic?
True, more voters have participated in this year's primaries than in any other election cycle. Most involved in 2008 are students, who have formed innumerable grassroots movements and rallies, perhaps due solely to the Internet. This kind of excitement over political process is exactly what the United States needs: energy, motivation and interest in fixing some of the country's seemingly intractable problems.
But our renewed attention to democracy only highlights the inequality in the primary system. A little over two weeks ago, 24 states held their primaries on what the media dubbed Super Tuesday, a near-national referendum on the candidates. While the turnout was high and the energy was equally impressive, the media (and to some extent, the candidates themselves) made clear that the winner of the day from each party would ultimately win the nomination.
Perhaps at the behest of the media's most outspoken (and sometimes mindless) pundits, that didn't happen. There are now 19 primaries remaining, and those voters, for reasons other than their delegates, deserve an equal say.
That's what the Potomac Primary means to us. If you remove the gallantry of high turnouts and the promise of the student vote, the media's quarrels over delegates and the uncertainty surrounding superdelegates, the staggered primary system suggests an inherent inequity, one that's easily avoidable. We can only hope the next president (not to mention the losers, who will likely return to the states or legislatures that catapulted them to the national stage) will turn his or her attention to the broken system that awarded them the executive in the first place.
