Nine more months of this?
As I scan blog sites and notice the deluge of posts on the upcoming presidential election, which is nine months away — nine months! — I’m moved simply to say, "Somebody, please, make it stop!"
How are we supposed to put up with nine more months of this? We’ve already heard all that the candidates are going to say. Yes, we know that they will bring in the kind of change that will transform this nation and lead us once again into the future as the greatest nation on earth. Yes, we know they have the solution for every problem that we face. Yes, we all know they are the ones who will bring change. Yes, we all know that each candidate has the best ideas in the world about how to change the world. In other words, I’m bored beyond my ability to describe it. I’ve heard all this ridiculous rhetoric before.
Do we really have to drone on about all of this for nine more months? Can’t we just have the election next week and be done with it? As I read the fever-pitch tone of all the blog posts talking about politics, a Bible verse keeps going through my mind:
"Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation" (Psalm 146:3).
You could urge your state legislators to move your primaries to later in the year. Living in Indiana, I don’t believe I’ve seen a political ad on television yet this year. The fact that our airwaves here are spared the shrill, often mean-spirited, blather that passes as political advertising today is enough to stifle the urge I occasionally have to whine about the primaries in Indiana being mostly a fait accompli. Besides, they don’t let independents like me vote in them anyway. Let Iowa and New Hampshire have their day; they can have it. I rather like the peace and quiet that comes with having a late primary.
I find the long election season horrific. My husband returned from a 22 month deployment in June, and just as I had finished explaining what the state of affairs is in Minnesota; I still had eight months of presidential campaigning to catch him up on, not to mention our upcoming mayor race and tax levy! But, at the same time, we don’t want the general election now because everyone’s emotions are still pretty raw from victories and defeats; and we don’t want such feelings to cloud rational judgment.
It’s this ridiculous desire to be “early.” It’s not just pride of place, candidates drop millions of dollars in the early primary/caucus states.
So I don’t think that states will move the primary season later by themselves.
Problem is, Congress has no express authority to set a national-primary day to elect the president. I don’t know whether an implicit/implied power argument would work.