The Gabagool Primary
New Jersey sounds off with profound Primary Envy
Oh how I envy the fine people of New Hampshire! You don’t know how good you have it. You get to go second in the presidential primary process (I know you think you go first but who are you kidding), remind everyone you aren’t Iowa, and enjoy a year-plus of candidates and media pandering to you as if you actually mattered. It must be nice.
While my friends in the great Granite State regale me with tales of Tulsi Gabbard attending Super Bowl parties, Bernie Sanders hosting ice cream socials, and Joe Biden actually existing, I’m down here in New Jersey with a whole lot of nothing. We get bupkis. Candidates barely even pass through, let alone avail themselves to us at the level to which you’re accustomed.
What I would give to have a congresswoman from Hawaii stop by and compliment my mom on her buffalo chicken dip or to discuss the mouthfeel of Breyer’s Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream with the socialist senator from Vermont. My lifelong dream of having a former vice president yell at me? That is a dream that shall remain deferred forevermore.
It’s not fair, damn it!
New Jersey’s primary is on June 2nd, which in case you didn’t know is almost dead last. Only the US Virgin Islands go after us. Even Guam gets to go before we do. When it finally gets to us there’s a considerable sentiment of “Why bother?” By then it doesn’t really matter, the nominating conventions are only a few weeks away, and everything is already more or less set in stone. So no Tulsi, no Bernie, no Biden. No nothing.
I admit, I am one of those independent socialist types that doesn’t care much for the American two-party system. I’ve voted in a primary only once, in 2016, for Bernie Sanders. And I did so knowing he only stopped in New Jersey one time and was likely to lose both my state’s contest as well as the nomination. That was about the limit of what my participation in these sorts of things can be. They don’t care much for us, so why should I for them?
There’s a pretty good chance I might’ve ended up differently. I could have become a real fan of the process. I have a degree in political science and am in fact a huge nerd when it comes to electoral politics. But the experience here vastly differs from what you in New Hampshire are used to. In the end, there’s not much to enjoy about it.
Other than the fact that we, too, are not Iowa, that is.