With the passing of Super Tuesday, we now can focus on our own Feb. 19 primary and the accompanying concerns of some that come down to this: Should state officials move the primary to an earlier date to grab more of the national spotlight and be politically more relevant?
The answer: No need to bother.
While there's plenty wrong with the present schedule of primaries, shuffling Wisconsin's date won't solve any of the problems. Furthermore, from a Wisconsin perspective, all the noise over early primaries and state relevance is a lot of thunder and no lightning; a lot of buzz and no sting; a lot of sizzle and no ...
Wisconsin gets heard when it really matters, leading up to the big show in November.
Imagine we had held our primary on some earlier, ostensibly more relevant date. Imagine that by now we had rolled out the red carpet for a big bash with all the polybiz celebs in attendance, just like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and, to a degree, Florida -- with Chris Dodd, Rudy Giuliani, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, the chubby guy from somewhere in the Southwest, and the skinny one from, where was it, somewhere in the Northwest?
All the now-irrelevant, bit players would have been right here, seen and heard over and over and over again during the plentiful and redundant early debates and visits that began in or around 1928. Those so-called early contenders are gone. The only thing we could have done to make a difference had our primary been held earlier, would have been to give one of them an unlikely big win.
You can make a fairly educated guess now who the finalists will be between Barack and Hillary on one side, and Ron, John and Mike on the other. You might even guess correctly. Or you could guess well and still be wrong. Anything goes in the world of polybiz, where the show goes on, and on, and on, but eventually only two stars are left in the spotlight.
And both stars, along with their supporting casts, will play Wisconsin in a big way.
We have 10 electoral votes up for grabs come November. Not as many as New York and California, but still more than 30 other states. Moreover, our votes are in play. We're not a red state or a blue state. We're a swing state that could electorally go either way. Some people also refer to us in more hawkish terms as a battleground state. Swing state sounds sexier, though, and sex sells much better than war -- especially this year.
Yes we tend to go Democrat. The last time we went Republican was in 1984 when George Orwell was running. But we've been teasing the Republicans more and more of late. Both sides know it. Both sides want us, and they want us very badly. So much so that we are (despite all our inferiority complexes) highly desirable. Not as sexy as Ohio (again, electorally speaking), but highly desirable.
In a land where 538 electoral votes go up for grabs with 270 needed to win the presidency, 10 votes that could go either way comprise a pretty significant cluster.
We will be wooed in 2008, just like in 2004 when the Democratic ticket narrowly won us over as John Kerry and John Edwards secured a plurality of 11,384 votes (0.38 percentage points). George W. Bush and Dick Cheney carried 45 counties that year to 27 for Kerry.
And before we spoke our hearts, we received numerous visits from the candidates and their wives. Sometimes, just their wives. Sometimes just the candidates. We did not come cheaply. They shamelessly lavished us with attention and our corporate media outlets with intense advertising dollars.
Nor did we come cheaply in 2000 when we had three suitors. Ralph Nader was after our hearts, too, giving Bush reason to hope we would split our affection enough to go for him. But on Election Day, the Al Gore-Joe Lieberman ticket managed a plurality of 5,708 votes (0.22 percentage points) over Bush-Cheney. Bush carried 46 counties to Gore's 26, despite Tommy Thompson's pleas on W.'s behalf.
Compare those years to 1996, when Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't compete for our favor. The Dole-Kemp ticket won just 11 counties, while Bill Clinton and Al Gore garnered 61.
This year, just as in 2000 and '04, there will be enough high-powered political travel in our state to keep the hospitality industry interested and the advertising reps salivating.
Have no fear Wisconsin, when the last two political stars of the 2008 primary season are left standing, they will come and they will listen, over and over again. We will be heard later on when the primaries are distant memories, not only by the stars, but their supporting casts too.
And in polybiz, later is better than early, because November is the presidential show that matters most -- just as it will be four years from now when the primary schedule will remain a big, unbalanced mess.
