Retrospective

So, the Democratic primary season is finally over, and I have commented on the race too much to let that pass without, well, comment! This post should have been done some time ago, but I have been a hamster on the wheel lately.

A couple of observations:

1. In spite of all the vitriol being directed at Hillary’s campaign, this contest has been good for the Democratic party. The best thing that Howard Dean has done as leader of the DNC was his “50 state strategy”, and party elders fought him every step of the way. They were wrong. Dean was right. Democrats were foolish to cede vast parts of the US landscape to Republicans by not even bothering to organize in what were perceived to be solidly red states. That was the universe before Dean.

Now our candidates – and the party -- have been forced by this campaign to organize in every single state. Vast and unprecedented sums of money have been raised and spent. The number of newly registered voters, and of voters crossing lines or declaring in order to be able to vote in OUR primary is historic. That cannot help but be a good thing.

2. And only Democratic voters have been drawn to the ballot because they actually believed that their votes made a difference. “Democracy”, the act of counting, is a powerful impulse on a deeply personal and psychological level, We want to count. Each and every one of us. And we want to count whether we live in Iowa, or Florida, or Montana. I’m not a good enough historian to know if it’s this is the first time this has happened since the founding of the republic, but it is the first time in my lifetime.

We would be fools to throw this away.

That’s all I have to say.