Cate’s Musings

It’s funny how quickly I get obsessed every 4 years with the presidential election. Last night I found myself responding rather emotionally to the results of the New Hampshire primary. I have no doubt that having grown up in New Hampshire plays a huge roll in it; while the rest of the country seems to think it’s rather silly and absurd that a state that size has so much say I find a real sense of pride in it.

So while I was disappointed in Obama’s 2nd place finish, I was really pleased to see the massive turn out, especially for the Democrats. According to the New York Times numbers, with 99% of the votes counted 112,238 votes were cast for Clinton (39.0%) and 104,757 for Obama (35.4%). To give you some perspective, 88,447 votes were cast for McCain who won pretty handily with 37.5% of the Republican vote. It says something when the guy who came in 2nd for the Democrats gets 16,310 more votes that the first place guy for the Republicans.

There’s lots of talk about Hillary’s tearful moment on the campaign trail. It’s bringing up all sorts of questions about gender and what sort of roll it plays in politics. There have been a couple of great opinion pieces in the the NY Times over the past couple of days. Gloria Steinem wrote in favor of Hillary – you can read it here – and Maureen Dowd responded with another take on things. Both articles are well worth reading.

So now it’s on to Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina and then Feb. 5th, what people are calling Super Duper Tuesday. Californians, that’s when you (and half of the rest of the country) vote! If for some inexplicable reason you are not registered to vote, you have until January 22nd to do so. Here’s a link that has any and all information you need to make that happen.