Knock the Vote

Canadians are becoming caught up in the excitement of the U.S. Presidential election campaign, which reached another peak yesterday with the Super Tuesday primaries. One poll reports that 15 percent of Canuck voters would drop their franchise for the next Federal Election in favour of a chance to elect America's 45th President. This page is not convinced that this is an entirely new, or just infrequent, phenomenom. Just four years ago in Portland, I made a cash donation to canvassers from the Democratic National Committee in the hopes that it would help drive George W. Bush from the White House. Canadians always get caught up with Presidential elections, just like we do with the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, American Idol, and any other cultural behemoth aimed at our TV screens from just south of us.

Morever, this page is concerned about the value of obsessing about America's next Commander in Chief this time around. Most of the attention surrounding yesterday's Super Tuesday results was focussed on the race between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic Nomination. Watching the returns on CNN, I didn't know if I was being subjected to The Best Political Team on Televison (tm), or the largest racial profiling project in American history. Besides exit polling based on gender, Countless exit polls were flashed showing preferences among African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, and Latino Americans for Senator Clinton and/or Senator Obama. At one point a panelist charged Obama with having a 'Latino problem' and that 'a history black-brown tension' in Houston did not bode well for that candidate in the upcoming Texas primary.

Maybe this page is still coming off the flu, but I don't remember Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper obsessing on the Republican side about exit polls showing support among followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for Mitt Romney, or among septugenarians for John McCain. Maybe it was the abscence of John Edwards, but for all the demographic profiling going on, CNN missed the two most important demographics of all: rich people and poor people, and how they voted.