Like all right-thinking people, I used to lament the power exerted by Iowa and New Hampshire. Who made them king, I snarked? How come they get to decide all this, I whined? Why shouldn't everyone get a voice, I lamented? Well, mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. Maybe a single national primary day would be better, but this endless process is the pits. Of all the recent elections that I could've imagined provoking bitter divides, Clinton and Obama's continued tango wouldn't have been high on the list. Kerry's defenestration of Dean, for instance, seemed far more combustible. But the anger now eclipses anything I remember in 2004. And understandably so. Dean's supporters suffered a quick and fairly clean loss in 2004. They didn't have time to nurture their disappointment into hate. But a long process gives each side more time to marinate in their opinions, more hours spent in their own echo chambers, more election nights to feel elation and disappointment, more slips and slights and insults and grievances to chalk on to the final tally and conclude that the candidate they don't support isn't merely their second choice, but a, well, monster whose nomination would be an unmitigated catastrophe that will forever drive them from political participation. And I don't blame them. There's simply too much tribal emotion being sustained for too long for it to go any other way. But I do want to say, to Iowa and New Hampshire, I'm sorry. Please, come back. We took you for granted. We need you. We just didn't know how much. Please save us from ourselves.
