The Way To Win The White House

and it is so simple I'm sure everyone has overlooked it. Thankfully the minds at the Onion News Network have released the results of a new poll to light the way

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

It's BS! That greatest of human inventions. I love b.s. It was the only thing that got me through college.
But elections are not like the university years (except for trying to appear smart but not too smart so you can be one of the cool kids and figuring out how to badmouth people in eloquent ways) and so James Boyce at the Huffington Post thought of a new strategy to win the nomination, or at least get a huge advantage, which I had never thought of (because I haven't been able to decipher the ever changing primary playdates)

Instead of focusing on Iowa and New Hampshire and pouring so much of your money in those states, start campaigning in and focusing on big states like Texas, for example ,which has almost twice as many delegates up for grabs as the first 4 primary states do. 299-147. (or California which has 441 Democratic delegates)

The strategy makes sense logically, for candidates to bypass those smaller states but there is a problem. The problem is momentum and the idea of backing a winner. Those early states are critical because they are a proving ground to see if candidates can pass the (looks like/smells like/acts like a) winner test and so even if Texas' primary is earlier and more delegate important no one, or at least very few voters will vote for someone that has already been tainted and tarred with the loser brush. People want to be associated with a winner and so they will latch onto that moving train and add themselves as coal to speed up that train until it reaches an unstoppable velocity. They don't want to feel important and not waste their vote on someone they view as not viable. So they will compromise a little on their principles and jump on the bandwagon so that down the road they can say the president has always had their support. (it's a lot better than having to scrape a "Brown '92" bumper sticker off.)

And so while the Take Texas strategy makes sense (and as we already know Democrats in Texas love John Edwards) if there is one thing we all should know is that the electorate rarely does things that make sense. Rather a good number of them are drawn to "shiny", which is why you must campaign in states that many people couldn't pick out on a map so that you can broadcast an ad trumpeting your win to the televisions of those less informed voters before they get off their couch and go vote because they want to get away from work for a few minutes. And so, as the ONN reports we should "all hail the idgit vote"

In The Know: Candidates Compete For Vital Idgit Vote

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