The primary cause of my anxiety

Tomorrow is January's halfway point. Plenty of resolutions have been broken, cabin fever has inspired me to take up treadmilling and most notably, the 2008 presidential nomination process is in full swing.

The two most noted states' days have passed, with four different candidates each taking home a first-place prize: Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in Iowa and Hillary Clinton and John McCain in New Hampshire. Tomorrow is the Michigan primary, much anticipated as the event, yet unrealized, that may actually break up the field of contenders in the jam-packed Republican competition.

The five candidates with any real chance remaining in that party are Huckabee and McCain, as well as Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. Each has pursued a different strategy to winning the nomination. Huckabee hopes to find support in the Rust Belt and southern states where his evangelism and populism resonate. Thompson, running as perhaps the most traditionally conservative--but woefully uninspiring and incompetent--candidate is pursuing a similar strategy. Most agree McCain, after winning New Hampshire, needs to win either Michigan or South Carolina or both. Giuliani is less orthodox: he is staking a lot on winning bigger states like Florida. And finally (I didn't forget, don't worry) Romney is in a similar position to McCain: needing a win in Michigan to really be seen as viable.

A little word on tomorrow before I cut to the chase.

Because the Michigan Democratic Party frontloaded its primary to tomorrow, the national party organization stripped it of its delegates. That means that whoever wins the Dems' primary tomorrow (it will, by all counts, be Clinton) will not receive any delegates, votes of support at the national convention, where the nominee is officially chosen. This has inspired many Democrats to come up with creative ideas on whom to vote for. McCain is particularly popular with independents who may choose to vote in the Republican primary (Michigan is an open primary, so it's easy to cross-vote).

But many Democrats are much more ingenuous. Knowing that a Romney win tomorrow is the result most likely to prolong the constipated Republican nomination process, many of Democrats have decided to vote for him in an attempt to minimize what may anyway be a Romney victory, not to mention the prospect of letting the Republicans rip each other apart until the summer while an already-coronated Democratic winner is gaining support from across the entire party. http://slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/01/11/machinations-in-michigan.aspx

Now, that's not nearly all of the prognostication to be spoken of for tomorrow. But it should do. I hope so, at least. After myself succumbing to it, I think it necessary to urge everyone to not give in to shallow horse-race journalism. I'd like to think I've said all that needs to be said on the topic for at least one day. This kind of reporting--on the campaign, who's winning, who's losing, and otherwise instead of on candidates themselves or the efficacy of their policy stances--is dangerous in its failure to substantively educate.

Yesterday, the Deseret News ran a story http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695243664,00.html entitled "62% say Mitt's still in race." This is one of the more egregious examples. 1) This is flagrant in its desire to report only how Mitt Romney is doing, nothing more. 2) Horse-race mentality is bad enough, but the DNews doesn't bother to get experts pontificate on all this vacuity like many organizations feel the need to, but instead just polls Utahns, who I'm not sure have any idea what people in Michigan are thinking. 3) It's another Mitt Romney story above the fold on page 1. Maybe Joe Cannon should just put old conference talks on page 2 and get it over with. Today's front page is "Romney revs up motown voters."

As potential voters, or at least informed citizens, try to look beyond this kind of coverage. It's because most people don't that tomorrow will still matter for Democrats, simply because the winner will get press, but no delegates. This election isn't about who's winning in South Carolina.

If you're interested in gaining a little insight on with whom you most align, spend some time on http://electoralcompass.com/ or http://myelectionchoices.com/, or maybe just read a little bit. Something not about a primary.