Some Observations About the Presidential Campaign

Here are some things I noticed about the presidential campaign so far, the day after the New Hampshire primary...

Any time a Republican candidate starts looking good in the polls, the others gang up on him.  When Ted Cruz rose to the top in Iowa, both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio went after him.  Then after Rubio made his unexpected good showing in that state's caucuses, he was attacked without mercy.  Now we have Trump back on top with John Kasich on the upsurge...expect both the Donald and the rest of the "gang" to pile on Kasich...

On one of the cable news channels...I believe it was MSNBC...they did a poll of New Hampshire voters after they voted in the primary.  According to the results, almost half of them didn't make their decision about whom they were going to vote for until the final days...this in spite of the fact that the campaign had been going on strong in the media since last spring and their own state had been inundated with information on the candidates and their records and positions...along with many opportunities over the past several months for the voters to evaluate their character and qualifications for the job.  What's wrong with these people, I ask myself...

Another pattern about the electorate that makes me scratch my head in puzzlement is the voter turnout issue.  Bernie Sanders was on the podium last night in exultant victory, lauding the very high voter turnout in the primary.  And it was, by all accounts, high.  Fine, I'm O.K. with that.  And in the presidential general election, it usually is pretty high as well.  Good, good, good.  But then wait two years for the so-called "off-year" elections that determine all of the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate seats, and a substantial portion of the Governors, and voter turnout goes way down, especially as I have recently observed, among those same Democratic voters who were so proud of themselves two years earlier for their active involvement in the political process.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: something is wrong with the system when a state like my Florida can go for liberal Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, elect tea party Republican Rick Scott in 2010, go once again for Obama in 2012...and, of course, turn right back around and reelect Scott in 2014.  It's not the politicians who are in the wrong: it's the electorate with their inconsistent, herky-jerky voter turnout record...