A few commenters took issue with my post earlier today about the "bad news" of last night's election. Some colorful baseball metaphors and a reference to an election way before my time caused me to look further. The argument is that this is hardly the first election to be drawn out and the country has always seemed to keep going.
Then I found an article in Slate by David Greenberg, in which he wrote:
To suggest that March 5 marks a late date in the calendar ignores the duration of primary seasons past. Indeed, were Hillary Clinton to have pulled out of the race this week, Obama would have actually clinched a contested race for the party's nomination earlier than almost any other Democrat since the current primary system took shape—the sole exception being John Kerry four years ago. Fighting all the way through the primaries, in other words, is perfectly normal.
But I'm still skeptical. The commenters and Greenberg used history to show that a party is not doomed when faced with a drawn-out election. And while that was true for McGovern and Carter, neither of them faced an election like this. It is true that elections have dragged on through months of uncertainty before, but it is also true that there has never been a primary that lasted 15 months before it was decided. And 15 months is looking like the shortest amount of time it will take for the party to figure out who it wants.
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