So the NH primary is now in the rear view mirror and here is what we’ve learned...absolutely nothing. Or maybe I should say that we’ve learned about 1.5% of what we need to know. Because that’s how many of the total number of pledged delegates are awarded. If you’d like to get a sense of how far along this thing really is, go ahead and click on the delegate tracker at the top of the front page here on Dailykos and you’ll get a bar graph showing a visual representation of how far we’ve come in the Democratic nominating process and how far we need to go. Go ahead and do that now, I’ll wait.
See? It seems silly to believe that anything has been decided yet.
To give an example, a major league baseball season is 162 games, 1.5% of which is less than 3. In other words, we’d be talking about putting teams in the playoffs before their first series is even finished. (Although stopping at that point would have been great for my beloved Phillies, who stormed out of the gate with a 3 game sweep of the Braves last year only to disappoint by the All-Star break.)
We just had voting by two of the least representative states in the entire country, one of which offers the opportunity for undeclared voters to cast a ballot, further skewing the numbers.
What does this mean? If your candidate has over-performed expectations, take a drink to celebrate and then get to work to make sure s/he doesn’t lose momentum. If your candidate has under-performed expectations, take a drink to calm your nerves and then get to work to make sure s/he bounces back in the next contest. Because there’s still a long way to go—this thing is far from over. After all, they don’t stop the Indy 500 and declare a winner after only 3 laps.