It pains me to write those words, but I accept evidence when it is presented to me. After 2000 and 2004, the usual right-wing pundits chastized Democrats as being coastal elites, not caring about the interests of voters in flyover states like Nebraska and South Carolina. 'Hollywood liberal', 'latte-sipping intellectual' we were called. They called out the Democrats for treating people that live outside of top media markets as rubes, unable to fully grasp the issues that plague this country. The suggestion was that we treat all the 'God people' as irrational hillbillies.
Of course, we pushed back against that. We understood the 50 state strategy. We knew that people in Colorado and Louisiana mattered and that we could win Senate seats in places like Montana if we actually, you know, treated them like educated voters whose issues and values mattered and were consistent with Democratic principles.
But in spite of some anecdotal evidence to the contrary like John Tester's win, Mark Penn stood up from inside the compound of the 'inevitable' Democratic nominee, backed by the most influential member of the party and former president, and proclaimed for all to hear that no, Montana actually doesn't matter. Nor does Minnesota. Nor does Georgia. Sorry folks, but we're not representing core Democratic values out here in Kosland by pretending that they do.
You see, it's true that what matters is that the 'right' people select our candidate - the ones who know best. Now, voters in Virginia do get to vote, and millions have turned out from states all across the country, but some of them just aren't smart enough or informed enough to really know who would make the best candidate. They aren't in the big urban media markets like New York or Los Angeles or Boston. There is a wisdom in these markets that just can't seem to find its way into places like Maryland or Iowa, Missouri or Utah. These people don't know what's best for America, or what is needed to win in November. They simply don't understand what's at stake. We've been out here ignorantly believing that there was an equality of voters in this country, but inside the Democratic core, that equality apparently really doesn't exist.
Perhaps the superdelegates are there to protect us from ourselves - to make sure that the people who think that white picket fences are charming and are easily taken in by a slick speech and prospects of hope don't go off half-cocked and vote for someone who doesn't really know how the world works. Or perhaps in the next election we'll just award the flyovers and southerners 3/5 of a vote in the primaries to better reflect their degree of political understanding.
But know this and know this well - Rush was right. Kansas voters and North Dakota issues really don't matter after all to Democrats. And we have Mark Penn to thank for setting us straight. We've been wrong all this time.