Tomorrow will be my first-ever primary vote

[Jed Dilligan]

Although I've been eligible to vote since 1992.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the candidates and the folks on DU for giving me reasons to care.

:patriot:

[peace13]

1. Enjoy! n/t

[riqster]

2. Welcome!

Hope it becomes habit-forming!

[andyrowe]

3. Awesome!!

I hope it turns out better than my first primary in '04.

[scheming daemons]

4. Which illustrates why a protracted race to the convention is a GOOD thing....

..for Democrats.

KEEP VOTERS LIKE THE OP ENGAGED IN THE PROCESS!

Those of you who don't like conflict and want this to be "over tomorrow" don't get it. If this thing drags out until the summer, it HELPS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

1. Ground organizations get set up in ALL 50 states and are engaged. The GOP ground games are sitting around doing nothing.

2. Debates, like last thursday, CONTINUE to occur. Free advertising in front of millions of Americans where the Democratic messages gets out without any response from the GOP. The "Texas" debate.. the "Ohio" debate.. the "PA" debate... and so on.

3. States that normally have no role... i.e PA and Ohio... have a critical say this time, which means more Democrats getting registered, more voters paying attention to the Democratic message in more states. The extra attention to the Dem race in Ohio might mean enough more Democratic registrations to tip the balance in that state in November.

4. The Democratic convention in Denver will be the most watched political convention in the history of the United States. The GOP convention in Minnesota will be an afterthought and largely ignored.

5. Republicans will have less time to attack our nominee before November, since they won't waste precious ad-buy money going after a candidate that they might not even be facing. They will have to wait until the Democratic nominee is decided to go on the full attack. The "swiftboaters-in-waiting" will have to sit on their powder all through the summer and won't be able to ramp up until August.

6. Every week that this race goes on will be another week in which the Democratic party dominates the news cycles. The GOP will be grasping for any media time, because nobody will be interested in their race. Look at this past week! 75% of the talk on the news channels is about the Democratic race... there is usually several minutes of talk about our race, followed by an "oh by the way, in the GOP race..."

Some people don't like "conflict" and can't stand Democrats yelling at each other. But that is a small price to pay for the enormous positives in the 6 items above.

I hope the delegate race is a freaking tie after Tuesday!

[Thrill]

5. Senator Obama is doing this for a lot of people

He gives us a reason to want to participate

[frazzled]

6. Good luck--and a reminder to do your due diligence on all the "small" races on your ballot

I don't know what state you're in, but here in Illinois we have lots of races to vote on our Dem. primary ballot--from US senate and representative to the state legislature races, to state's attorney (county) to water reclamation district and tons of judges!

I've spent all day researching judicial recommendations and looking at all these races we tend to know so little about. I hope everyone is paying attention to these more local issues as well.

(End of sermon!)

[Jed Dilligan]

7. We've got a lot of very borderline issues

Typical for California with our ballot measure system.