In what seems like the longest political preseason ever, California has been chopped liver for the past year while Iowa and New Hampshire get to have all the fun.
Suddenly we’re the belle of the ball.
As this column is being written, there are no less than three channels on the university cable network talking about the importance of California voters on the presidential primary’s Super Tuesday.
Anderson Cooper is circling our state with the John Madden-style superimposed pen, Greta Van Susteren is breaking down the women’s vote on Fox, and MSNBC is doing a four-way with Pat Buchanan, which is probably just as bad as it sounds.
Leads are “razor thin”; races are a “dead heat” or “down to the wire.”
And if picking the next president is your goal, then as you’re reading this, you have either participated or abstained from the most important vote you’ll have all year.
That’s because statistically and historically, the primary election is the best shot Californians have to pick the president.
In other words, come November, your vote for the president of the United States likely won’t matter much. We’re a blue state, and our electoral votes will inevitably go to the Democratic Party nominee.
Now, now ““ I wouldn’t dare discourage people from voting. From Nickelodeon’s literally unconstitutional “Kids Pick the President” campaign to Diddy’s absurdly hyperbolic “Vote or Die” movement and MTV urging us to “Choose or Lose,” we’ve almost all been conditioned since birth to value our civic duties.
Plus, there is always an assortment of local and state ballot initiatives and propositions, some meaningful, some trivial, that should be your democratic incentive to dimple a few chads when duty calls.
But if you consider the “value” of your vote to be gauged by the closeness of the contest, then for Californians interested in having a say on our next president, the primary is our best chance, while the national election is largely irrelevant.
Look at the history. In 2004, John Kerry took 54 percent of the California vote to Bush’s 44 percent. Though that may be nothing special by percentage, it represents a difference of 1.2 million votes ““ only New York with 1.3 million, and for obvious reasons, Texas with 1.6 million, had larger margins of victory. In fact, it broke down to 40 percent for Bush and 58 percent for Kerry in New York, and 61 percent for Bush, 38 percent for Kerry in Texas.
In 1996, 1.2 million more Californians voted for Bill Clinton than Bob Dole and only New York had a wider margin that time.
But the irrelevance of the California presidential vote peaked in 1992 when Bill Clinton got almost 1.5 million more votes than George H. W. Bush ““ a difference of almost a half million more than second-place state of New York.
In terms of the value of the vote, there is no better recent example than the historic 2000 election, where the fate of over 105 million voters hinged on a difference of only 537 Floridians.
By comparison, 1.3 million more Californians voted for Al Gore, a margin again bested only by New York and Texas.
I was 18 in 2000, and remember being very excited to finally participate in the national election.
To see my state’s electoral votes and the country’s popular vote go to the guy who didn’t win felt a little like being involved in a hit-and-run accident on your first day with a driver’s license.
Like, “I waited for this?”
Putting your (and my) feelings from 2000 aside for a moment, can you imagine being a Florida Gore supporter in 2000 who didn’t make it out to the polls?
You might always be wondering what could have been.
A few well-heeled or well-connected Floridians could conceivably gin up a few hundred votes, but nobody in California has 1.3 million friends on speed dial.
As this is written, candidates are courting Californians like the mating birds of paradise and news outlets are declaring races “neck and neck” or “too close to call.” This is why Super Tuesday was so important for California.
Even with our whopping 54 electoral votes ultimately going to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, at least our vote will “meaningfully” help choose between the two, or “meaningfully” decide who they run against.
The question remains, however, did you vote when it counted?
E-mail Aikins at raikins@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments