Are We There Yet? by Martha Thomases

Every week when I’m considering a subject for my column, I look at the newspapers and the comic books cluttering up my living room. Perhaps this will be the week in which there is a perfect synchronization between the real world and the graphic world! Perhaps a team of comic book writers, artists and editors will perfectly capture the zeitgeist that is our national condition!

Perhaps this primary season will finally end.

I like elections. I like voting. I vote every chance I get. Because I live in New York, I’m accustomed to my primary vote not counting very much. I vote anyway. I voted for candidates I knew would lose, just because I wanted the Democratic Party to know there was a bloc of support for those positions. I’ve voted for Bella Abzug, Al Sharpton and Jonathan Tasini for Senate. I voted for George McGovern, Jesse Jackson and Edward Kennedy for President. I voted for Ruth Messinger for Mayor. I voted even though none of them had a prayer. When I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and he won, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

This year was a little bit different, because New York moved up its primary so that it would be earlier. However, because she’s our Senator, it was assumed New York would vote for Hillary, and we didn’t get much media (or candidate) attention.

I voted for Obama. I wanted to vote for Edwards, but he was out of the race already. I could have voted for him anyway (his name was still on the ballot), but I wanted my vote to say “No” to Clinton and her vote for the Iraq war.

That was in February. It’s almost June. Today, as you read this, the Democratic National Committee is deciding what to do about Florida and Michigan, states that violated party rules by holding their primaries too early. Tomorrow is the primary in Puerto Rico. Tuesday will be the last two primaries. Will it be over then?

It feels longer than a DC event. It’s almost as if Dan DiDio was running the country. The only drama the audience seems to care about is whether or not a candidate’s chances are dead or alive. Issues are pesky things, like character development or logic. Why talk about the war, or health insurance, when the polls may have changed by a tenth of a percentage point? Why discuss taxes and the economy when someone is wearing a pantsuit, and someone else isn’t wearing a tie?

(By the way, why are we talking about Hillary’s pantsuits? Aren’t all the candidates wearing pantsuits?)

In any case, just when you think one huge event is open (52, or the run up to the first primaries), another huge event is announced (Countdown, or Super-Tuesday). And then, when everything is supposed to be over, there’s another huge event (Final Crisis, or June 3). Only the hard-core fans show up, and everyone else is exhausted.

I’ll be voting again in November, but then, I’m a geeky fangirl. With luck, the storyline by then will be friendlier to new readers, and we’ll get some new customers checking out the choices on the ballot box.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess for ComicMix, wonders if blue jeans and her DC denim jacket count as a pantsuit.