Taken for Granite

I'm glancing at C-Span's Road to the White House program right now, in which Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold is visiting some group or another up in New Hampshire, and it occurred to me that I ought to mention something that has long made me bristle.

It's absolute bullshit that someone in New Hampshire or Iowa gets to exercise significantly more influence over who the next president is than I do.

I know, I know, I've read all the "Making of the President" books by Theodore H. White and I know that supposedly this is the only practical way to do it, blah blah blah. (Btw, I'm surprised that there's not more analysis of that series floating around out there on the Internet.) But the interested voters of the other 48 are left largely to contribute a bunch of money or something if they want to have their opinion be worth anything (money that will probably be spent on champagne and caviar for the indecisive of Nashua), or else hope against hopes that the guy that they like is still in the race by the time their state's primaries come around. (I'm still burned about not even being able to attempt to help get out the Illinois vote for Richard Lugar back in '96.)