The Democratic primary season is now behind us. Before we completely turn our attention to the general election, though, I want to take one last glance at how far we’ve come since candidates first announced their intentions to run. This video from Slate is a great run through — and covers a ton of ground in just eight minutes. And I promise, after this, we can start forgetting about the primaries.

Image details: Barack Obama Campaigns Throughout Oregon Ahead Of State’s Primary served by picapp.com
Yesterday, Barack Obama held a rally on the banks of the Willamette River to start getting Oregonians excited about Tuesday’s primary.
75,000 people came. Heck, the rally went beyond standing room only on the river banks to crowding the river itself: small craft (including kayaks) loaded with Obama supporters were out on the water.
To put it nicely, Oregon and Kentucky’s primaries tend not to matter. After all, in a typical election year, both parties have an obvious nominee long before May rolls around. But, as we continue to …read more

Image details: Hillary Clinton Holds Pennsylvania Primary Night Rally served by picapp.com
Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary with 55% of the vote last night. She picked up 75 delegates, while Barack Obama picked up another 65. But for all the smiles and speeches, Democratic voters are pretty much in the same spot as they were last week: Obama still has a respectable lead over Clinton — although not enough to actually get him the nomination.
As the Democratic nomination process drags onward, I think that both Obama and Clinton are doing more harm than good: the only way that this contest …read more

There isn’t another presidential primary for almost six weeks. Whatever shall we (and the candidates do with ourselves) until Pennsylvania is ready to hold their primary?
I’m sure all of the candidates will be spending time on fundraising — even with the end of the primary season in sight, most of the campaigns feel stretched. There are still 11 primaries to be contested, and even John McCain’s claim on the Republican nomination doesn’t stop his need to at least make a token effort to win the upcoming contests. This window does provide an opportunity for a head start in those states, …read more

Puerto Rico’s Democratic Party moved the date of their primary from June 7 to June 1, according to an article in El Nuevo Día (Spanish-only). They also changed their method of selecting delegates from a caucus to a primary. Democrats in Puerto Rico will be deciding on 56 delegates — a higher number than 27 states — and could play a far more significant role in choosing a nominee than they have in years past. 
The date is being switched because election law requires Puerto Rico’s primary to be held the first Sunday of June, which is the 1st. The original …read more

As other political junkies spent yesterday evening watching the slow count of votes from the Maryland primary, I was grinding into my fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth hours as an election judge. I entered my precinct before 6 a.m. and didn’t leave until almost 11 p.m.
It wasn’t supposed to be quite that grueling — the polls were slated to close at 8 p.m., and tear down only takes an hour because both a Republican judge and Democratic judge are required to participate in just about every step to guarantee that there is no partisan hanky-panky. But there’s just no having an …read more

Washington state’s Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser holds a B.A. in Accounting, but you have got to wonder if the man slept through his statistics courses. He called the state’s Saturday primary for McCain with only 87.2 percent of the vote counted — and it gets worse. With almost 13 percent of the votes uncounted, John McCain had less than a 2 percent lead on Mike Huckabee. I sure as heck wouldn’t be comfortable calling that race without knowing how those last votes were going to fall.
Esser says that they did an analysis that proved that McCain was guaranteed to …read more

It should come as no surprise that Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination. His supporters had been urging him to run since the middle of last year, when lukewarm support for other potential Republican candidates seemed to leave room for a ‘Reagan conservative’ like Thompson to energize the party. But when he finally declared his candidacy in September of 2007, his lackluster performance at campaign events and bland policy positions left his audiences dreary.
Thompson’s fundraising suffered from the outset. Since his campaign’s late start last fall, he has raised only $12.8 million, placing him …read more

For the past week, it seems like every political blog has been covering who will get the Des Moines Register’s endorsement for the upcoming primary. Why is one particular news media so important in a campaign? Why did Bill Clinton spend hours in the editorial office of the Des Moines register currying favor for his wife?
The Des Moines Register is “The Newspaper Iowa Depends On.” It’s not just the daily for Des Moines — it’s delivered all over the state every day. I have family in Centerville, Iowa (population 5,924) way down in southern Iowa. They all read the Register, …read more

Most people assume that the only way to make money from an election is to bet on the outcome or sell their vote. In reality, you can make a day’s wages by offering to work as an election judge in your precinct. Depending on your state, your local election board will pay anywhere between $30 and $150 — this is one of those variable expenses that makes the actual cost of an election so hard to determine, by the way — for an election judge. This isn’t just a once every four years sort of thing, by the way. Primaries …read more