Alex Kellner

January, February and the beginning of March featured incredible levels of public interest in the presidential primaries. This high level of attention was atypical considering the history of political engagement in the United States. This phenomenon was attributed to a number of causes, from the emergence of a woman and African-American as the two leading candidates in the Democratic Party to the writers’ strike and the primaries serving as the best reality shows on television. However, now as the calendar turns to April, the feeling that the process is going on too long is becoming the dominant meme.

Political commentators contend that the longer the democratic nomination goes undecided the worse it is for the Democratic Party, which is something that I cannot argue with. Yet, when it comes to the state of “small d” democracy, a longer primary process would seem to be better for the country. Having more time for the candidates to flesh out and debate policy differences and more time for voters to fully understand each candidate’s platform would be the ideal scenario.

The voting public is clearly not interested in policy preferences, more debates or any other form of political punditry because to them the storyline has already become stale. Now this does not mean that I am advocating for CNN’s Ballot Bowl hosted by Jeff Probst and produced by Mark Burnett. What it does mean is that I am questioning whether or not our “small d” democracy is actually in a better state than it was two, six or twenty years ago as some commentators were suggesting less than two months ago.

Without painting a doomsday scenario, I do not see an America with an engaged voting public. When a charismatic young African-American, a woman from today’s political dynasty and a war hero who fights government corruption can’t engage the United States for more than a few months, something is wrong. Perhaps we overloaded on coverage in the first three months of this New Year because there was nothing else on due to the aforementioned writers’ strike, but the malaise that is spreading throughout the country now seems to be a bit of an overreaction.

The ultimate question in this quandary is what happens in November? The Democratic nomination process is far from over and may last all the way until the convention (which I maintain is a horrible thing for the Democratic Party), which means that the level of political coverage in the news is not going to end any time soon.

Normally the general election marks the period when the average American voter actually starts paying attention. Considering the voting public tuned in so much earlier than in years past, the question becomes: Are they going to tune back in when the “real” race starts?

I would certainly like to think that they will, considering the consequences and possible historic nature of this election, but at this point the state of our democracy is as far up in the air as the date the Democratic nomination will be decided.