The primary system is broken. People in four states-- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida trimmed the field of democratic candidates and removed my first and second choice for president before I, and the majority of the rest of the country, even got a chance to express our opinions. I'm left with a candidate that I can't support under any circumstances and another candidate who I have no faith in or passion for whatsoever. A candidate I would happily work to defeat and one that I can't whip myself into any enthusiasm for no matter how hard I try. A candidate who represents corporations instead of real people and one that seems more interested in being "historic" than changing the direction of a flailing government in crisis.

I don't get to vote for any of the candidates who might have actually represented my interests. I don't blame this on the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina, and Florida. I blame it on the democratic party, on the entrenched political interests who put their own success before the best interests of the national constituency, and most of all, I blame the corporations who are the real beneficiaries of my disenfranchisement. Especially the media, whose endless mediocrity and punditry turned the most important presidential election in my lifetime into a horserace. The media that has consistently refused to give real issues of public and global consequence anywhere near as much consideration as who's got the best haircut or who said what about whom. The media that steadfastly refused to cover the candidates with the greatest potential to make significant changes in the trainwreck this nation has become.

I never got to vote for a candidate who represents me, or the ideals that are meaningful to me. America does not need a Hillery Clinton or a Barack Obama-- hell, it probably doesn't need a John Edwards or a Dennis Kucinich, although they would have been a step in the right direction. America needs a George Washington, a Thomas Jefferson, another Tom Paine or an Alexander Hamilton. It needs leadership committed to throwing out the rotten garbage wherever they find it. It needs revolutionary change, not a different flavor of the same ol' corporate rule. It needs someone who will heed Eisenhower's warning and toss the MIC into the gutter of political and economic history, along with its Pentagon toadies and its captains of industry. I never got to vote for someone who might work for me, instead of for CNN, Fox News, General Electric, Haliburton, Blackwater, and MacDonald Douglas.

I'm left with someone else's choices-- choices who are not even majority choices yet, but who have been annointed as the ONLY democratic party choices available to me even though the process of "majority decision" has barely begun. The system has allowed a tiny minority to decide for us all, and we will undoubtely be told that the eventual democratic party nominee has "majority" support. "Get over it, dude-- you're just all sour grapes because your candidate didn't win." No, I'm all sour grapes because I didn't even get a chance to vote for "my candidate." This is NOT democracy.