You can’t open a browser this morning without stumbling onto some election analysis, so I won’t go over the minutiae from the exit polls from Ohio and Texas. But it strikes me that with more than a month before the next big primary, on April 22 in Pennsylvania, we’re in a pretty unusual — if not unprecedented — situation. Despite the delegate count, I don’t think Barack Obama has nailed down the Democratic nomination, but Hillary Clinton obviously hasn’t retaken frontrunner status yet. Yet, even if Florida and Michigan vote again in some fashion, voters in about three-quarters of the country have already had their only shot at casting a ballot for the nomination. That means we’re in for six weeks of Democratically inclined friends, family members, and co-workers trying to change each others’ minds even though they don’t have any say in the process anymore.
What will happen to that pent-up passion? Lots of $25 and $50 donations to Clinton and Obama? Tens of thousands of volunteers going into Pennsylvania? (There’s a point at which more money and volunteers won’t make any difference. Pennsylvania is going to go the way Pennsylvania wants to go.) People trying to get included in national polls by asking their phone companies to install extra land lines? I don’t even want to think about the millions of frustrated comments that will be added to every political blog in America in March and April.