Putting the super in Super Tuesday

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/03/2020 (2270 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In analyzing the results of Super Tuesday, we crusading newspaper columnists are forced to answer some difficult questions.

The first question, not surprisingly, is this: What exactly are the results of Super Tuesday?

Well, the answer to that question is simple: I personally do not have a clue what the results are because, thanks to the strict deadlines for this column, I am forced to write these words long before the polls have closed.

Not that I will let something that simple stop me from doing my sworn duty to provide you, the curious reader, with enough words so that my employer will continue to provide me with a paycheque.

I don’t know about your profession, but if we big-shot media analysts only analyzed things that had actually happened, then there would be a lot less analysis in the world, and that would be a sad day for democracy.

That said, the other main question we crusading columnists need to answer is: What exactly is Super Tuesday?

The answer to that one is: It depends on what side of the Canada-U.S. border you live on.

For instance, if you happen to be Canadian — you can check your passport if you’re not sure — Super Tuesday is most likely the day on which you have to decide whether you want double the Air Miles or 10 per cent off your entire purchase at the grocery store.

It’s an entirely different story south of the border. In the U.S. — and you are going to have to trust my journalistic expertise on this one — Super Tuesday has, and you can quote me directly, “something to do with politics.”

According to what I have just read online, Super Tuesday is — I guess we should say “was” because you are reading this on Wednesday — the single day when the most states hold contests to pick a presidential nominee, the most voters have a chance to go to the polls , and the most delegates will be allotted to candidates.

More than a third of all (bad word) delegates for the Democratic National Convention are (were) up for grabs on this one day.

Think about it: one-third of Democratic delegates (1,357) were up for grabs in 14 states — Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Vermont — as well as the territory of American Samoa and the votes of those living abroad.

And I think we all know that as American Samoa goes, so goes the election. But that is not today’s main point. No, today’s main point is that I do not have a clue who won the most delegates on Super Tuesday, but I still feel obligated to provide Canadian readers with a thoughtful analysis.

I think the first thing we can say — and this seems pretty obvious to me — is that Super Tuesday highlights some major differences between Canadians and Americans.

In the U.S., the way the Democratic race to be the person who gets to challenge Donald Trump for the White House works is pretty complicated, bordering on clinically insane.

What the Democrats do is get together and hold televised debates in which all the challengers stand beside each other and kick one another in the teeth and accuse each other of being a far-left lunatic or a right-wing fanatic or a person who believes in kicking the most puppies before election day. The person who survives with the fewest visible scars gets to take on the president.

It is sort of like taking a panther and a tiger and a jaguar and, possibly, a wildebeest, and throwing them together in a room with a bunch of raw meat, closing the door, and then opening it an hour later and, whichever one is able to drag its bleeding body out of the room fastest, gets to fight a (bad word) lion to be King of the Jungle.

That is not the way politicians roll in Canada. In The True North Strong and Free, our politicians tend to stress their Canadian-ness at debates, wherein they try to score points by out-politeing one another.

First debater: “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I possibly might just disagree.”

Second debater: “That’s perfectly fine. Maybe we should sit down over a two-four and talk about it.”

The other thing I have observed about the front-runners in Super Tuesday in the U.S. is that they are (how can we phrase this?) chronologically challenged guys of my particular gender.

Establishment-friendly moderate Joe Biden is 77, and progressive populist Bernie Sanders is 78, which means U.S. President Donald Trump is comparatively a spring chicken at a mere 73. If we were to get these three guys together to debate health care, it would sound like this:

Sanders: “If I’m elected president, EVERYONE gets new knees. (Points at audience) YOU GET A KNEE! AND YOU GET A KNEE!”

Biden: “Listen, I was vice-president to Barack Obama and that guy had FANTASTIC knees!”

Trump: “No one in the world knows knees the way I know knees! I have genius knees! Very stable knees!”

In contrast, Canada has Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Tory front-runner Peter MacKay and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, three guys who barely seem old enough to be allowed out on their own on a Friday night.

And your standard Canadian voter feels a strange sense of pride knowing that American magazines love to write about how sexy our political leaders are and how, in a pinch, they can decide volatile issues by challenging each other to combat in a mixed martial arts bout.

In conclusion, I would just like to point out that, wherever you live, Super Tuesday is now over, which means you no longer qualify for a discount at the grocery store.

Which is sad, because I could really use the Air Miles.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca