I have spent the last three weeks in a state of almost constant anxiety, about the ugliness of this primary season. A long time ago, when this primary season started, I vowed that no matter what happened, that I would vote for anyone who was the eventual Democratic nominee. As the weeks have dragged on, I have been more and more scared that when the primary was over, all the bad blood between the candidates would spill over into the general election, and cause us to lose to McSame in November.
Please, please, please, I thought, just make this stop.
Well, no more. Now, I love this primary, and I think it's the best thing to happen to the Democratic party in my (short) political memory. Why? For one simple (ok, not so simple) reason: this primary has turned f**king Pennsylvania blue.
What am I talking about?
The state now has 4,119,213 registered Democrats. Since March 24, the last day of eligibility for the primary election, the state has received 33,281 new Democratic registrations and 45,977 party changes to the Democratic Party. The secretary of state’s office is still accepting new registrations and party switches that were postmarked by the deadline.
State officials said the activity on the final day was intense, and these new numbers likely include large swaths of registrations that were collected by both the Obama and Clinton campaigns and submitted just before the deadline.
Since the first of the year, the state has received 101,499 new Democratic applications and 132,688 switches to the Democratic Party.
By contrast, the Republican Party in Pennsylvania now stands at 3,197,586 people. Only 32,191 citizens have joined the Republican roles and 13,937 have switched to the GOP since January 1.
(h/t Jonathan Singer at MyDD)
Why does this excite me? Pennsylvania is a purple state that has been trending blue for the last fifteen years. Bill Clinton won twice, Al Gore won in 2000, and Kerry won in 2004. Before this primary, PA voter registration between the parties had been roughly equal across the entire state. Right now, Democrats have an almost 1,000,000 voter advantage in Pennsylvania, and almost 200,000 of those registered since the beginning of the year. And that is thanks in part to the freaking primary I have been silently wishing way.
It's not just PA. Because of this primary season, many millions of new voters all over the country are registering as Democrats. Many more millions of people (like me), for the first time, can speak intelligently about caucuses, primaries, and delegates. If they didn't already, they know who their state party chairman is. Heck, now I know what a credentials committee is!!
Thanks to this primary, there are now millions of new, excited, informed, engaged, Democratic voters. New voters that are already participating in the process, maybe donating to or volunteering for a campaign. For the Democratic party, this primary has been the political equivalent of printing one's own money, except it's legal.
And even if the primary gets uglier, I no longer believe that all these new voters are just going to stay home and disengage if their candidate doesn't win. They'll be angry, but already invested in the process, and will know some channels into which to direct their rage or frustration. (Perhaps the DNC will need a dedicated phone line for angry calls.) And as long as they are still involved, there is still time for the Democratic Party to work together and beat McSame.
I am not saying this primary season has been perfect, or that I hope it lasts forever. But thanks to our rabid partisanship, we are blowing the Republicans out of the water in money raised, number of donors, and number of registered voters. There are more of us than there are of them, even in red and purple states. And that, my friends, is a recipe for kicking butt, electoral style.