And, just like Big Brother and other reality shows, the events are heavily influenced by those who put on the show. The pundits and prognosticators spew their narratives about "who's winning" and "who's losing" with almost no discussion of what actually differentiates the candidates policy-wise. HRC's upset win in New Hampshire shows that polling sometimes fails, and that media personalities should really focus on something other than the horse race aspect of politics.

The byzantine, drawn-out primary calendar makes the whole exercise even worse. The ability of individual states (and, in fact, each of the parties within those states) to decide when their primary is held undermines our democracy, and gives both parties as much chance as possible to push through their preferred candidates instead of giving the power to the voters on election day. Many primary votes are cast after the party's nominee is already decided by earlier primaries, and the parties can do a lot more electioneering in the early states than they'd be able to do if there was a single national primary day.

All that said, I'm happy with the Hillary and McCain wins, not because I like either candidate (I don't) but because I want the process to continue into the later states and not already be decided after only 2% of the primary voters have spoken.