Texas Showdown

The NY Post headline compares today's primaries to a Western showdown. The Daily News, meanwhile, used sports analogies to suggest that after tonight's results Obama could send "Hil" to the showers. Both references are highly masculinized and reflective of our society's "winner take all" political system.

At a conference this weekend, I heard Lani Guinier address the need for a more proportional political system. Transformative politics, otherwise, cannot occur until the "backroom" agenda of a super-delegate mechanism is dissolved and justice restored. Our electoral system that awards all state electoral votes to one presidential nominee stilts the democratic process from unfolding. However, if Americans participate in the process, and civic duty extends beyond voting for a representative, the political system would cease to be just transactional. Until we unravel this system that discourages real participation, change will be difficult, if not impossible, to create.