A Good Day for America

Supercalifragelisticexpealidocious Tuesday is finally here.

Nearly half of these United States are holding primaries today. Over 1,000 delegates are up for grabs on both sides of the aisle today alone, and, on the Democratic side, polling indicates that the two contenders vying for those delegates could emerge from S00p3r Tuesday!!!11! with total delegate counts within 10% of each other. Of course, political polling is nothing if not wildly inaccurate, so who bloody knows what will happen today?! Wheeeeeee!

Well, we do know one thing. We know that no matter for whom Democratic primary voters cast their votes, they will be voting for change. Not the highly-touted and over-stated change from Beltway Business As Usual, which is a dubious proposition at best, given the realities of our lumbering, revolution-averse bureaucracy, but a change of historical significance—we have budged from myth toward truth the idea that any American-born citizen can be president. Today, nearly every Democratic primary vote will be cast for a woman or a man of color.

And every. single. vote. will be a vote for change in its repudiation of the current administration. After seven long years of conservative rule, progress will be getting lots of votes today.

Meanwhile, as Democratic voters are thumbing their noses at convention and starting new American traditions, the Republican primary voters wonder which of their candidates is most conservative, which will best protect them from this onslaught of progress—and their candidates assure the fearful daydreamers of a golden American age that never really existed, I will conserve; I will preserve our traditions.

These are gossamer promises. The march of progress may be slowed, but it cannot be stopped and it cannot be turned, not by any Republican candidate. Even their iconic golden boy Bush, a conservative cult leader with no checks and balances, left to pursue every conservative wet dream with abandon, could not stem the tide that sweeps us ever forward. At the twilight of his rule—during which radical feminists, kissing boys, and anyone swarthier than Ron Marsh's imagined Jesus in Head of Christ were routinely demonized when politically expedient—Bush nonetheless finds himself leading a country that supports same-sex marriage in greater numbers than when he entered office and leading a party whose opposition have narrowed their field to a black man and a feminist woman.

Onward we march… Did I mention that progress will be getting lots of votes today?

America's greatest strength has always been its progressiveness—our existence as a melting pot and our awkward struggle toward a true egalitarianism, where all people are free and equal, where every individual can live up to her or his potential. Progressives love America for what it can be; they look always forward. Today, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be talking to people about the future, about doing things for this nation that have never been done before, drawing roadmaps in new directions, while John McCain and Mitt Romney tread the same marshy, fetid ground in which better and worse men than they will ever be have already left layers of footprints. Today, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton transcend tradition, while John McCain and Mitt Romney desperately squabble, each trying to convince the Republican base that he is the Great White Knight who will defend it.

This is a good day for progressives. And a good day for progress. That makes it a good day for America.

Rock on, Super Tuesday.