The most ridiculous idea to precede the New Hampshire Primary was that the presidential primary race would be over if Senator Barack Obama won over Senator Hillary Clinton. Why? What was this assumption based upon? Wishful thinking and erroneous presumptuousness? With a warchest of millions, a vast campaign staff and political connections nationwide, and 48 Democratic primaries and caucuses to go, it was one giant leap to assume that the Clintons would give up their bid for the presidency with less than one-half of one percent of the voting electorate having cast a vote.

Sometimes you wonder just where these thinking extremes come from. Remember that just a month or so ago, Senator Hillary Clinton was assumed to be a shoe-in, that the Democratic National Convention would simply hand her the nomination as a formality. In a matter of weeks the idea of Clintonian inevitability was surpassed and supplanted by the Obama Usurpation.

So what does this tell us? That pollsters and the media sometimes get things wrong. That to base one's opinions on the opinions of others is not a sound way to choose a candidate. That the media hype concerning the first two states that have primaries and caucuses is not only self-indulgent but injurious to the overall election process for the rest of the country. That New Hampshire and Iowa are given entirely too much weight in the scheme of electing our nominees considering the very minor role they play in the electoral college and the overall general election.

What we need is a primary and caucus season of approximately four weeks duration. This way the candidates can remain in the hunt for the entire election process, giving the people the full slate to choose from. The candidates would not have to spend as much money and you could place all the smaller delegate states up front to balance out the heavy delegate states later in the season. This focus on the first couple states, by the media and by the candidates, is unfair to the people in all the other states -- all 99 and 1/2 percent of them -- in that it denies them the ability to be included in making a choice. What kind of democracy is that?