Every four years, the preliminary primaries and caucuses always seem like such a bunch of silly pomp and circumstance, as relatively small states attract candidates to eat fried foods at county fairs, and show they are just "plain folk" too. There is much ballyhoo over the results, even though they add little significance toward the end result (the convention). Finally, we arrive at Super Tuesday, and the shit gets real.

Yesterday, eleven states held their primaries. There weren't a lot of surprises on the Democratic side - Clinton won the states she was expected to, as did Sanders. The one possible outlier was Massachusetts, which went to Clinton. I assumed that all of New England was a given for Sanders, but apparently that wasn't the case.

On the Republican side, Drumpf took the majority of those states with a minority of votes. With 5 candidates still in the race, he never got more than 50% of the votes in any state. The most he got was 49% in Massachusetts, but he won Vermont and Arkansas with only 32.7% of the vote - less than one third. That means 2/3 of the actual voters in those states didn't want him, yet he won the state anyway. Cruz won Alaska, Oklahoma and Texas, and Rubio won Minnesota. (details here) It will be interesting to see how this plays out with regard to the delegates being won by the non-Drumpf candidates when the convention rolls around. As it stands now, Drumpf still has less than half of the delegates collected thus far.

Clinton has won more delegates then Sanders, but it is the Super Delegates that have really pushed her ahead. The Super Delegate system is something that has Sanders' supporters in fits. In a very real way, it allows the party machine to push their candidate of choice over the finish line. Sanders - who was not a Democrat before deciding to run as one - was at a disadvantage right from the start. The party builds up those who build up the party.

At this point, it still looks like Drumpf -vs- Cruz on the Republican side. Drumpf is very polarizing - people either love him or hate him. The party establishment is scared to death that this outsider might be their man in the General. To some extent, he is to the Republicans what Sanders is to the Democrats. Unfortunately for the Drumpf haters, he is succeeding, where Sanders still has a long road ahead of him. Democrats (and some Republicans) see a Drumpf candidacy as an embarrassment to the nation, and that is certainly valid. On the other hand, Cruz is just scary as hell:

Will anyone in the news report on this insanity? Will they challenge Cruz?

Doubtful - they're all too busy taking a big steaming Drumpf