Our vote may matter (01/05/08)

Will Indiana's vote matter?

A week ago, the answer to that would have been clearly in the negative. The state's May primary virtually guaranteed that the presidential nominees would be in place before Hoosiers had a chance to vote.

Today, the answer's still, "Probably not." But there's a slim possibility that "probably not" could be upgraded to "maybe" in the weeks ahead.

The difference, of course, was Thursday's Iowa caucuses, specifically the success in Iowa of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee.

With their Iowa victories, those two candidates have shuffled the deck and shattered a number of assumptions that the talking heads on television and Internet bloggers have taken for granted.

Certainly, after Thursday, nobody's talking about "inevitability" any more. The gates are open for a much more drawn-out process in selecting this year's nominees.

The other factor is money.

So much of it has been raised - particularly by Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney - that those candidates are in a position to fight on despite their Iowa stumbles.

One also suspects, having watched the Clintons in the political arena for more than a decade, that even if Obama wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina the Clinton campaign will fight on.

These are not folks known for graciously stepping out of the spotlight; they know how to scrap, and they are tenacious.

Will that be enough to make Hoosier primary voters relevant?

Probably not. May is a long, long way off.

But after this week's caucuses, it would be foolish to rule anything out. - J.R.

[[In-content Ad]]