Elections 2008

Over the past weekend, Sen. Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucuses and Sen. John McCain did the same in the South Carolina primary. Soon after, the focus of many conversations, including some of my own, became whether or not these two candidates would eventually ride their wave of success to their parties’ nominations for the presidency.

We began to wonder who would win if both of these candidates faced each other in the general election. We took a look back at recent polls that questioned the outcome of such a contest. We began to forget, if only for a minute, that this election is still far from over.

Often, we get so caught up in the politics of who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s making a comeback and whose campaign is about to die, that we forget what we are voting for and why we are voting. We forget that when we enter the polling station, it shouldn’t matter who is polling ahead or who’s raised the most money, but instead, who we believe will best be able to lead our country into the future.

If we have learned anything from this election cycle, it’s that polls can sometimes be wrong, that the unexpected will sometimes happen and that until the voters have had their chance to voice their opinions through the ballot box, even the best punditry could not predict who will be our next president.

And it’s still only January.

No one knows what this election season has in store for us as we inch closer to November, so as we do, be sure to take a moment to tune out the talking heads who often pretend to have all of the answers and look again at the candidates and the issues raised in this campaign.

Ravi Doshi, Bruin contributor