Thats right. It turns out I was miss informed and that maryland does in fact hold a primary instead of a caucus. This means we needed to get our butt in gear and learn more about the two leading candidates so we can decide on who to vote for. Nicole and I spent a little but of sunday night trying to do some research on the candidates and how they differ. Unfortunetly it’s really hard to tell them apart. Some of the few difference I have found between them have been pretty unimportant to me. They both say the same things on the majority of the issues that are important to me. This seems to match what nicole has heard on NPR where for the most part they are the same and that for many it might come down to a ‘gut’ thing.

The most important thing for me is who can better get elected in the the general election. Hillary suffers from being a clinton and there are many people out there who just don’t like her and will vote for the other guy. Obama on the other hand is fairly inexperienced and up until recently suffered from the opinion that he couldn’t translate enthusiasm for him into actual votes. So this thinking has got me leaning towards voting for Obama. Especially in the last couple of weeks on Digg there have been more stories on conservative blogs where they say they would be much harder pressed to work up enthusiasm to vote against obama vs if it was hillary. However I do have one problem with Obama is that some of his campaigning promises/speeches are on things that I think are unrealistic and are basically empty promises. I’d rather have a future president tell the public the truth to the best of their ability instead of telling me something i want to hear but won’t be able to necessarily deliver.

So driving into work today I heard my first political ad for the presidential campaign on the radio. It was for Barak Obama. I thought it was kinda silly and corney that the ad starts off with Obama saying “I approve this ad”. It was kinda neat because I don’t think I’ve ever heard a presidential campaign ad on the radio before since for the last few elections I haven’t been listening to the radio and before that I wasn’t all that interested in who was getting elected. It went on listing how Obama is an agent for change and don’t forget to get out and vote. I think it will be interesting to listen to the radio over the next two weeks. I especially want to hear a republican ad. Although I generally don’t support the republicans I think it would be interesting to hear how they represent themselves and what tactics they use to engage their base.

Sadly I think it is going to be unlikely that I will participate in maryland’s primary. The mainly because for some reason Maryland holds a caucus instead of a regular primary. I’m interested in politics but all I want to do is go in and cast my vote for who I would want to represent me instead of some long drawn out process. I just don’t have enough energy or time to devote to figuring out how caucus’s work and to participate in them.