Have A Super Tuesday
Gosh, here's hoping everyone is having a super Tuesday today!
I'm sorry if that was a bit snide, but I have to say I'm getting a little sick of "super" Tuesdays. The term "Super Tuesday" has, in my opinion, now officially jumped the shark. Case in point: today's primaries are the second time the media has used this term during this year's primary season.
The use of "Super Tuesday" to describe a constellation of state primaries on one day can be traced back to the 1980 election cycle. Newsweek is the first citation of the term in the Lexis/Nexis database, dating from May 12 of that year:
[Teddy] Kennedy must roll up landslide victories on "Super Tuesday" -- June 3 -- when primaries take place in California, Ohio, New Jersey and five other states.
By June, even the New York Times was using the term. From a Times article a few years later:
It seemed good political strategy at the time. In 1980, Carter-Mondale campaign strategists, wanting to give President Carter a chance to make a quick rebound should he lose the New Hampshire primary to his Democratic challenger, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, arranged to move up the dates of three Southern state primaries to one week behind the New Hampshire contest. Thus ''Super Tuesday'' was created in the South, with voters in Georgia, Alabama and Florida expressing their Presidential preference the same day.
In 1984, Super Tuesday moved up to mid-March, when 10 states voted, many of them from the South. By 1988, Texas joined the party, bumping the number up to 13. This fell back to 11 states in 1992, when the original scheme (of boosting the South's importance in the primary season) actually worked to Bill Clinton's advantage. By 1996, Super Tuesday, still held mid-March, had shrunk even further, to only seven states, anchored by Texas and Florida.
In 2000, the term was first being used for an even bigger Tuesday in the election calendar, because states like California and New York had leapfrogged their primaries one week earlier than the traditional Southern "Super Tuesday." In other words, in 2000, Super Tuesday happened a week before Super Tuesday. By 2004, ten states were voting on the first Tuesday in March, one week before the traditional Super Tuesday, and the term had shifted to meaning "the Tuesday when the most states hold primaries."
By 2008, the frontloading of the primaries got completely out of control, resulting in Super Tuesday moving up to early February, when 22 states participated. This was so obviously larger than previous Super Tuesdays that alternate labels were bandied about: "Mega Tuesday" or "Tsunami Tuesday" or "Super Duper Tuesday" -- leading one political hack to dub it "Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday," although most were more circumspect, choosing one or the other.
Since the punditocracy had such a whale of a good time in 2008, and since it was all such great television, it now seems almost any Tuesday with an election can have the "Super Tuesday" label slapped on it. This year, today is the second Tuesday that's so far been called "Super" (the previous one being May 18, when Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oregon all voted).
Super Tuesday has now lost all specific meaning, in other words. It just means "a big election day." This, at least in my memory, is the first non-presidential election I've even heard the term Super Tuesday. While previously the term was only used in presidential years, these days it just sounds so gosh darned cool that the media can't resist overusing it.
But there's a point when cool, hip terms start being used by those who are neither cool nor hip (like your parents, for instance) and they become nothing more than a joke. Super Tuesday has now hit this point.
I realize I'm a voice crying in the wilderness on this, but I prefer to be thought of as a trend-spotter instead. Because I think it's time for all of us to move on from the "Super Tuesday" label, since it has been reduced to almost meaninglessness by overuse and by looser and looser definition of the term. Maybe we'll come up with a better one by 2012, because if we don't we'll wind up with every Tuesday with a primary being super-sized by the chattering classes on television.
So here's wishing everyone who votes today has a truly super Tuesday, although I just can't go as far as wishing everyone a Super Tuesday.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Hey, it's always a super Tuesday around here. :)
Even though, you know, sometimes the column gets posted on a Wednesday ...
Liz -
Hey, it was still Tuesday out here when I posted it!
:-)
I knew everyone'd be up watching the returns anyways...
-CW
By 2008, the frontloading of the primaries got completely out of control, resulting in Super Tuesday moving up to early February, when 22 states participated. This was so obviously larger than previous Super Tuesdays that alternate labels were bandied about: "Mega Tuesday" or "Tsunami Tuesday" or "Super Duper Tuesday" -- leading one political hack to dub it "Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday,"
"Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed"
-Austin Powers, AUSTIN POWERS II
:D
I knew everyone'd be up watching the returns anyways...
Uh.... yeeeaaaaa That's what I was doing. :D
I was watching DayBreakers. Pretty kewl movie if you like blood and guts and gore.. :D
Speaking of movies... David, Liz (and anyone else who is interested), ya'all have GOT to watch UNTHINKABLE with Samuel L Jackson.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914863/
It's VERY apropos to some of the discussions we have had here on CW.COM
I would love to hear your input on it once ya'all see it.
But, getting back on topic...
CW, do you have an analysis on what the wins and losses mean for the upcoming mid-term elections? :D
Michale.....
Speaking of SUPER ELECTIONS, I am on record as saying that Obama is going to be a 1-termer..
I have since come across an op-ed piece that explains, quite accurately, exactly how Obama actually might be able to pull a win in 2012..
Why Hillary Will Be On Obama's Ticket In 2012
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/09/liz-peek-hillary-clinton-obama-run-democrats/?test=faces
Michale ducks as Liz throws a keyboard at him
:D
Michale.....
Thanks for the movie recommend, Michale!
I was a little disheartened by Blanche Lincoln's establishment win but am taking comfort in how close a grassroots movement came to beating an establishment candidate.
This is more of what needs to happen so that Dems in office don't act like Republican-lites!
Quiz for the day. Who said the following after the "Super" Tuesday elections?
"These candidates have the courage to stand up for their convictions, fight for what they know is right for their states and our nation, and buck politics as usual in order to put government back on the side of the people."
-David
David -
Well, it probably wasn't Rahm Emanuel, from what I heard he was saying that night...
Um, Sarah Palin? Sounds like her scansion, for some reason...
Here's my favorite quote from a president after a previous Super Tuesday (I noticed this while researching this article, but couldn't find a way to work it it):
"It's kind of weird out there, man."
Bet nobody will guess who uttered that line...
-CW
You win the prize, Chris! It was indeed scabrous Sarah. Not the foot-in-mouth Emanuel.
As for the Super Tuesday quote. That's a tough one. A President, you say? My first thought would be Clinton, but since you said we wouldn't guess, I'm not going to guess Bill.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess Nixon. But maybe just because I want to picture him saying that :)
-David
David,
Thanks for the movie recommend, Michale!
It's a killer movie. It even prompted the wife and I to have a political discussion... Something we rarely do...
But I really want to hear ya'alls reactions when you see it.. It opens up some real hard-ball philosophical questions...
CW,
"It's kind of weird out there, man."
I am gonna say Bush... I can't see Nixon putting "man" at the end of anything, unless it's a McCoy-esque, "Good god, man!"
Michale.....
I am gonna say Bush... I can't see Nixon putting "man" at the end of anything, unless it's a McCoy-esque, "Good god, man!"
Heheh. I can't either, but I think it would be funny.
And I looked back at your article, Chris, for the date on Super Tuesday. 1980. I guess Nixon is out. So I'm going to switch to Reagan as a 'darkhorse'.
I told you guys this one was tough to guess...
From 3/11/92 USA Today, quoting George H.W. Bush about the Super Tuesday election results versus Pat Buchanan:
"It's weird out there, man," he said at a White House photo opportunity. "When a 40-point win isn't considered a victory, I've got to know what the hell is going on out there."
:-)
-CW
HA!!! Bush!!! :D
I figured Bush would be the best guess, because it doubled my chances of being right! :D
Michale.....