The everlasting presidential campaign soap opera running right now on your favorite electronic thought-cleansing device finally got real this week. And by real we mean when real people get involved.
The people have spoken in Iowa and New Hampshire, the country's first states to pick the two parties' candidates. So far the two parties are losing big time.
On one side, a reality tv star is crushing a line-up of governors, senators and holy rollers. On the other, the inevitable is starting to look like the improbable as an angry old white guy fires up the youth vote by pointing out the obvious.
Things kicked off in Iowa where the only Canadian no one likes won in the Republican caucus. The Democratic side was called for Hilary after several coin tosses using magical two headed coins. Caucuses are hard to explain because no one outside Iowa understands how they work. It must be the ethanol.
I'll note that the Iowa Caucus caused Rand Paul to drop out of the presidential race. Senator Poodle convinced the state GOP to switch to the caucus process to get around our little law against running for two offices on a state ballot. At least Democrats in the state have the decency to hold it's own charlatans to running for one office at a time.
Now you know who to blame if things go wrong in Kentucky's concealed carry caucuses. But I digress.
New Hampshire gave the first indication most of us can understand by opening actual voting polls. Believe it or not, our state is very much like that state. They have mountains, they have horse racing. They have one big city and a whole lot of small towns. They have about the same ratio of deer hunters to vegetarians.
On the Republican ballots, the Donald fired the rest of the circus carrying 35% of the vote. John Kasich stumbled in second with a whopping 16%. That number gave party leaders a flicker of hope.
On the Democrat side, Hillary felt the Bern. She probably didn't like it because Sanders took 60% of the vote, the largest primary percentage in the history of primaries. Party leaders are not pleased.
Unlike our state, New Hampshire holds open primaries. In other words, you don't have to be registered as a Democrat to vote in the Democrat Primary. If you're registered Independent, you choose the primary you vote in. As it should be and is in most states.
According to the final tallies, Donald Trump received 100,406 votes. Bernie Sanders received 151,584 votes. That's 50,000 more votes for the Democrat winner in a state that has a long history of voting Republican. Maybe Hillary isn't the only person feeling the Bern.
But it's a long soap opera. Anything can happen and probably will. The Donald might admit this is all an elaborate punking of Ashton Kutcher. Hillary could reveal that Bernie is a secret Koch brother. The possibilities are endless.
I'm of the belief that as long as the parties are losing, the country is winning.