The Endless And Chronically Weird US Presidential Primaries Explained, Courtesy Of Courtney Act
Better than CNN, just quietly.
One day, far off in the distance, the US Presidential race will be over. Names like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Martin O’Malley and (hopefully) Donald Trump will be nothing more than vaguely unpleasant memories, consigned to the same carefully neglected corner of your brain as the questionable hair you had in high school. Until it all starts over again in 2019.
Since the only way to ever truly escape relentless Presidential campaign coverage is the sweet embrace of death, you may as well take a few minutes to learn the basics of what a primary contest actually involves. Caucuses, conventions, delegates and superdelegates — there’s a mini-dictionary of political industry jargon that’s fairly incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t treat this stuff like a sport, especially if you’re from a country with a comparatively sane electoral system like Australia.
To that end, we’ve enlisted performer and RuPaul’s Drag Race finalist Courtney Act as our resident US correspondent throughout the 2016 Presidential contest. In the first of Courtney’s dispatches for Junkee, she explains the bizarre, infuriating and deeply confusing world of the Presidential primaries for anyone who’s not up on the finer points. At the very least, it’s way more fun than getting your political information from CNN.