I didn't *really* know what Super Tuesday was

It's okay if you didn't either!

Did anyone catch Dr. Becky on a recent podcast talking about how true confidence is being able to raise your hand and say “I don’t know" without feeling like an idiot?

I graduated from law school at 27 believing the most dangerous way to be a lawyer is to pretend to know something you don’t. It took another 10 years before I could metaphorically raise my hand, admit I didn’t know something, and actually feel okay about it.

And guys — I honestly didn’t know what Super Tuesday was. I read a handful of articles that weren’t super helpful. I found this US News & World Report article to be the most helpful/concise, but I was still curious. And because the universe appreciates a civically curious mind, my curiosity was rewarded over lunch (on Super Tuesday, no less) with someone whose world is a perfect mesh of the two things I love talking about the most: civics and entertainment. More on that below.

But first, the basics are this: Super Tuesday is the day when a big group of states (16 states and American Samoa, to be exact) hold primary elections. Primaries are how we choose candidates. You know how at the beginning of a big election year, you hear a lot about the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, etc., and other individual caucuses? Super Tuesday is when we go from single-state primaries to a collective of primaries happening on the same day, all across the country, in states that are all very different from one another.

Yesterday was anticlimactic in terms of presidential nominees, but historically, primaries help predict which candidate will ultimately clinch the nomination for their party.

I found this resource from the US Vote Foundation to be helpful for a closer understanding of primaries and caucuses:

US Vote Foundation / Overseas Vote

I’m also linking a very digestible article Katie Couric Media sent this morning summarizing yesterday’s takeaways (side note - I find her platform to be so refreshing and easy to read, and there always seems to be a hopeful message even when they’re covering hard stuff. Highly recommend her daily news blast).

And here’s me, voting on Super Tuesday.

I’ll leave you with my own personal takeaways on Super Tuesday following an impromptu lunch with Steven Olikara. I met Steven a couple months ago. Like me, he’s newish to LA, but unlike me, he’s an actual civic braintrust and dedicated change-maker. We first connected at a local political gathering then got to hang out at Sundance a few weeks later.

When I tell you with zero irony that I’m trying to find the next generation of civic “influencers”, Steven fits the bill in every way. He founded the wildly successful Millennial Action Project (now called Future Caucus) in his early 20s and is now leading Bridge Entertainment Labs, a nonprofit linking arms with Hollywood to bridge political divides through the power of storytelling. From writing, to playing music, to leading transformative nonprofit organizations, everything he does is focused on bridging divides in unconventional ways.

He’s also someone who can effortlessly talk through the most complicated of topics (like Super Tuesday) in a way that not only helps you understand, but even helps you consider how we can each do our part to make things better.

I asked Steven to explain the importance of Super Tuesday beyond the obvious basics. The takeaway for me was unexpectedly hopeful. Breaking it down here.

• First, I was reintroduced to the concept of the “Exhausted Majority” (67% of Americans, to be exact, are fatigued by the polarized state of our society and eager for change). But while the label of “Exhausted Majority” sounds defeatist, the “eager for change” part is hopeful — and acknowledging that the majority of Americans are tired of division is, in and of itself, positive.

• Primary elections tend to attract the most ideologically extreme voters, which makes sense if you think about — the majority of voters tend only to vote in general presidential elections and not primaries for several reasons, including social pressure, which tends to be more of a motivator in general elections.

• There’s a growing movement (supported by the Exhausted Majority, who again, are eager to dial down the rhetoric) to expand primary elections — meaning potentially super-sizing Super Tuesday by adding even more state primaries to the mix, or amplifying the importance of primaries in the public perception generally. Basically, the thinking is that if primaries took on the same societal importance as the general election, turnout would be higher, primaries would attract a more representative voter base, candidate quality would improve, and maybe, just maybe, this would lead to less polarization.

My goal for this Substack has always been to help parents re-learn and re-imagine the idea of civics, and to find our way through the election (and beyond) with hope, positivity and humor. If you find yourself looking at things differently, please share with anyone who might enjoy reading.

More soon,

Sarah