Big Turnout for Indiana

And they didn't even have to put gay marriage on the ballot to achieve it.

Over 1.25 million Indianans voted yesterday for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary.

Over 1.1 million Indianans voted for Jill Long Thompson or Jim Schellinger in the Democratic primary for Governor of Indiana.

In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry received 969,000 votes in the state of Indiana...in the general election. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joe Kernan received roughly 1.1 million votes, just shy of Schellinger and Long Thompson's combined votes in the 2008 primary.

The Democratic vote in the Indiana primary not only clearly outstrips Kerry's total from the general-which is remarkable in and of itself-but it is actually closer to Bush's vote total in Indiana than it is to Kerry's. Bush received 1.48 million votes in Indiana in 2004, 60% of the vote.

So either Dems in general are all fired up and getting involved where they didn't before, or people in general are all fired up and turning Dem, or Indiana folks are all fired up because the spotlight is on them. Regardless, primary numbers like these make me very happy.

Don't get me wrong... I would have been more happy had 51% of Indianians not fallen for a certain someone's paper-thin pandering. But as Donald Rumsfeld would say, you go to elections with the voters you have, not the voters you might want or wish to have at a later time.