I would be remiss if I didn't turn The Fives' gaze toward politics with this being primary Tuesday in South Dakota and the topics of the day.

With candidates Clinton and Obama making a series of stops in the Rapid City area over the past week, the talk has been varied and energized, all this despite the national media and politico's slightly early call for the latter.

As South Dakota voters get the rare opportunity to truly close up one race and start the nation's movement toward the bigger and equally or more interesting election in November, here's just a few of the topical issues of the week.

Is Hillary the first woman candidate?

There has certainly been a lot of talk about Hillary Clinton being the first woman candidate for president, and it is certainly true no woman has ever gotten so close to a shot at the presidency.

Still, the first woman candidates for president began rolling in even before women had the right to vote. Granted, they often ran on less-than-popular tickets, such as the Equal Rights Party or the New Alliance Party. Those that managed to get involved with the major parties were often dismissed early in the nominating process.

My favorite, of course, is Victoria Woodhull, who in 1872 founded her own newspaper and later owned her own a Wall Street investiment firm. And she ran for president.

How accurate the polls? Ask 'Give 'em hell, Harry'

Monday saw a poll released by the New Hampshire-based American Research Group that showed Clinton with a sizable lead over opponent Barack Obama in the Democratic primary in South Dakota.

Of course, this is the same outfit that saw Clinton running close in South Carolina, the state where she was more than doubled up by Obama 55 percent to 27 percent.

Heaven knows the media loves polls, and no case exposes that weakness more than the 1948 presidential race between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. Most people are familiar with the iconic Truman pose holding up the Chicago Tribune that declared in a massive headline font "Dewey Defeats Truman." (Even if they only know it because of the bronze on the corner of St. Joe and Mount Rushmore Road).

Still, those poll takers faced some of the same challenges pollsters have today. That is, not everyone they were polling were on an even keel. In 1948, not everyone had a telephone, so the pollsters were missing out on a large chunk of the electorate - a large chunk that favored Truman.

Today, the problem is with cell phones and numbers that pollsters don't generally have. Will the growing cell phone bloc be able to sway the 2008 elections, some 60 years later?

Stay tuned.

The great communicators

One of the treats of this election season has been to hear Barack Obama speak. Although some may dispute the message - or the fact that there may be little or no message there to dispute - but he can speak, which has been missing from recent presidential races.

Of course, maybe the bar has been lowered enough in recent years that oratory skills are less important than actions, largely because our attention span has been reduced from the hours of fine debate of the Lincoln-Douglas debates down to 15 second sound clips.

In trying to gauge the great political speeches in U.S. history, I stumbled on a Web site that offers up its own top 10. Now, granted, I was a little concerned with the sites name (rightwingnuthouse.com), but the list is engaging in how it breaks down famous political speeches throughout the ages and what made them significant.

Who's going to win in November?

Any true politico knows the answer to this one - if they're talking about South Dakota, that is.

It took Barry Goldwater - a candidate who would have enormous political pull today in western South Dakota - to get South Dakotans to vote Democratic in the presidential race. That was 44 years ago.

For a complete look at the state's history in political elections, check out the 270towin.com Web site.

Good for South Dakota, but not so good for the Democratic party?

The extension of the primary season all the way to South Dakota has no doubt been great news for voters here in South Dakota. It's rare these day we see anyone but mid-level minions when it comes to real presidential candidates during the primary season.

However, it might not be so good for the winner of the Democratic nomination for the November presidential election.

Chuck Raasch of the Tucson Citizen's recount of tight primary races over the past four decades indicates potential disaster for campaigns that were in doubt by the time they went to the national convention.

The likelihood that the Dems won't have sorted through the primary mess by convention seems unlikely at this point, but not as unlikely as Truman defeating Dewey, or for Obama leading the r ace over Clinton, for that matter.