First things first. Apologies to all my US friends for this post. But it had to be done. Your politics are a tad confusing for poor Brits who did not benefit from American History lessons at High School and years of exposure to your government’s idiosyncrasies.

Secondly, this is insultingly simple. Written by a simpleton for simple people.

Sorry, again.

The thing about politics is that most of us don’t have much of a clue.

It’s far from easy and a lot of it is either too boring or too mind numbingly important to be comfortable with.

And yet in a democracy we, the voters, hold the key. We’ve been given the power to determine our own destiny. Fair enough. But not so fair when those that are seeking your approval are using every trick in the book to hoodwink you into voting for them.

Politicians are con men. Absolutely to the last one. Or con women. They need to be able to con, I mean, persuade you, that what they are saying they are going to do they ARE indeed going to do. So in order to get the most possible votes they basically have to appeal to the largest number of people. There’s the trick. But we voters are very fickle. We like someone one day then they say something we don’t much like and we don’t like them at all the next.

That is unless you are Donald Trump.

Whatever he says, the American public seems to think about it for a nano second then say “fair enough”. They seem to like him. This despite or perhaps because of what he has said, and, more importantly, what he has not said. As a presidential candidate, he has spoken many, many words. But most of these are about winning and being the best. Or indeed “being great”. But very little is said about what he will actually do once elected – or more accurately – how he will do it.

All the candidates have a tendency to use fear as a tactic. If you vote for me I’ll make sure you are safe/healthy/prosperous/live in a lovely house and have lovely children at a wonderful school which is not governed by idiots. But if you don’t vote for me – well – you have to accept the consequences. War/famine/sickness/illiterate and unemployed offspring and most terrible of all, lots of foreign people running rampant in our wunnerful country.

The major news channels all have their own particular take on the proceedings and it is all too apparent where allegiances lie. Chief among News Channels is CNN. This is becoming more and more like Not the Nine O’Clock News by the day.

A recent ‘interview’ with three female pundits on Don Lemon saw two of them battle it out in a very superior and knowledgeable fashion.

Each knew more than the other, each smile gleamed with more white teeth than the other, and interrupting each other was elevated to a fine art. The youngest, most attractive of the three was a blond bimbo-esque wee thing who vainly attempted to get a single word in edgeways. Her two opponents flicked their lush long tresses and flashed their plastic smiles ever more menacingly. Until the very end when Don deftly brought her in to comment. Then she outshone the other two, said her quite intelligent piece before Don wrapped the interview up so you were left remembering only her uttered words and pretty face. The other two are remembered as blurry harridans who were really horrid to this sweet young thing. Quite clever really.

For those of you from the UK it is important to make the distinction here between the presidential elections and electing a party leader. The parties here (there are two) are not looking for a leader per se, but for a candidate to be put forward to the public vote to be elected as President of the United States of America.

There are other ‘leaders’ within each of the two parties. Leaders of the House of Representatives, Leaders in the Senate, Leaders here there and everywhere. Once the President is elected, the opposition candidate tends not to be a leader in any way shape or form – they are a bit of a failure if truth be told. So you don’t hear much about Mitt Romney these days but here’s what he’s allegedly been doing.

The parties have to go through all of the shenanigans of getting the right candidate for President first. These shenanigans are the ‘caucuses’ which are a primitive form of gathering of many people, usually party members but not, weirdly,  in all cases, and during each gathering, the various corners of the US decide which of the (far too many) candidates they want to represent their particular party. Here is how Iowa did it but every state is different (of course).

The caucuses started on 1 February and continue on until a blaze of glory in ‘Super Tuesday’ on 1 March because so many states ‘do it’ on that date and finally end in June. It’s all done and dusted in July when the parties officially elect their candidates. This is a useful timetable of the ‘primaries’ which also tells you if the caucus is ‘open’ or ‘closed’.

Then the fun really begins in earnest and the presidential campaigns can ramp up the silliness, sling it out in TV debates, throw poll after poll result in front of the hapless electorate until November when finally, finally it will all be done.

Read part two to find out more about the parties and the wonders of US politics.