The Election that Never Ends!

This is the election that never ends,
Yes it goes on and on my friend.
Some reporters started covering it, not knowing what it was,
And they'll continue covering it forever just because,
This is the election that never ends...

Seriously, most reporting of the 2008 presidential race has degenerated into something only demented children's show producers previously had the gall to subject the public to.

It's hard to believe how excited about this madness I used to be. I spent last summer and fall chasing the plethora of presidential-nomination hopefuls around Iowa and faithfully transcribing as many stump speeches as I could. And I could barely contain myself on caucus night when I got the chance to witness Huckabee and his supporters celebrate their stunning defeat of Mitt Romney, which ultimately opened the door for McCain's historic comeback.

Oh for the days when Barack Obama was still a long-shot. Or when Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel were still running around gleefully throwing pies in the faces of the more mainstream candidates. But no, those days are long gone. And after a year and a half of intense media attention, we still have about three and a half months left to go until election day. The problem is that everything meaningful to be said has already been said. Now we're just stuck in a hellish repeat loop, a tortuous echo chamber of empty rhetoric and asinine "analysis."

So I've done the unthinkable. I've unsubscribed (in Google Reader) from every exclusively election-related site and blog save two: Politico.com and Marc Ambinder's reported blog on politics. I've also maintained my subscriptions to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish and several state-level partisan blogs, but those all have value to me outside of their presidential election coverage--and from now on I'll be reading far fewer of their election-related posts.

I'm pondering going even further and just taking a second to check up on the Iowa Electronic Market every couple of days to see where the race stands. It's more reliable than any pundit's piffle anyway.

It's a really good thing I'm not on the politics beat anymore. I couldn't take it.