I know I know

Ah, my readership, I know I have been missing from your lives. Where have you been, you say? In a hole - a deep hole of trying to figure out which of my years of cultivated information I must shed in order to make space in my brain for the useless crap I need to know to get good grades.

But I digress.

I was watching Chris Matthews today - by which I mean that I had him on for 4 minutes before the blood started dripping from my ears - and I started thinking (a bad pastime in my current condition)

Where would we be in our national dialogue if, say, all the Democratic primaries had occurred on the same day? Or within two weeks, or a month of each other? Would the media and Democrats be screaming bloody murder over this race?

Well, really, we should be focusing on the media. It's their fault we're in whatever mess we may or may not be in right now. Quick Aside: A great little piece on Bill Clinton was in the New Yorker this week describing how two very bored journalists follow him around recording every word he says (which I will admit, is a lot) just to catch him on the few that he may say that are "off message".

But back to the point on hand, really my main point of a few entries on this blog, it's not the candidates fault that this race is dragging on so long and the tone is so painful at times, it's the process and the media. If on July 1, Obama's lead is only single digits in pledged candidates, doesn't that only show that Democrats are more divided on who should be our representative and not that Clinton stayed in too long? It's double-think backwards logic to suggest that this is Clinton's doing, that she's spoiling something that people want - obviously people are ambivalent, that's why we're here.

But to still end on a note of optimism: The economy has taken front seat even to the race. It's the summer doldrums of political coverage in an election year and I still see more coverage on the Democrats - yes the squabbles, but also the policy. That with the economy and a media quiet McCain, I still think that this process, despite all the hand-wringing it's brought us, won't be the end. Democrats will coalesce behind the party's candidate and the whole primary process will be past history in the short attention span political world.