by 99 Seats
I haven't written much about politics here lately. That's partly due to the personal stuff going on in my life. But it's also partly due to what Nate Silver notes here: in terms of the presidential election, nothing much is changing. It remains a close race, with some structural advantages given to President Obama and some structural disadvantages clinging to Mitt Romney. Oh, there are dust-ups and whatnot, but when the dust settles, nothing has changed.
Obviously the fall presidential election is massively important and, maybe even more obviously, presidential politics are not the only significant politics happening. But they take up a lot of oxygen and every single twist and turn is reported breathlessly. So now we get a half a news cycle about the NAACP booing Romney, followed by half a news cycle of when did Romney leave Bain, when it will probably be time for more shenanigans about Eric Holder and the completely fabricated "Fast and Furious" mess or some other foreign policy "gaffe." It all feels a bit like wheel-spinning to me.
We're waiting, waiting for the actual campaign, for the debates and, in a way, for the day itself. There don't seem to be a lot of convincable voters out there, so the question that looms seems to be who will get their voters out. And, more disturbingly, how many of them will actually be allowed to vote. It's also intriguing/disturbing how little policy seems to actually matter in an election everyone acknowledges as important. Maybe it will in the fall. Maybe not. It just feels like a long way to wait.
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