Good grief

Do you have electionitis? I think we -- hubby and I -- most certainly do. Any given time of day, pundits are blaring in our house, dissecting the races, the candidates and each other. That gets old, but nothing's more fun than watching the election returns.

During my recent trip to Orlando -- hubby was at a conference while I was working -- we met up with some of my campaign cohorts in the hotel bar to watch the New Hampshire returns. Fairly soon, we had side bets going on who was going to beat whom. Kucinich versus Thompson; Rudy versus Ron Paul; Clinton versus Obama. Fun stuff.

In the end the big winner was the one who took the ever-growing pot of Gravel guesses. A buck bought you a guess on how many votes Gravel would get by the end of the night. If he went over, you were out.

The whole evening was proably a sad commentary on what this election has become: entertainment. Britney who? Paris? Dubyah, who? We're all too busy paying attention to the latest poll, and we won't have learned. Next week we'll be watching the polls just as closely as before they proved to be just plain wrong.

But let's hope we don't all get too involved that we don't notice Bush's new strategy in Iraq, his visit to the Middle East and what Congress is passing while everyone else is too busy being entertained. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely support and love it when people pay attention to the electoral process. Just not at the exclusion of everything else.

That said, who'll lay a buck on Thompson dropping out after South Carolina. I still think Kucinich can take him...