I suffer from a curious condition. Call it punditblogomania. I'm thoroughly sick of the election, yet, I cannot help myself from spending far too much time browsing endless political blogs and web sites. I don't watch TV punditry much anymore (FOX News and Bob Novak make me break out in hives), but I find myself hideously drawn to Internet flim-flammery about the pending election, a mere week away now. I'm on tentative eggshells about how it will all come out (and not looking forward to a very hectic few days at the paper next week), have already voted myself, but the polls (he's up! he's down! Bush inches ahead in Wisconsin! Kerry owns the Jewish southcentral Ohio vote! Hawaii is tied!) are compulsive reading.
Part of it I guess is the desire to know, to figure out the answer before the election, as if that were possible. Unlike TV news, too, I can find much more rational discourse online. The essential site for political numbers geekery is the awesome Electoral Vote Predictor. Check it out and stare for hours at Alabama poll numbers. Amazing undertaking. Favorite talking (writing?) heads of mine include the nonpartisan analysis at Columbia Journalism Review, left-leaning thinker Eric Alterman, Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post, and here in Oregon, this guy Basie! gives good bloggery. There's many others, of course, but in the end, they're all saying pretty much the same thing -- we don't know what will happen, but we're more than willing to guess... Gonna be a long week...
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