Today is Saturday, March 28, 2009. Today, I saw big signs for candidates in a major upcoming election.
Fortunately, it’s an election that will at least take place this year. There’s no excuse for campainging right now for the 2010 elections – or the 2012 elections, though that hasn’t apparently stopped some people (see “Straw Poll comma CPAC 2009”).
But I live in Virginia, and in Virginia, state elections are held in odd-numbered years. So, there’s an election for governor (where His Excellency Governor Kaine’s prohibited from running for re-election because this ass-backwards state not only calls the governor “His (or hypothetically Her) Excellency”, but prohibits reelection), and for the state House of Delegates. And while a bunch of city offices are elected in even numbered years – so last year we voted for mayor and part of the city council – the County and City Sheriffs (Yes, City Sheriffs, because in Virginia a City is the same as a County in any other state. We also have Counties here. That’s why Richmond County contains no cities and is 50 miles away from City of Richmond which is not in any county. Did I mention “ass-backwards” political structure?) and the Commonwealth’s Attorneys (DAs elsewhere).
As a result, people have begun campaigning for Governor already. I mean, the election’s only in November, so it’s only 219 days away. Of course, there’s primaries, but the big signs I saw were all for Bob McDonnell, who is… running unopposed in the Republican Party primary. I think he’d have been ok waiting a little while.
On the other hand, there’s 3 guys running in the Democratic Party’s primary (Brian Moran,Creigh Deeds, and Terry McAuliffe) and and since that’s going to be held on June 9th, the three of them really need to get their signs up – they only have 72 more days to campaign in!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously, the “campaign season” takes too long and becomes farcical. If they’d wait at least until after Tax Day to start, I think there’d be a lot less mudslinging and asinine horse-race sort of “news” coverage. Maybe it wouldn’t actually improve the quality of campaigning from the crap we get right now, but it would at least cut down on the quantity of the crap.
"That you may ruminate" 