One election that wasn't about the lesser of two evils

Via Serious Eats, this Colorado Senate race, between Bob Bacon and Matt Fries, may have been the best ever.

Clearly, I would have voted for Bacon. But frankly, I sort of wish he had lost, because then someone could have made bumper stickers and T-shirts that read "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bacon," and that would have been awesome.

this Colorado Senate race, between Bob Bacon and Matt Fries, may have been the best ever.

I saw that on Scalzi's blog: [link] and I agree with him. ("You can't defeat bacon. You can't even hope to try.")

For one thing - my parents (and probably his) were not adults during WWII.

I hadn't heard that criterion before, but I like it. Then again, my mother was not only not an adult during WWII, she was born then.

Gee, Cash, way to make me WEEP. It was a touching and interesting story and I was tearing, but man, what a wallop in the end!

Gee, Cash, way to make me WEEP. It was a touching and interesting story and I was tearing, but man, what a wallop in the end!

I *just* finished reading it and was coming here to post the same thing. Damn.

Sorry, Sophia! But it came with a cry warning!

DH is taking his direct reports to an off-site team meeting. At the local brewery. They're taking the tour.

Fred Pete, that is my own criterion based on what is generally considered to be the main boomer experiences - and one is being born after WWII when your daddy comes back from the war.

Also - being in HS and college in the 60s - early 70s.

My parents were b. during the Great Depression and were kids during WWII and were in traditional college students in the mid-to-late 50s. They were tweeners and so am I.

Gee, Cash, way to make me WEEP. It was a touching and interesting story and I was tearing, but man, what a wallop in the end!

I couldn't get in. Does buffistas have a login at the Post?

If McCain had campaigned the way Obama did, it would have been a close race.

Up until the economic downturn, it was a close race. I really think being linked to the mortgage/Wall Street crisis did him a lot more damage than picking Palin as a running mate, since she seems to have drawn nearly as many people out from under rocks and bridgesof revivals and survivalist compounds as she drove leftwards of the middle.

Up until the economic downturn, it was a close race. I really think being linked to the mortgage/Wall Street crisis did him a lot more damage than picking Palin as a running mate

A somewhat contrary view: Did Lehman Kill McCain?

That's the partisan Republican spin on the dreadful McCain campaign. Krauthammer makes the case this morning:

The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 -- caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Brothers, according to the police report) -- although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4. In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama's victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.

The data do not support this thesis. McCain was behind for almost all of the campaign, apart from a brief post-convention bump. Here's the Pollster graph for the period in question:

...

You will note that McCain's slide began September 7, a week before Krauthammer claims; and Obama's re-surge began September 9. Pollster's polls are smoothed out, but the turning point was well before Lehman, and correlates with the disastrous Couric Gibson-Palin interview.

All along, the clear line for McCain was always down, and only the convention period - when people were still under the temporary illusion that Sarah Palin was a credible, rather than a farcical, candidate - gave McCain any hope.