It's almost over!

That's right, tomorrow is election day! The long, winding road is finally over with, and I can stop being bombarded with radio ads every break during the day, and stop having to run from various TV commercials. I can't tell you how bitter I am that, due to my DVR's automatically starting to record a minute before the scheduled time of a program, my recording of the Phillies' glorious World Series clinching Game 5.5 victory will forever have a minute of Obama's message to the nation on the beginning of it. (And I feel the same way had it been McCain, no politics with my happy World Series moment, thank you)

Other than the radio ads, I'd been able to keep myself relatively insulated from the maddness, until last week, when the one other place I couldn't really defend began to be bombarded - the mailbox. It's been insane. Multiple print ads everyday, on the national races, local races, etc. Last Thursday, I got 4 different ads for the same state house race on the same day. There was one from each of the candidates, and then two from other groups supporting one of the candidates. Craziness. Not to mention I've gotten 3 variations of the exact same Obama piece stuck into my door in the last month, and then there's the near daily flyers from Republican entities on various levels telling me about the evil Democrats who want to destroy me, or something like that...

I partially blame myself for this, because I believe that, at least on some level, this is a result of my change in party affilitation. When I was a registered Republican, I typically seemed to only get the standard Republican get out the vote materials, and the Democrats left me alone. Now, as a Libertarian, the Democrats apparently think I'm fair game (silly them), and the Republicans are going full out on me (ironically, doing a great job of affirming my decision to end my association with them in the process). Enough already.

Oh, and a quick note to the Republicans - that whole "fear the other guy" tactic only works when you can sell the status quo as a good thing. In case you haven't noticed, that's a REALLY hard sell right now. I personally think Sen. McCain would make a better president than Sen. Obama (though at this point I don't plan on voting for either), but he's been a terrible candidate for president, and in general, I've found the Republican efforts to be pathetic. Whether you agree with Sen. Obama or not, he at least has a vision and he's selling it. McCain and the Republicans as a whole have largely been selling fear of the Democrats, rather than anything positive about themselves. Not that they don't have a valid point or two in those arguments, but I don't like that tactic in general, and it's totally ineffective in the current environment.