Why does the Presidential campaign season last so long?

One answer, and one answer only.

To make our lives a living Hell.

 

In other words, for the first time since 1952 (Eisenhower vs. Stevenson I), you don't have an incumbent running for re-election or a sitting vice-president running for president ...

 

GOP exemplifying the worst of it, right now . . . fighting about who's "most conservative" . . .
Exhibit A of how to pander to base to win a nomination -- and lose an election.

 

I think the time has come when we need to send all the candidates to an island and then vote one of them off each week until there's only one remaining.

 

Gratuitious Jeopardy plug... this was the Final Jeopardy question the game after I lost. The woman who beat me blew spectacular chunks on it.

Figures.

 

The thing is, Breaker of Leopold and Loeb, this is Campaigning 101. You start out pandering to your base, then move to the center as the campaign progresses. It's a tactic that has been hewed to since time immemorium.

For the current incarnation of the GOP, however, they always seem to leave out the second half of that equation. And you're correct. This time out, this should cost them.

 

Just to play contrarian:

To separate the cream. To win the nomination in this country -- and the process is far from perfect, and for the price of a couple beers, I'll explain to you exactly how fucked up it is -- you need to dedicate your life to it. You have to go door to door in Iowa and New Hampshire. You have to be able to raise money consistently and spend it wisely. You have to hire good staff and deploy them around the country and delegate authority to them and trust in their ability to get it done. You have to speak to every issue under the sun and write (OK, have those staff you hired write) policy papers on all those issues plus more. You have to appear at county fairs and talk shows, Legion halls and war protests, picket lines and business meetings. You have to work 20 hour days and appear fresh and energetic from that 6 a.m. pancake breakfast to that 10 p.m. airport rally.

There are a lot of problems with the way we run campaigns, but length isn't high on the list. Shorter campaigns would only exacerbate the situation we have now, where candidates like George W. Bush and, yes, Hillary Clinton, try to get elected without ever actually saying anything.

 

I HATE politics. I always have. I ate the false enthusiasm, the back-stabbing during the run-up to the primaries and convention and then the fake group hug/photo-ops after the bloodletting is over...it all turns my stomach. So the fact that it's become a two-year ordeal really bugs me. I turn off to it as much as I can until a month or two beforehand.

 

When the broomstick-rider said, "Lobbyists are people, too", she made her business-as-usual position crystal-clear.

She has one attribute:

She's NOT Fredo.

 

And the sad part, Ben?

She's running his campaign.