AND THE WINNER IS...

...nobody.

I'm still a bit hung over from an evening of watching non-stop election coverage last night. Still hard to know what to make of it, except nobody really delivered a knockout punch.

It seems pretty certain that Romney is gone, however. He showed such promise when he saved the 2002 Olympics and ran the state of Massachusetts. Then he decided to run for president, and he turned into something of a wanker. Perhaps there's something about running for president that rots your soul.

And how about that Huckabee? That friendly guy who used to be fat just won't go away.

So almost nothing has been decided and the races on both sides (but especially the Democratic side) will go on for some time. I can't possibly pretend to know who's up or who's down anymore, or offer any insight into what the future might hold. But I can hope. Hope that, perhaps, this race will drag on for some time. Hope that things are so evenly split that Oregon's pitifully late primary might actually mean something. (And hope for the flood of political advertising that comes with it... that's where my paycheck comes from.) And hope for a political process not as depressing and ugly as what has gone before it.

Is that too much to ask for.

(Answer: yes)