Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline.

I've really gotten tired about this year's presidential election and have decided to stop paying such obsessive attention to it.

Don't get me wrong -- I still believe that this is perhaps the most important election of my lifetime, and that what is left of the American Dream is at stake. It's just that I am going to try to stop following the constant horse race aspects of it. There is just too much information, flowing too quickly, to absorb in a rational way. I'm not the first person to note that the internet, social media, and a gazillion cable and web shows have all combined to pump content out at a high rate and volume -- feeding us so much information at such a high speed that it's like trying to get a drink of water from a fire-hose.

As a practical matter, I'm not sure how this will work. Will I only read stories from print newspaper and magazines? Will I give up reading the Twitter feeds of Ana Marie Cox and Matt Taibbi and Maggie Haberman and Alex Pareene and Jim Roberts? I will try.

Speaking of elections, for a variety of reasons, I have been reading some old posts. Here's one from 2008:

This is the first election since 1992 where I was genuinely enthused about my choice -- I voted for That One -- and I am filled with hope and optimism about what will happen over the next four years if he wins. And, needless to say, I will be seriously disappointed if he loses.

I'm realistic, though. I know that (to paraphrase Hilary Clinton's memorable remarks during the primaries) if Obama wins, we won't have celestial choirs singing, telling everyone will that we should all do the right thing. And the VRWC has made it known that they plan to pick up right where they left off in January 2001, so any progress won't be made without battles on every front. But I think that we are a very different country now than we were in the late 1990s, and that voters will have less patience for smears. I think that the country will welcome legitimate policy debates over some of his plans (Joe the Plumber's original discussion with Obama before the debate, for example), but I don't think that we'll see much tolerance for things like an Obama Death List. (He said hopefully.)

In short, I am cautiously optimistic. But I don't want to jinx anything. Fingers crossed!

http://strangledcries.blogspot.com/2008/11/wishing-and-hoping-and-thinking-and.html (emphasis in bold added)

Yeah, that worked out well, right?