72 hours from now

72 hours from now and what has been almost assuredly the least spirited election in living memory will draw to a blessed close. Though, with that said, the last week has actually felt slightly more tolerable then that which came before. I think the electorate is engaging in some sort of Stockholm Syndrome-style recalibration of its political expectations. We've become so used to Abbott's vacillations and Gillard's wandering drone that the inherent comedy of it all seems to be drawing to the surface. Witness the party's respective launches: the Liberals a vapid, self-satsified coronation of premature ejaculatory proportions; Labor a regurgitative, policy heavy affair seemingly unable to tangle with passion due to the fact that significant portions of the past and present leadership cannot stand to look one another in the eye. Both of them staged oddly late in the campaign, not so much for any grand strategic reason, but because in the time before a campaign launch a party is able to jet around the country at taxpayers' expense. According to Crikey, Gillard and cohort managed to clock up thirty-nine thousand kms before the launch, Abbott (and cohort) thirty-one.

Still, a minor curiosity in a campaign filled with strangeness. Lest we forget Hey Hey. Watching the slightly surreal "he said"/"she said" bickering that is the currently unfolding debate over the debates seems to be the quite literal evocation of the depths to which our political dialogue has sunk over the last few weeks. That is, the major issue currently possessing our two potential leaders, three days out from an election, is whether and on what terms they'll step into the same room and have a discussion about the state of our economy. Reading the transcript of Tony Abbott's appearance on the 730 Report last night is, at best, embarrassing. Not necessarily just for Abbott - although given the brutality with which Kerry tends to dispose of Mr Abbott, he must be reconsidering how much he really wants to spend the next three years regularly receiving the same treatment - but for the mere thought that this, to an outside observer, would seem to be the crux of our political process. Here's a quote:



The polls still suggest anything could happen, although looking at the assembled surfeit of data procured by Galaxy, Roy Morgan, Newspoll, Nielsen, Essential, internal polling, online polls, discussions with friends, flipped coins and, of course, the odds being offered by Centrebet (currently $1.26 Labor, $3.80 Liberals), a Labor victory looks all but assured. However, I must say, with that amount of polling occurring each and every day, I can't help but feel loosely insulted that I'm yet to be asked my opinion on proceedings. The best I've had so far was an audibly nervous Labor representative for Cath Bowtell who managed to use the phrase "strong progressive voice" seven odd times in a two minute phone call. Which was actually kinda endearing. If not definitively vote-winning.

However, there is some suggestion that a particularly hostile suite of marginal seats in New South Wales and Queensland could savage Labor's majority and lead to the somewhat unpalatable position where the party with the majority of the vote ends up with the minority of the seats. A result which our electoral system does try to make reasonably difficult, but recently occurred in both 1998 and 1990. Given that for most of this site's target demographic a Tony Abbott victory would probably be seen as an event roughly on the scale of getting smallpox, the apparent injustice of such an electoral inversion would - I can only imagine - feel like getting smallpox while being told that Santa isn't real. And being set on fire.

But, you know, if you are, um, voting for Abbott, then, uh, enjoy your... smallpox? Yeah. Sounds about right. Gillard would be like a persistent rash picked up from somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa: unsightly, irritating but overall a little less life-threatening.

In the meantime: 72 hours. Less, perhaps (the Internet makes for fuzzy time stamping). And then we can be done with this awful election fever dream forever. Or at least for the next three years. Either way, I cannot wait to get a regulation news cycle back. I mean, I haven't read anything about Obama for at least three weeks. And I just wonder: what's he up to? Is he safe? Is he happy? Has he defeated those pesky Republicans? WHAT'S GOING ON, OBAMA? I CAN'T SLEEP AT NIGHT!

I think I'm getting Obama withdrawals. And we all know only one thing can fix that: unicorns.