Garbage in....

Anybody who thought the election was over in September was an idiot. Governor Romney's performance in his debates with New Gingrich and Rick Santorum, as well as President Obama's weakness against Hillary Clinton four years ago, should have given everyone pause. Rand Paul and Chris Christy were going around int he week before the first presidential debate trumpeting how their guy was going to wipe the floor with the president, and that is exactly what happened.

It was also pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention that the Vice Presidential debate was going to be entertaining. This one went true to form. The administration's resident pit bull, Joe Biden, went out and did his best to chew the yippy little terrier of the GOP, Paul Ryan, to shreds, as though it was Michael Vick and not Barack Obama who had sicked him on the little guy. Ryan fought back, but he was no match for the grinning, the eye rolling, and the tenacity of Biden. This one played more true to form, with the Republicans insisting their guy had won (because he had more decorum) and Democrats insisting their guy had won (because he had drawn more blood).

Not that any of it mattered. Nobody votes for Vice President. And the polls are where they should be at this point in the race. As tracked by RealClearPolitics.com, the race is a dead heat, with all polls basically within the margin of error. If it stays this close the election will be a fight between the Democrats get-out-the-vote apparatus and the Republican's vote suppression efforts, and the whole thing will end up in court.

But all of that aside, the most interesting thing I saw this week was the Melissa Harris Perry show on Sunday, where she did a long segment and led a panel discussion on relative truth--the current political reality in which nobody can even agree on what a fact is, let alone what is true. Each side has not only their own policies and paradigms, but their own sets of facts, and if you call those facts into question you are part of the conspiracy of lies being spread by the other side. It is a valid question to ask, given this situation, can democracy even function at all?