According to my latest news sources, it’s an election year. But, despite the bombardment of election information I hear, I do not believe it is. So tell your friends 2008 is no longer an election year. Instead let’s think of the U.S. Presidential election as a mud-wrestling match. I find this term appropriate because the election has merely become a mud slinging competition. Who can make the other look dirtier? It’s one defamatory statement after the other thrown at whomever is in the way.

You have Senator Barack Obama in a mud-pit to his knees, wrestling Senator Hillary Clinton. Don’t think dirty. They are dressed in full business attire. Senator John McCain is sitting over to the side of the ring. The only mud you see on him is the mud slung on him from watching the fight. If you watch him long enough, every once in a while you’ll see him grab a handful of the brown stuff and sling it right back to the Democratic, brown, earth-covered mob. Is this money they are playing with or mud? It doesn’t matter; the mud to money ratio is probably the same as mud coverage. As of this March, Obama raised over 40 million dollars, Clinton over 20 million, and McCain over 12 million. I don’t think this is what Senator Clinton was talking about when she started her "go green" initiative.

As I said before, 2008 is no longer an election year. It is the year of the mud-wrestling contest. Whoever wins inherits a trophy. It’s a trophy the size of a 55,000 square-foot mansion. Oh yeah, and the responsibility for all 303,966,662 million people who call the United States their home.

Because of the feuds, there is no strength backing any of the candidates, or for that matter, either of the political parties. I’m not saying the candidates came to the table empty handed, but the strength each candidate contains is not known to the average voter. The rhetoric is covered by the mud slinging, and it leads the average voter to become ambiguous. The substance behind their elections is now a diamond in the rough. Clean it up. Let the voters vote with clarity. Talk more about your policies and less about the other candidates’ policies.

There is no strength, but there is energy; energy that is being wasted. How would Senator McCain feel about that? What I’m talking about is all of the wasted energy the candidates are spending fighting each other. I find this interesting on Senator Obama’s end, because in a recent press conference he is quoted as saying, “I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people — trying to promote mutual understanding.” If the candidates’; energies are used to build strength and “mutual understanding”; they might actually go somewhere. Instead they are running as fast as they can in place. According to an article on The Washington Post's website, Obama and Clinton had an exchange of words about each other's recent policy changes. However, it was their campaigns that did the talking.