Life in a Swing State

Oh, how I wish I was referring to the swing found at a playground.

Unless you live outside of the US or somewhere under a rock right here at home you know that yesterday was the Presidential Debate here in Denver.  Leading up to the debate the biggest news here was a massive closure of the central part of our freeway system for five hours starting at peak rush hour and the cold front that might bring snow.  No biggie.

What the news hasn't talked much about, until today, was the other political joys we've garnered living in Denver/Colorado the last 30 days.  Perhaps it's just the fact that we're a swing state, or the hosts of the first debate, but we have been deluged with advertising.  (For any international folk out there, a swing state, according to our pals at Wiki is: a battleground state...a state in which no single candidate or party has overwhelming support.  Swing states get extra attention during elections because they are still  'undecided'.)

a map showing swing states from a few months ago, examiner.com

We've felt a little battered.  We still have a landline at our house (we live in a hilly spot and the topograpy makes cell signals unreliable.  We're not dinosaurs I promise) and the political calls have gotten so copious we simply stopped answering.  Any given afternoon we'll get between 4-8 calls.  Not so many in the morning, but it's not unheard of.  Then a few more in the evenings.  Some days we get just a couple, then another huge spurt.  I don't even bother getting up to look anymore, it's hardly ever anyone we know.  They are all hiding from their phones, too.

Tonight on the news Travis experienced political ad redemption.  The pain and agony of pushing fast forward endless times on the DVR to skip ads really has been more than normal.  Both campaigns bought more TV advertising in Colorado last month than anywhere else.  Nearly 8,000 ads.  Obama had twice as many as Romney.  I'm pretty sure that the radio buys are about the same and other media outlets aren't too shabby, either.  I sure hope our city and state get some good revenue out of all this spending.  As far as influencing my vote, I can't say that any of the ads have done anything other than annoy me.