katlaughing, I just reread my post which only intially was in response to yours. You weren't the cynic I was referring to, the media whores and political pundits driving the madness machine were the ones I was referring to. Apologies if I made it sound as if that part of my criticism was directed toward you. That was not my intention, and I can see how it reads that way now.

I only meant to disagree with you that the election was more important than the waiting until after the funerals to resume the campaigns, and to disagree that the Minnesota race should be seen as more important in national terms (ie which party will control the Senate), than local terms. I don't believe that partisan national agendas trump the local agendas, even in what pundits claim will be a close election and which party will control the House and Senate. We have candidates for the senate race from I don't know how many political parties here in Minnesota, but we have 3 very viable political parties in this state, and a growing 4th party (the Greens), all of whom are running candidates for the senate.   In the governor race, the third party candidate is in a statistical dead heat with Democrat and Republican candidates. So our party dynamic in Minnesota is much different than anything on the national level. The Green Party and Independence Party senate candidates are very much a party of the Wellstone/Coleman race, because the polls showed the two candidates in a statistical tie. The national "balance of power" arguments are about which party will win the two party politics game. It is much more complicated here, because of third party candidates figuring so prominently as spoilers and very real contenders for public office. We have a third party government, and enough third party elected officials at lower levels of local government, where nobody counts them out and automatically dismisses them anymore. Not since The Body entered our politics, and Nader/La Duke not only took over 5% of the vote in the last national election, but got Green Party candidates elected to various offices on their coattails as well.

IMO, the main reason why people aren't concerned with who controls Congress is that they only see Congress as one monolithic group, not as two ideologically different parties. I mean, the entire Congress keeps voting for the Bush agenda, so really, there isn't much to distinguish the two parties right now. People pretty much see all national level electoral politicians as the spineless reptiles they truly are. Or as I think it was Barbara Boxer said in her remarks about Wellstone yesterday, most of the Congress is too afraid to come down on the losing side of a vote to act out of conscience with conviction.