Hey, politics junkies! Are you going through campaign withdrawal? Do you find yourself, in the quiet moments of the day, longing for Contessa Brewer to interrupt her news-reading with a “Breaking Campaign Trail Alert”? Do you find your index finger, without your brain telling it do so, clicking on your RealClearPolitics bookmark, its reflex rendered pointless when you remember that the site’s “Latest Polls” section was replaced with unchanging “National Results” breakdowns long ago? Do you find yourself thinking that maybe that whole “lipstick on a big” controversy wasn’t so much a symptom of our capacity for inane distractions as a spirited debate that harkens to a better, simpler, more exciting time in our political past?
If so–and, oh, do we feel your pain–then take your sorry self over to the Web site of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which is covering the ongoing Coleman/Franken electoral drama…in multimedia! With interactive electoral maps! And recount videos! And everything!
Aaaahhhhh….like Nicoderm for election withdrawal. Minnesota’s Senate recount will go on indefinitely–until each of the state’s counties has counted its ballots by hand–but here’s hoping that, by the time it’s over, we’ll have fully overcome our withdrawal symptoms. Or found another vestige of campaign drama to feed the addiction.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.