Election exhaustion (I'm talking about 2008!)

I rather obsessively listened to the news prior to the election - I was riveted while polls were parsed and prognostications were offered. And after the election, I reveled in who had won and who had lost and what it all meant. But now the commentators and talking heads endlessly speculate about the 2008 presidential election and it's starting to get on my nerves. For one thing, it's boring - it's so far from now and anything could happen. Two years before the 1992 election, Bill Clinton was barely on the radar screen. It's just too soon to take seriously any predictions about the outcome. But more to the point, filling the airwaves with this focused but endless discussion means that a lot of stories that deserve some coverage get ignored, or, at the very least, minimized. This includes Darfur, AIDS in Africa, the healthcare crisis in America, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the very significant activities of all our elected representatives, besides the half dozen that are constantly in the limelight. Of course journalists and the public (the few that pay attention) love a horse race, but the media is doing a disservice by spending so much time and energy on something that matters very little at this time when there are really many pressing issues that we should all be considering.