As of a few minutes ago I am completely caught up on watching all of the presidential debates of this election season so far. The first debate was on April 26th. The most recent was on September 27th. In that time there have been 13 Democratic debates and 7 Republican debates. And I have watched them all. (Even the one in Spanish where I couldn’t understand very much, but I still watched the whole thing!)

6 more Democratic debates and 8 more Republican debates to go. (Assuming the current schedule holds.) Whew. That is a bunch.

I must say, they do get a bit repetitive. But there are usually a couple good moments in each one.

At the moment, if I had to pick a Democrat I think it would be Joe Biden. If I had to pick a Republican it would be Ron Paul. Of the whole field Ron Paul is still my #1 choice. I just mailed in my voter registration a couple of days ago. In Washington you don’t need to declare a party, but if nothing changes between now and then I’ll vote in the Republican primary so I can vote for Ron Paul. It will be my first time ever voting in a Primary. (Generally I’ve considered that I am not a Republican or Democrat and therefore it is none of my business who the parties nominate, and that my decision comes in the general election, but I’ll make an exception for Mr. Paul.)

Of course, by the time we get to the Washington Primary (February 19th) the nominations in both parties may well both be wrapped up. 32 states will have already had their primaries or caucuses, including most of the big ones. But it isn’t like Ron is going to win anyway. (Although he has been showing an upward trend in polls in the early states and may even manage to squeak out a double digit showing in some of the primaries before all is said and done… we shall see.)

I’m still hoping though that the strategy of front loading all the primaries to get an early winner backfires if there are several strong contenders who manage to make it through all the early states, bringing us out of super-duper Tuesday (February 5th) without a clear winner in one or both parties. That would be awesome fun.

I really want to see a candidate actually decided by the conventions sometime. That hasn’t happened since 1976 (when I was five years old), but I think it really is time for it to happen again.

If we get a 3rd or 4th party candidate who is semi-competitive on top of that it would just make my 2008. We shall see. :-)

Oh well. Next debate is Wednesday at 01:00 UTC on MSNBC. Republicans this time. Time to check that the Tivo has it scheduled.