Or maybe preseason exhibition games are a good metaphor. Here in the doldrums between the primary and the general, it feels more like the campaigns are doing warmup exercizes and test-marketing tactics to get a feel for which ones will prove most damaging in the general. A lot of what appears to be shotgun desperation is really just the process of trying out lots of different ideas now, while the stakes are a bit lower and there's time for people to forget the real stinkers.
This election I'm paying particular attention to Republican smear campaigns, having been alerted more than a year-and-a-half ago by the first Obama-is-a-Muslim-mole smear. (Please don't whine that there must be Democratic smears too; it's not my job to monitor them, that's for Republicans to do. Would you trust a non-Republican with your defense? Don't be silly!) What I'm seeing now in the way of smears, particularly from Floyd the Brown Stain of Willie Horton fame, seem half-hearted and not entirely serious. Brown's just phoning it in so far. Not surprising, since a smear that torpedoes Obama before the convention risks letting the Democrats recover by switching to Clinton. I'm confident that Brown and the other professional smearmongers are biding their time and holding back their "best" efforts until the general is in full swing. I think it's safe to say that this general election will be among the ugliest elections this country has ever seen.