It began with campaign manager David Plouffe backing slightly off the suggestion made on the campaign plane last night by David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist, that Mr. Obama might mix a few general election stops in between the primary campaigning this month.
Sołtys, who is in his fifth term after winning a "North Korean score" of 93% of the vote in the last election, stopped short of offering advice to the 74-year-old Democratic party candidate.
Finally on Tuesday, the election stopped this sick cycle with the ending that was always coming anyway.
This sort of gossip-based campaigning distracts from actual issues, of course but this election stopped being about issues a long time ago.
As news of the catastrophe spread around the world, the ongoing presidential election stopped, and the guerrilla fighters stopped their campaign "in view of the painful tragedy that has befallen our [the Colombian fighters] nation".
Wouldn't one easy fix for part of that problem be for Labour to change its rules – as Harriet Harman argued at the party's national executive in September – to ensure that leadership elections stop being "a clean sweep of men"?
