Ray Ramano looks rough.

My understanding of why the Delaware Senate debate was broadcast to the whole nation is that at some point, someone, somewhere decided that the division in the state of Delaware was a microcosm of the state of the nation at large. This race then became symbolic of the entire 2010 election. It helps, of course, that UD has a professor of communications who was once a bigwig at CNN. He used his contacts to turn the spotlight on Delaware in general and on this debate in particular.

Returning to the symbolism of the race, if there is any truth at all to that assertion, it gives me great consternation. Coons is the guy the Democrats were willing to let Mike Castle (the intended Republican nominee) destroy this election season, rather than letting a candidate with a serious political future lose. O’Donnell is the Republican analog, the candidate they were willing to sacrifice to Joe Biden in 2008. What we have, as was made apparent in the debate last night, is like the Presidential election in 2004 – the battle of two uninspiring, uninspired, terrible candidates.

The funny thing is, I kind of think that this is the least ridiculous thing about Christine O’Donnell. I think you’re totally right about this documentary not being all that shocking, and it’s probably not germane to this race. An appearance on a 90′s MTV documentary hardly defines a campaign. When I think of Lou Barlow, I don’t think of him as a pro-masturbation campaigner based on his appearance in the same documentary.

In reality though, Christine O’Donnell is campaigning as a fiscal conservative after bankrupting herself when campaigning against Joe Biden in 2008 (a race she lost 70%-30%). She then lied about the margin of her defeat, claiming she won two of Delaware’s three counties. She lost all three. She also sued her former employer for sex discrimination and claimed that they forced her to quit a Master’s program at Princeton University. In reality, she hadn’t even applied to Princeton and in fact didn’t have her Bachelor’s yet because she never paid her tuition. Her undergraduate institution had to sue her to get the money. Recently, she’s taken to claiming that in 2008 her house was broken into by operatives allied with Mike Castle (her opponent in this race, who was not running against her in 2008), and those operatives continue to hide in the bushes outside her home. She did not, however, report said break-in to the police like a sane person would.

The more you know.

Can we talk about how Mac McCaughan deserves to sit on a golden chaise lounge always?