Maine and 17 other states held their 2024 presidential primary election on Tuesday.

Did anybody win?

Did anybody bother to vote?

Did the results surprise you?

Do you even care?

Last weekend, I drove around the peninsula looking for some indication that we were excited about the political contest. I must have spent half my meager monthly gasoline budget driving from Newagen to Damariscotta on main and back roads, looking for yard signs. I found one – and it was homemade.

I even went to the dump. That is where Maine’s true political believers hang out on the weekend before an election to help old ladies/men pitch their trash into the maw as they smile and suggest it would be nice if the oldsters would please vote for their preferred candidate.

If I missed some clues – my bad. I am sure my usual critics will point to this miscue as a sure sign I am a communist/socialist dupe spouting woke (whatever that means) propaganda fed to me by a cabal of evil masters who discovered concrete evidence (of what?) inside a used laptop rescued from oblivion by none other than Rudolph William Louis Giuliani.

Can you believe it?

Do you think maybe, just maybe, we are getting a bit tired of the flashing banners scrolling across our TV sets as we seek solace from the dreaded depressing days of a strange winter?

Is the hyped hoopla finally getting tiresome/boring?

Look at it. No, really, look at it for a moment.

Pick a station, any station that is not plugging old movies, Star Trek reruns so old the bartender on the Enterprise asks Capt. J.T. Kirk for his ID because he looks underaged, or, gulp, home renovation/cooking shows.

If you follow my train of thought, you will find MSNBC/Fox/CNN/Newsmax et al. flogging the latest details of investigations into (here you may insert your favorite villain).

Is it worth a flashing breaking news banner trumpeting that some no-name lawyer for some famous client filed a routine two-page pleading?

Last week, three (count ’em) three networks carried a live feed from an Atlanta courtroom where lawyers were trying to convince a judge to disqualify a prosecutor because she dared to fall in love.

Heavens to Murgatroyd, Grasshopper, they are adults. In every office I have ever worked in, there were adults who became romantically involved. And the world did not end. And, by the way, they continued to perform their assigned tasks to the satisfaction of their superiors. Nobody cared except for the gaggle of gadabouts gathered by the water cooler.

Now, if you are a real fan of breaking romance news involving consenting adults, go on the internet and follow the travels and triumphs of Taylor Swift as she flits around the world packing mega stadiums with adoring fans. Meanwhile, her lover Travis Kelce, the star tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, flies thousands of miles to the other side of the world just to stand in the wings and watch her prance and dance. There is a romance worth a bit of hoopla. If you don’t think so, count the number of images found on the covers of magazines at the supermarket. The last time I bothered to check, there were five – or maybe six.

Now that is real breaking news.

As for the Republican and Democratic presidential nomination contests, all the news outlets tout polling numbers proclaiming the winner.

Every well-suited and well-coiffured pundit, every political expert, and every book flogger sitting around a shiny TV set table points to this subset of the electorate or that, which proclaims that – without a doubt – the winner will be (here insert their favorite).

Few of them are old enough or read history at all, to remember how the pundits, prophets, pollsters and prognosticators were way off target in 1948. Thanks to Paul F. Boller Jr., who used that lovely grouping of “P” words in his book, “Presidential Campaigns.”

Boller laid out chapter and verse of how the press guaranteed that President Harry S Truman, the Democrat, would be swamped by Republican Thomas Dewey.

Even the ever-loving New York Times told readers Dewey’s election was a foregone conclusion.

Wrong-o-mundo. The pundits forgot to ask the voters who gave Truman two million votes more than Dewey.

After the dust settled, at least the Washington Post had the grace to put a sign on their building saying: “Mr. President, we are ready to eat crow whenever you are ready to serve it.”

I wonder if ? Naah. No way they will admit they were wrong.

This year, we should all relax and take note of the words of Yogi Berra, the esteemed NY Yankee catcher/pundit: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

That is good advice, even if it came from a famed New York Yankee.