Have you seen enough political commercials? Me, too. Turn on any TV program, from football games to egg-headed election experts to silly game shows, and you will be bombarded with political commercials hammering your brain to hate this or that candidate. Wait a minute. Is my brain on hold? Is yours? Have the snarly ads really taken over our TV sets?

Sorry, the answer is yes. I checked the record, and the political tracking outfit, called Open Secret, tells me outside groups, the folks from away, no less, have spent more than $77 million to help or hammer Maine candidates. Seventy-seven million dollars will buy a lot of TV and internet advertising in a small state like Maine. Latest census figures (2020) tell us about 1.4 million folks live in the Great State of Maine.

So, if the big money dudes really wanted to buy our votes, they could send about a half million to each of us, and we would be sure to back their candidate. Right? Sure.

On Saturday morning, I stopped in Wiscasset to see how many No Kings folks braved the chilly fall winds to demonstrate on the bridge over the Sheepscot. Earlier in the year, similar demonstrations filled the span with cheering folks urging us to vote, and waved signs lampooning POTUS, but this time the bridge was about a third full. A nice turnout, but I figured the sub-50F temperatures convinced many to stay home and enjoy a second cup of warm coffee.

On the way back home, I stopped to chat with Ms. Pigette, the charming character who holds up a mailbox on the way back to Boothbay. She was bundled up against the chilly wind, but, as usual, she offered a burst of unbundled comments on politics. I told her about the huge dollar TV-internet political advertising spending budget and asked her if she would sell her vote for a half million bucks or so.

“I am insulted, you old goat. I would not sell my sacred, secret vote for half a million. But, well, double that, and we’ll see,” she said with a wry grin on her snout.

“Look, there are only a couple of weeks left until the in-person voting begins on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November (Nov. 3). Last week, I checked with the town clerks in Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor and Southport. They told me more than 600 folks have already voted. I’ll bet a lot more folks have already made up their minds and the big money gang is just wasting their donors' mega dollars. I figure Elon Musk and the rest of the new billionaires are getting bilked by alleged expert consultants looking to pocket a fat commission percentage themselves.

If you look at the polls, even the Republican ones suggest something is going on. They say the public is fed up with something. The big question is: What will voters do? Will the Democrats ride a big blue wave? Will the GOP pull it out? Will someone leak an October surprise to turn the tide? The answer is: Nobody knows.

In a few months, the political scientists will publish academic papers telling us what we already know. We are in a period of change, where the older generation, the folks who have controlled our nation since 1950 or so, is giving way to their children and grandchildren. They will all tell us that traditional political power centers, like unions and ethnic, religious and cultural groups, no longer have the clout they had 25 years ago. Thank you, social media.

Washington politicians are no longer graded on the pork they deliver back home. Senior legislators no longer rule their caucuses like tiny kingdoms. Opinions from newspapers, magazines and television networks still matter, but their influence shrinks as their customers migrate to Facebook and the rest. And customers who visit Facebook and other websites find they are flooded with phony A.I. generated garbage. Wonder why some are confused?

Then we have a president like no other in history, a guy who smiles then says and does bizarre stuff, a guy who took us into a war with a pip-squeak nation and found out they turned the tables on him, triggering an economic mess back home.

"So, my old goat, you wonder why the polls say the nation is a bit honked off?” she asked.

“Now, get out of here. I have to take this call. It is the Wall Street Journal. They keep pestering me to find out who I think will be the next Maine senator. And I don’t know.

"I think I will tell them to wait and refer them to one of the great American cultural icons, Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra, who said: 'It ain’t over 'til it’s over.'"