With little more than two weeks to go, Virginia’s gubernatorial race is the talk of the nation. Actually, it’s really not since no one thinks Creigh Deeds can win, but here are some good reasons to pay it no mind anyway:

• The candidates are virtually identical when it comes to issues they can actually affect. Deeds likes jobs. So does Bob McDonnell! Deeds wants greener energy, but not at the expense of possibly drilling offshore. McDonnell wants greener energy, but not at the expense of oil and natural gas. They do differ on how they’ll fund their transportation initiatives: Deeds will consider new taxes. McDonnell wants to sell off the state’s liquor stores (good idea) and…get more money by considering drilling offshore. But anyway, it doesn’t matter because Deeds is toast.
• This is Virginia, and they are both assholes. When it comes to social issues, McDonnell is slightly more of an asshole. Both voted for parental notification. Both voted against recognizing same-sex marriage. Both oppose reasonable controls on firearms, like banning them from school campuses. They are both responsible for the dipshit “IN GOD WE TRUST” sign my kid’s school has to display in its foyer. But I wouldn’t read too much into any of this—-abortion has been legal for decades. Gay people continue to exist in Virginia. It’s no problem to bring guns anywhere! For all the noise on these issues, very little has changed or will change, no matter what the governor thinks.
• There is no incentive for anyone to do a good job as Virginia governor. Due to the commonwealth’s moronic one-term limit, its governor spends most of his term auditioning for a better job. You spend three years slowly getting one initiative through the part-time general assembly, where everyone is conservative in uninterestingly different ways, and there’s your legacy and then it’s off to be senator or head of the DNC or wildly unpopular mayor of Richmond. In some parts of the United States, governors can shape the future of their state. Not here.
• If Republicans win, it’ll be mean the GOP is coming back. No, it’ll mean Creigh Deeds couldn’t make an essentially conservative state go for the slightly less conservative candidate. Yawn.

In other news, some young people don’t visit Twitter.

BIKE COMMUTING CORNER: It is getting colder, and wetter. You need something under your helmet. Soon if you have hair, now if, like me, you are bald. Until it gets really cold I wear a beanie under my foam hat (later I go to a balaclava). They make yucky mornings like this one bearable. Don’t stop riding because the weather’s turned!