Montana had the last primary and so, for what it's worth, can claim to be the state that put Obama over the top. The political atmosphere was fairly surreal, what with both Hillary and Barack, not to mention Bill, campaigning heavily all over the place. Normally, national figures would be hard pressed to find the state on a map but there they were, claiming they understood local issues in Anaconda and Crow Agency.

Montana can now slip back into political obscurity for another century, which is fine with almost everybody.

There were peculiar side-effects in the House and Senate primaries, however. What with Hillary and Barrack buying up all the air time, there was almost no advertising for candidates for other offices. As a result the six Republican candidates for the Senate were pretty much all unknown to the voters. The exception was a 85 year old whacko named Bob Kelleher, who has been running for various offices for decades, sometimes as a Democrat, sometimes as a Green. This year, he threw his name in the Republican hat and won big, presumably because he had at least a tiny bit of name recognition.

He's in favor of scrapping the U.S. constitution in favor of a parlimentary system. The Republican Part has already disowned him, so the Democratic incumbent (Max Baucus) is assured of another term, not that there was ever much doubt about it.

There were three Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives nomination, with pretty much the same situation - no advertising or significant discussion of any of them. The guy that won, named John Driscoll, has been a state Public Service Commissioner so he had a teaspoon of name recognition and won handily. He accepted no contributions and did absolutely no campaigning other than filling out the election documents and paying his filing fee

He's not planning on seriously campaigning in the general election either or even criticizing the Republican incumbent (Dennis Rehberg) so there is at least one safe House seat for the Republicans.