Presidential candidates?

Let's see now... we have 8 Democratic party candidates declared and capable of debating each other on the issues in April of 2007. The election is when? Oh right, not until November of 2008. What are they thinking?! Seriously, with each Presidential election cycle, the start date has been getting pushed back further and further. What's going on now doesn't make sense. NOBODY will remember what was said in last night's debate come election time. Even the media will have forgotten about it. Now, I'm not picking on the Democratic party. How many Republicans have declared their candidacies? Having any candidates before the summer, in my opinion, is too many candidates, so both parties are guilty of perpetuating a spending spree. Who pays for this anyway. Sure, they are repudiating public funds, but the money still comes from somewhere. Whether it's through private, business, lobbyist donations, or whoever donates, you and I are still paying for these campaigns, whether directly or indirectly. I am tired of how early all this is happening.

Now, one can argue that the extreme prematurity of this election cycle is due to the fact that there is no incumbent and due to the rampant Bush bashing that is occurring. Both of these could be contributing factors to it, but that still does not account for the every widening campaign season that has occurred with each successive Presidential campaign that I've witnessed. I just don't understand why anyone thinks this is a good thing. What I suspect will happen is that a large part of the electorate who actually try to keep up with the candidates and who actually vote will suffer from information overload by the time each party has chosen it's candidate and therefore will either not really care very much by the time it all comes to fruition, which can only hurt the candidates, the country and ourselves come election day, or they might just not vote at all, which would be even more tragic. A majority of Americans don't vote on a regular basis as it is and a prolonged and certainly dragged out campaign season certainly isn't going to change that, but it might very well have the effect of making even more people choose not to vote. I suggest we the people choose to let our legislators know that this is unacceptable and that the campaign season should be limited to a year, or perhaps 18 months, but certainly not as early as 2 years, which based on when some of these candidates announced their candidacy (December), it has become that long. At the point of last night's debate, we are still over 19 months from election day. By compressing the election cycle, you achieve two things. You SPEND LESS MONEY and you might actually keep people interested long enough to make it to election day.