"The country wants a summer vacation," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic analyst not working for either campaign. "We're now at the moment where the country would be perfectly happy to have these two nominees go away and choose their vice presidents."
Enough already.
The primary race that just wouldn't end also will be remembered for starting early: People in Iowa voted on Jan. 3, when the confetti from New Year's Eve had barely been swept up.
Hillary Rodham Clinton once famously predicted that the finish line would be reached a month later - at "midnight West Coast time on Feb. 5." In her favor, she figured.
That "Super Tuesday," as it turned out, wasn't even the midpoint.
Now it's super-soaker season. Beach weather. Backyard barbecues ahead of the dog days.
Even at this late stage, the exact finish line is a bit iffy.
Bean counters have been saying that it takes 2,026 delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination. As of Friday, Obama had 1,984, Clinton 1,782.
This weekend, though, the Democratic Party's rules committee will decide whether to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan, which lost their spots for moving their primaries up to January in violation of party rules. Adding delegates from Florida and Michigan could increase the magic number.
Even so, there's no suspense about how all of this will end: It just means Obama may have to pull a few extra "superdelegates" out of his back pocket. Those commitments, already coming in for him at a steady rate, are expected to cascade his way once the primary voting ends on Tuesday.
In the face of it all, Clinton refuses to say die.
On Friday, she cast the end of the primaries as a time that party officials and other superdelegates could start breaking her way.
"I think that after the final primaries, people are going to start making up their minds," she said in Montana, which votes Tuesday along with South Dakota. "I think that is the natural progression that one would expect."
For more than a year now, Obama and Clinton have been brawling away, scrapping for every delegate and dollar.
Along the way, the duo participated in 21 Democratic debates - roughly 375,000 spoken words - blew through more than $404 million, and put the kibosh on six Democratic rivals.
So long, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.
Other candidates never even made it to the starting gate. Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack dropped out in February - of 2007.
Overall, there have been 53 contests for the Democrats ahead of the final three: Obama won 28 states plus the Virgin Islands, Democrats abroad, Guam and the District of Columbia. Clinton won 20 states and American Samoa.
"This has been a long primary season," Obama noted last month.
"There are babies who are now walking and talking who were born since I announced for president."
The Democratic race has dominated the political landscape so long that it's easy to forget the Republicans had a hard-fought primary contest, too.
So long, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, Tommy Thompson and James Gilmore.
Sometimes it felt like a long haul to them, too, although McCain had the GOP nomination in the bag by early March.
"Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night at home and I don't know where I am," Huckabee said one night as his plane was "somewhere between Chicago and Wisconsin."
And to think that Giuliani raised nearly $60 million and went home early.
Romney, for his part, stuck around long enough to sink $46 million of his own money into his losing cause.
Add up the money raised by all the presidential candidates, and the number approaches $1 billion.
That's almost enough money to finance Red Cross relief operations worldwide this year.
A huge chunk went instead to political ads.
Clinton is running one in Montana this weekend that promises voters: "I intend to be a president who stands up for all of you."
In what may be the perfect metaphor for her campaign, though, her departure time for a campaign stop Friday in Puerto Rico was temporarily in doubt.
A sinkhole had opened in the runway.
--- Associated Press writers Ann Sanner and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.
