The debates are passed. A thousand stump speeches have been ground. The candidates have spiced the rhetorical pot with everything from Benghazi to Big Bird.
And yet, there is a word I have not heard, a verbal touchstone that has reigned over every political bloviation since the dawn of our republic, a word that, until this season, no pol could omit from a single speech, lest the duck fail to descend and deliver a hundred dollars.
That word is "prosperity."
I can understand the Republican candidate's reticence to mention the P word. Voters might be reminded just how much of it he has enjoyed, largely by depriving others of the chance to do so.
The president's omission is a bit more of a mystery. Is the prospect of real, growing prosperity now so far-fetched that to dangle it before voters as to be an invitation to mockery? Is "prosperity" quaint?
I don't know the thinking of media advisers, nor do I have access to the mountains of focus group dial results they've accumulated. I can't say whether "prosperity" was killed this season or merely acknowledged to be dead and given a decent burial.
But its absence from the stump is telling. I just don't know what it's saying.