At the start of this week we asked whether D.C. Wire, the Post’s local politics blog, was slowly dying. Not so, fired back Metro reporter Lori Montgomery. In a post published yesterday, she explained that the frenetic pace of the mayoral race — particular the many forums that Post reporters attend — has left them tired and, we’re guessing, lacking in snark:

Today’s topic: Mayoral forums — useful exercise in democracy or tedious electoral drudgery? I think I know how your tired team of blogging newspaper reporters would vote, after giving up countless evenings to these forums.

We can only sympathize with Montgomery and her colleagues. We’ve attended a number of mayoral forums, and they tend more towards tedious electoral drudgery than useful exercise in democracy. The five leading candidates stick to their usual talking points (Vincent Orange has these down to a science), carefully side-stepping questions that may lead to juicy Post articles. The majority of the audiences are composed of campaign workers or supporters, and getting into these events often includes a dash through the campaign gauntlet — volunteers left, right and center forcing campaign materials upon you while others demand you give their candidate your vote. It isn’t much fun.

And given the number of forums this month — 10 so far, with some running back-to-back on the same day — we can only imagine how the Post’s Metro reporters might feel like they are being run ragged. After a long day trying to pull stories out of candidates that would rather the Post write glowing reviews about their rags-to-riches life histories, we can sympathize with the beat reporters not wanting to have a pesky editor demand blog submissions.

It sounds like the folks over at D.C. Wire could use a good, stiff drink. If they come out to Unbuckled next week, we’ll be sure to buy them one.