CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Well, here I am, just over one week into my campaign for the 2060 Democratic Presidential nomination and I can safely say that my candidacy has already hit a couple of minor snags. The first is money, which is usually a problem for almost all candidates this early in the election cycle, and the other is the willful silence of the mainstream media on my candidacy, a problem reserved for conservative candidates no matter what their party. The faithful reader of The Passing Parade will no doubt remember that I began this campaign with just $15.63 left over from my previous paycheck. Since then I have managed to add $5.75 to my political war chest. These funds are not, however, immediately available to me; I will have to bring the bottles across the street to the local Grand Union and redeem them first; but I estimate that, if you factor in the inexorable rise of inflation, the $21.38 now will be more than enough to buy air time in New Hampshire and Iowa. In fact, if my calculations are correct, my $21.38 in 2007 dollars should be worth something approximately $117,934,726.41 in 2060. Assuming that I will spend at least 25% of that on prescriptions and other medical costs; keeping a 102 year old candidate on the campaign trail is much costlier than keeping some whippersnapper half that age is; I believe that I should have more than enough to swamp my opponents in the primaries and still have enough left over to play online poker morning, noon, and night.

That is, of course, assuming my opponents do not stoop to low and devious means to raise money. As I’ve previously mentioned, I do not want to take the low road in this campaign, but it is becoming clear that at least one of the other contenders for the nomination has recently taken substantial sums of money from the tooth fairy for what I, for one, can only see as a somewhat questionable quid pro quo. Let me be among the first to say that while I would be more than happy to accept the moral and financial support of the gay rights movement and the dental industry, I will not allow them to dictate my agenda nor will I stand idly by when some misguided members of those two groups attempt to suborn a candidate for the highest office in the land. That the tooth fairy involved seems to have gotten the money for this pre-emptive bit of peculation from two, and possibly four, members of the AARP only leads me to conclude that my opponent is now so indebted to the special interests that the American people cannot take his (or her) candidacy seriously. These, of course, are the same American people who in 2007 obsessed daily about the comings and goings of one Britney Spears, at that time a well-known bit of intellectual fluff known to promote tooth decay and senile dementia in laboratory rats. I am sure that in 2060 someone similar will have the same equally noxious effect on broad swathes of the populace, so perhaps there is still hope for my opponent.

As for the mainstream media, I must say that their lack of interest in my candidacy is truly astonishing. As far as I can tell, not one major news outlet covered the announcement of my candidacy and not one political blog has offered an opinion about my running for the nomination one way or the other. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal apparently don’t care about my positions on the issues, Rolling Stone doesn’t want to know my opinions on the hot new bands out there (word up, that Bach kid, he’s going places, dude), Annie Leibovitz hasn’t taken my picture for the cover of Vanity Fair and apparently won’t be taking my picture for the cover of Vanity Fair any time soon, GQ hasn’t mentioned that chances of winning the nomination would improve greatly if I dressed for success and got rid of my usual wardrobe of sweatshirts, ratty sneakers, and dirty navy blue Dockers (at least I think they’re navy blue; it’s hard to tell nowadays), and absolutely nobody on Hef’s staff has called trying to line me up for an in-depth Playboy interview. The Playboy thing really cuts me to the quick, too, given that my site meter tell me that The Passing Parade is the place to be for anyone who thinks Miss November 1984, Roberta Vasquez, was the hottest Chicana babe since La Malinche.

Since I am now that rarest of creatures, a conservative Democrat, I’d thought that I could at least get a rise out of the folks who read the Daily Kos, that these people would demand that I, like Joe Lieberman, be run out of the Democratic Party on the electrified third rail, preferably after a good tarring and feathering. I am, after all, on record as being a big supporter of President Bush, I think that the ideal way to end the war in Iraq, or wherever it is we will be fighting a war in 2060, is to win the war, I am pro-life, anti-gun control (for the most part; I do support weapons testing—maybe it’s just me, but I think you should be able to prove you know what you’re doing with a gun before you can buy one; accidentally shooting yourself in the ass because you don’t know the muzzle from the butt when there’s an intruder in the house is not the ideal way to deter criminals and makes you look foolish to boot), and for smaller government in general. These are my positions, and yet not one Daily Kos reader, or anyone else from the leftosphere, for that matter, has left so much as an intemperate or even vaguely impolite remark in the comments section. Not one of those guys has taken the trouble to call me a no-good Nazi KKK racist fascist homophobic bastard who ought to die choking on my own puke. I don’t know why not, frankly; they’ve done that and more for candidates who are a lot more moderate than I usually am.