ELECTIONEERING NEWS: I am sure that many of you will be happy to know that my run for the 2060 Democratic Presidential nomination is finally back on track and even, dare I say it at such an early point in my candidacy, acquiring some momentum. The money troubles that plagued the campaign in the beginning have abated somewhat; the money is not exactly pouring in, but the trickle is now a stream of sorts and we have picked up some powerful support. My commitment to raising the refund on all bottles and cans to 75 cents from one end of this our Great Republic to the other has garnered a good sized chunk of the homeless and mentally ill vote, and the good thing about having them on your side is that they are always available, except when they have to line up for their meds at the outpatient clinic, and that five people with multiple personalities can bring a candidate anywhere up to thirty to forty extra votes on Election Day, and a one man voting bloc is nothing to sneeze at, I can tell you.
My opponents still refuse to debate me, that much has not changed, but I am resisting the urge to go negative yet. There seems little point in my pointing out that my honorable opponents routinely behave in an un-Presidential manner when their mothers, of all people, will do that for me, and in public, no less. I don’t believe that I have ever seen a crop of candidates in any election cycle as psychologically immature and unprepared for high office as this one is. But as I said, now is not the time to go negative, I think. If you start with this sort of thing too early in the election cycle, I’ve found, you tend to turn off the voters, who will always associate you with negativity. This is not a good thing for anyone trying to gain elective office.
I have to say, though, that the thought of going negative now is pretty damn tempting, I can tell you. It’s not just the jejune nature of my fellow candidates, it’s that here we are facing the second half of the 21st century and for reasons I am not sure I fathom the Democratic Party was and is the party of nostalgia. It’s as if the last bright idea any Democrat ever had was the New Deal, and let’s face it, even that wasn’t everything Democrats crack it up to be. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not run in 1932 and 1936 on 54—40 or fight or on Tippecanoe and Tyler too, and yet all anyone ever seems to hear from us Democrats is the same old New Deal programs repackaged for a new generation. We keep appealing to the same old class warfare nostrums without thinking that the same old class of people we aim those nostrums at have picked up and moved on. But we don’t want to hear that, because that would mean having to change the game and we like the game as it is, even if it is way out of date.
Still, there may be hope for these Democratic stalwarts. A new underclass may emerge, although just where we’d find this new set of potential voters is a little hard to figure out. We could convince California and its scads of underprivileged to rejoin the Union, even if more than one cynic has pointed out that back in the day, Baja California didn’t start in Oakland, or we could ask the Mexicans if they would rent Texas back to the United States for a little while. That doesn’t seem very likely to me, though. The reemergence of Mexico as a world power was certainly one of the more surprising developments of the past century and I saw in the New York Times the other day that Russia demanded that Mexico stop its ongoing aggression at the latest meeting of the Security Council. The Mexicans denied that they were committing any aggressive acts against Russia—they always deny their hostile intent, no matter what the circumstances—but this time the Russians had proof: a live satellite feed showing shadowy figures in blue jeans and baseball caps crossing the Bering Sea bridge on foot in the middle of the night. Then the Russians showed many of these same people standing outside a 7—11 in the Siberian city of Yakutsk, waiting for los rusos to come and give them a day job working construction or digging snow in the hot July sun. The tenor of the meeting was definitely hostile, with the Russians claiming that their country was not going to meet the same fate as the Disunited States and the Dominion of Nuestra Senora la Virgen de Guadalupe, which I always think sounds so much better than Canada anyway, even if it's hard to get all of that on a bottle of ginger ale, and that the Russian armed forces would use force if need be to halt this ongoing attack on the sacred soil of the Rodina. The Mexican ambassador, clearly outraged by these charges, told the Russian ambassador to go chinga a tu madre, cabron and that if the Russians didn’t stop whining like mi vieja and shut the hell up, Mexico would have no choice but to ram the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo up their culos sideways. Clearly, the Mexicans are not in any mood to rent Texas back to the somewhat United States, not when there are fresher fish to fry.
That’s what happens when you wind up on the D-list of nations; no one on the A-list wants to take your phone calls and you wind up talking to some punk kid right out of diplomat school who wants to impress his boss by making you feel like the poor relation asking for a handout. Once upon a time in this country, Mexicans came across the river to work for Americans. In 2060, some Mexicans still come across the river to work, but that traffic is very well—regulated nowadays; it is much harder, though, to stop the traffic in Americans crossing the Mississippi to find work in Mexico. That’s one of the major social and economic problems of our times and none of my opponents want to address the issue, not when they can promise the voters that they won’t have to pay for anything ever again. I’m still not sure how they intend to pay for that; we’ve already sold off the Dakotas, and most of Illinois, as well, and I don’t want to frighten anyone here, but if you live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, you might want to learn Mandarin or Arabic in fairly short order. Just giving you guys the heads up. Have a nice day.
My opponents still refuse to debate me, that much has not changed, but I am resisting the urge to go negative yet. There seems little point in my pointing out that my honorable opponents routinely behave in an un-Presidential manner when their mothers, of all people, will do that for me, and in public, no less. I don’t believe that I have ever seen a crop of candidates in any election cycle as psychologically immature and unprepared for high office as this one is. But as I said, now is not the time to go negative, I think. If you start with this sort of thing too early in the election cycle, I’ve found, you tend to turn off the voters, who will always associate you with negativity. This is not a good thing for anyone trying to gain elective office.
I have to say, though, that the thought of going negative now is pretty damn tempting, I can tell you. It’s not just the jejune nature of my fellow candidates, it’s that here we are facing the second half of the 21st century and for reasons I am not sure I fathom the Democratic Party was and is the party of nostalgia. It’s as if the last bright idea any Democrat ever had was the New Deal, and let’s face it, even that wasn’t everything Democrats crack it up to be. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not run in 1932 and 1936 on 54—40 or fight or on Tippecanoe and Tyler too, and yet all anyone ever seems to hear from us Democrats is the same old New Deal programs repackaged for a new generation. We keep appealing to the same old class warfare nostrums without thinking that the same old class of people we aim those nostrums at have picked up and moved on. But we don’t want to hear that, because that would mean having to change the game and we like the game as it is, even if it is way out of date.
Still, there may be hope for these Democratic stalwarts. A new underclass may emerge, although just where we’d find this new set of potential voters is a little hard to figure out. We could convince California and its scads of underprivileged to rejoin the Union, even if more than one cynic has pointed out that back in the day, Baja California didn’t start in Oakland, or we could ask the Mexicans if they would rent Texas back to the United States for a little while. That doesn’t seem very likely to me, though. The reemergence of Mexico as a world power was certainly one of the more surprising developments of the past century and I saw in the New York Times the other day that Russia demanded that Mexico stop its ongoing aggression at the latest meeting of the Security Council. The Mexicans denied that they were committing any aggressive acts against Russia—they always deny their hostile intent, no matter what the circumstances—but this time the Russians had proof: a live satellite feed showing shadowy figures in blue jeans and baseball caps crossing the Bering Sea bridge on foot in the middle of the night. Then the Russians showed many of these same people standing outside a 7—11 in the Siberian city of Yakutsk, waiting for los rusos to come and give them a day job working construction or digging snow in the hot July sun. The tenor of the meeting was definitely hostile, with the Russians claiming that their country was not going to meet the same fate as the Disunited States and the Dominion of Nuestra Senora la Virgen de Guadalupe, which I always think sounds so much better than Canada anyway, even if it's hard to get all of that on a bottle of ginger ale, and that the Russian armed forces would use force if need be to halt this ongoing attack on the sacred soil of the Rodina. The Mexican ambassador, clearly outraged by these charges, told the Russian ambassador to go chinga a tu madre, cabron and that if the Russians didn’t stop whining like mi vieja and shut the hell up, Mexico would have no choice but to ram the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo up their culos sideways. Clearly, the Mexicans are not in any mood to rent Texas back to the somewhat United States, not when there are fresher fish to fry.
That’s what happens when you wind up on the D-list of nations; no one on the A-list wants to take your phone calls and you wind up talking to some punk kid right out of diplomat school who wants to impress his boss by making you feel like the poor relation asking for a handout. Once upon a time in this country, Mexicans came across the river to work for Americans. In 2060, some Mexicans still come across the river to work, but that traffic is very well—regulated nowadays; it is much harder, though, to stop the traffic in Americans crossing the Mississippi to find work in Mexico. That’s one of the major social and economic problems of our times and none of my opponents want to address the issue, not when they can promise the voters that they won’t have to pay for anything ever again. I’m still not sure how they intend to pay for that; we’ve already sold off the Dakotas, and most of Illinois, as well, and I don’t want to frighten anyone here, but if you live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, you might want to learn Mandarin or Arabic in fairly short order. Just giving you guys the heads up. Have a nice day.
Labels: Democratic nomination, Democrats, elections, Mexico, Politics
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