Cam-Pain

So I just watched Bill Maher ask Bernie Sanders, after briefly describing the nature in which Mitt Romney has recklessly calumniated the record thus far of Barack Obama -- which, let's keep in mind, is practically indistinguishable from what Romney's record would be if he had the job -- a rather simple question: "Can you win running against a fictional candidate?"

As a laugh line, it's passable, but shit, George W. Bush did exactly that. Twice. And that's just this century. Obviously a substantial portion of politics involves, even requires, contorting the positions of one's opponent. Inventing positions has not been a bridge too far for quite some time.

There are many axioms that will take place during the year-long sideshow. But two stand out to me as particularly obnoxious. One is that, in this wondrous modern era of endless, self-devouring news cycles, most of which show no compunction about recklessly inflating trivial, inane stories, the perpetual campaign industry will continue full-tilt. The very second after the loser of the election concedes, the winner will delegate a team to strategize the next round. This will be true even -- perhaps especially -- if Obama wins. The Democratic Party will take the victory as a sign from the infinitely wise and well-informed 'murkin electorate that they won because they gave the people what they want, ergo, they want more of the same. So they start grooming, say, Heath Shuler for the '16 run, with a quickness.

This is the same brilliant marketing strategy that produced John Kerry as a candidate in '04. I'd say I've followed politics fairly closely for a very long time, and I'll be goddamned if I can tell you three things Kerry has done before or since his nomination, certainly nothing that would remind one of how he achieved such exalted status that magical year. But he does and did sum up quite nicely the Democrats' institutional diffidence and utter lack of feck in properly serving as an adequate countervailing force against the modern Republican party's ingrained habits of lying, verbal aggression, and outright fear of appearing rational or intellectual.

The second big obnoxious 21st-century campang thang we'll see, if you haven't already, is the groundhog-like return of the quadrennial N8r h8rz. "Never forget!", they plaint in unison, heavily bucked teeth quivering over where their chins would be if they had them. The operational premise of Nader's infinite perfidy single-handedly sending our fair nation into a tailspin is finely honed to a keen edge by a dozen years and counting of obsessing and fingering, like cheap plastic rosary beads or a hopelessly desiccated clitoris, wiggling furiously for purchase and the assurance that a payoff will be forthcoming.

Someday, someday, they quietly moan to themselves, waiting for the next liar to give them the illusion of bliss. Yes, no, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is the one, so much better than the other one. Fuck you, h8rz, this corporate stooge will ass-rape us considerably less than that corporate stooge. How dare you complain about slightly more polite ass-rape!

Their favored stooge may even leave a tasty mint on the pillow afterward, for further delectation. So there's that.

No doubt you've heard the tired-ass joke about the Polack (and yes, I'm part Polish, so I can go there) walking up with a handful of shit, exclaiming, "Look what I almost stepped in!". This is a fairly accurate portrayal of your modern Democratic voter. (Forget your modern Republican voter; he's the one putting a dollop of whipped cream on his pile of shit and grabbing a spoon.)

So it will be a good six, eight months of yammering, nattering, tedious ankle-biting jabber, by self-styled hard-nosed realists who in their grim determination are simply Doing What Must Be Done, acknowledging the vicissitudes of a hopelessly corrupt system that produces and rewards thieves and vipers, yet doing fuck-all to actually change that system in any meaningful way. It is as elaborate a kabuki performance as any 30-hour filibuster to add a defense rider to a Broccoli Month proclamation.

To the empty notion that they might change the system as the opportunity presents itself, all I can say is, "When? How?". I mean, Obama was dealt a phenomenally dreaful hand by his predecessors, but he did come in with a supermajority, a clear electoral mandate, and favorable political winds. Those things were his to squander, and damned if he didn't do just that. We can't vote him a pair of balls.

Don't get me wrong; in spite of my misgivings about Obama, I'll probably vote for him, if in fact I vote at all this time around. (I'll almost certainly vote, for local and state pieces at least, if not for preznit. But it too becomes more and more an empty gesture, the act of casting a pebble into the void and pretending that it becomes part of some massive synergistic force.)

But it's not because I think Mitt Romney can't do the job, or would be substantially different in terms of practical policy initiatives from Barry O. It's because Romney's an asshole, and the people bankrolling him are bigger assholes, and the idjits currently driving the rhetoric of that party are fucking flaming assholes, and I like the idea of all those assholes thinking that they have a clue about anything about as much as I like the fucking Tuck Rule.

But I hate it all the same, I fucking despise a broken system that spends literally months mooning over an interminable parade of certifiable chuckleheads and buffoons as if they were marginally qualified for the job they already hold, much less the job they want to run for. It's a bad system, it reeks of filthy pelf, and neither candidate from either party will do a damned thing to improve the lives of the peons. There are only slightly lessening degrees of corporate toadying.

So let's keep all that in mind as N8r-b8ing season approaches, and the smugonauts go on their perennial snipe hunt. The most important takeaway from Nader's role in the 2000 election is not that Gore was such a dreadful candidate he couldn't even win his home state, or even that in Florida, 12 times as many registered Democratic voters "defected" directly to Bush as did for Nader.

The most important lesson, once again and we can all see that it still holds true, is that the Democrats learned absolutely nothing from it.