The next eighteen months, politically speaking, are going to be something to be avoided. It is a great and terrible thing to live in a country that is about to see four billion dollars spent on a "choice" between two center-right job applicants. Three hundred twenty million people in 'murka, and we can't find anyone better than Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. That's a pretty goddamned sad state of affairs.
The primary differences between the two are that Bush is presumed to have a penis and thinks he's Mexican. Both will be distinguished -- and elected, or not -- mostly on their ability to grovel to and satisfy a grubby, pelf-addled cabal of bookies and spreadsheet diddlers.
Possibly the most tedious aspect of Clinton's candidacy is the prospect of media weasels mooning over the "opportunity" to have a female chief executive. That noble achievement would put us at long last on a par with places such as Pakistan. It would be difficult to find something less worth caring about.
Politics is a trap as well as a racket; every political disciple and acolyte grooms themselves mainly for inevitable disappointment, when their object of affection turns out invariably to not be quite as advertised. In this case, regardless of who wins the quadrennial epic battle for imperial custodian, it is practically a guarantee -- Bush is not remotely conservative enough to appease his increasingly psychotic base, and Clinton is a "liberal" only in the most technical sense of the word.
At this point, presidential campaigns are as much about who gets to appoint the next SCOTUS justice (yet another antiquated, unanswerable institution that sorely needs to be revisited) as they are about who gets to be the figurehead for the next few years. The best you can hope for is that Clinton selects some sort of "moderating influence" type -- Elizabeth Warren, Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, etc. -- as a running mate, in order for people to better pretend that a vice president (a Democratic one, anyway) as any sort of measurable effect on governance and policy.
The primary differences between the two are that Bush is presumed to have a penis and thinks he's Mexican. Both will be distinguished -- and elected, or not -- mostly on their ability to grovel to and satisfy a grubby, pelf-addled cabal of bookies and spreadsheet diddlers.
Possibly the most tedious aspect of Clinton's candidacy is the prospect of media weasels mooning over the "opportunity" to have a female chief executive. That noble achievement would put us at long last on a par with places such as Pakistan. It would be difficult to find something less worth caring about.
Politics is a trap as well as a racket; every political disciple and acolyte grooms themselves mainly for inevitable disappointment, when their object of affection turns out invariably to not be quite as advertised. In this case, regardless of who wins the quadrennial epic battle for imperial custodian, it is practically a guarantee -- Bush is not remotely conservative enough to appease his increasingly psychotic base, and Clinton is a "liberal" only in the most technical sense of the word.
At this point, presidential campaigns are as much about who gets to appoint the next SCOTUS justice (yet another antiquated, unanswerable institution that sorely needs to be revisited) as they are about who gets to be the figurehead for the next few years. The best you can hope for is that Clinton selects some sort of "moderating influence" type -- Elizabeth Warren, Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, etc. -- as a running mate, in order for people to better pretend that a vice president (a Democratic one, anyway) as any sort of measurable effect on governance and policy.
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