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Election 2008, 18 February 2008

Memo to Democrats: DON'T BE DUMB.

It's President's Day, so I thought I'd take advantage of this rarest of rare opportunities to talk about the 2008 election campaign. This thing has been flying under the radar for MONTHS now, and it's precisely the kind of story that alternative media, like the Internet, can serve to bring to the public's attention. For example, did you know that the Democratic Party is on the verge of having either a black man or a white woman as their candidate for President?

I know! It's like we're living in some kind of future-world where the oil is running out, humans can access the entire wealth of our species' knowledge while waiting for their dinner to arrive, and Indiana Jones is fighting aliens.To help you navigate through these strange and exciting times, I've prepared another installment of YAD Talking Points on the Hillary Clinton / Barack Obama match-up. Feel free to use these pithy policy statements the next time you're doing whatever it actually is that the metaphor "standing around the water cooler" represents.

OBAMA TALKING POINTS:

• Barack Obama does not shit apricot scones.
• Barack Obama does not piss antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice.
• People, it's great that you're excited, and passionate, and inspired, and contributing money, and going to rallies, and all that stuff. But it does make you suckers. Taking the cynicism out of American politics is like taking the potatoes out of Freedom Fries. What's left isn't any better for you.
• If necessary, you can console yourself with the fact that suckers play a huge and vital role in the general election. We've elected every single president so far based on which candidate can accumulate the largest pile of viable suckers.

CLINTON TALKING POINTS:

• There are a lot of reasons to hate Hillary Clinton. "Because she's a woman" is only one of them. Does that reason show through in some of the attacks on her? Yes. Does it show through every time Chris Matthews opens his pie-vortex? Yes. Does that suck? Yes. Is it the constant and sole reason she's behind? Fuck no.
• Hillary Clinton surrounds herself with people who say and do stupid shit. This is somewhat problematic.
• People, it's great that you're excited, and passionate, and inspired, and arguing on the Internet, and going to fund raising dinners, and all that stuff. But it does make you suckers. Pretending that Hillary Clinton is an unique entity separate and apart from the Democratic Party machine that rolled into town with Bill and stubbornly refuses to leave is just delusional.
• If necessary, you can console yourself with the fact that, after suckers, delusional people are the second-largest demographic group in America, and not all of them are supporting Ron Paul.
• Even given all that, Hillary Clinton is twenty to twenty-five times better than John McCain.

PRIMARY AND ELECTION TALKING POINTS:

• The following words are prohibited from future discussion of the primary/convention processs: "undemocratic", "disenfranchised", "stolen". Just cut it the fuck out.
• The process by which the parties select their nominees is a giant, hairy bolus filled with thousands and thousands of small, mysterious processes, every single one of which can undermine or negate the will of millions of voters. If you don't like it, you can always join your party infrastructure and convince them to change things so that the process of picking who you get to vote for is as "democratic" as the actual vote. Good luck with that.
• Stop arguing about electability. Al Gore was electable. John Kerry was electable. MICHAEL FUCKING DUKAKIS was electable. And this year, you -should- be able to take a convicted pedophile, slap a (D) after his name, and still get 55% of the votes. You probably SHOULDN'T, because getting the convicted pedophile to switch parties is more trouble than it's worth, but you could. All you have to do is not run a shitty campaign.
• So we're probably fucked.