Looks like it’s going to be The Donald vs. The Hill. Bernie flamed out, as expected, and will return, no doubt, to his placid round as a Democratic Party sheepdog in the Senate. The other Republican contenders, each more pathetic than the last, poor stiff scripted overthought nudniks, will have to hope they live so long as to try again.
Now of course the fun thing about this setup is that it’s Hillary’s dream. She couldn’t have asked for a better opponent. As has been observed before, Trump is the only guy scary enough to the average well-meaning white liberal to get him or her to turn over in bed and leave the house early and pull a lever for Hillary. Nobody, but nobody, really likes her; and nobody, but nobody, has any really hopeful expectations of her.
Hillary’s only card is the fear that somebody else — somebody with really strange hair, say — might be worse. She is, you might say, the pure Lesser Evil candidate — the person you love to hate only slightly less than the other guy. No positives at all; but perhaps slightly fewer negatives than Hobgoblin or foul fiend. At least from certain points of view — points of view confined, I suspect, to a rather narrow demographic.
There’s an old Yiddish proverb: It could always be worse. Deep wisdom here. It could — in fact — always, absolutely always, be worse. Misery is bottomless. Turtles all the way down, as the famous lady said to Arthur Eddington.
The Democratic Party’s appeal, these days, is like a reverse Madoff scheme. With your investment in our hands, say the Democrats, it will lose only 25% of its value per annum. The other guys, it’ll lose 26%.
There are no other investment vehicles, and you can’t cash out and put the money under the mattress and hope that conditions will improve. It’s Merrill Grinch or Spamguard. Take your pick.
You could, of course, write your investment off and walk away. This is the reasonable thing to do — you’ll never get it back, so why stick around and watch it vanish? But I recognize that this is emotionally challenging. People are notoriously irrational about their investments.
There’s always shitting in a box and mailing it to the bank.
Dunno how useful it is, but the Rebublicans I know all seem to be having fun with it.
I’ve participated in many radical demonstrations.
This year, I will carry a box — a non-ballot box — on Main Street. And provide people with non-ballots that they can stick into the box to demonstrate that they are TRULY INDEPENDENT and WILL NOT vote. In return, I give them a red and yellow lapel sticker that says “I WILL NOT VOTE FOR THESE CREEPS!” (Plus a flyer about strategic simple score voting.)
Then I will dump all the non-ballots in front of City Hall.
Looks like Jesse Ventura will run — said he would if Bernie did the sheepdog bait-and-switch number.
“The Hawai’ian legislators voted to pass H.B. 638 because they believed that somehow this method would make elections “more fair.” The rogue that falsely convinced them of this is Rob Richie, Executive Director of the coyly-named FairVote, a well-funded, tax-exempt operation that would like to add that state to their list of conquests, so that they can continue to hawk this nonsense to others.
“Quite deceptively, H.B. 638 mentions locations in which IRV (sometimes in variations known as “ranked choice” or “proportional representation”) has been adopted, but fails to cite the places where it has been rescinded after proving problematic and, in some cases, outright disastrous.” — Brad Blog:
http://bradblog.com/?p=8476
Oh lookee here! “FairVote” (the Fairvote Action Fund, Inc. of Takoma Park, MD), is run by Rob Richie, and do you want a real honest-to-God conspiracy? Look no further:
http://www.fairvote.org/financials
Another of life’s little surprises!
There’s still soooo much time for Hillary to completely bottle this.
MJS finally gets his blog back up just as his bete noire (or, raison d’etre?) is now one of two people (who’s that other guy?) about to become President of the Land of Decree and Home of the Rave…and
no one’s around for shits and giggles….
Everybody come baaaaaaack!
It’s rather easy to imagine The Donald beating HRC. His Rust Belt appeal will be a sight to behold to us lefties.
Also, I very much look forward to his excoriating her on a debate stage, before Super Bowl-sized viewership, for her Iraq War vote, Libya, trade and Goldman Sachs.
One thing’s for sure and that is whoever becomes the next POTUS will be worse than his predecessor. Historically, that’s been true for as long as I remember. The question is would defeating Hillary bring the demise of the Democratic party the same way as the rising of the Donald has done to the Republican party? I tend to think not because these pukes won’t go away easily and unlike the parliamentary system where the head of the party resigns upon astounding defeat, these guys keep coming back with worse alternatives as candidates. Sometimes I think maybe Hillary paid off Trump to get in the race so that she could win the general election!
That’s been my theory for some time now — not entirely humorous, even. Of course, who knows, and they’re probably not really that clever, but I can’t quite rule it out.
I’m glad I’m not the only one in the Left Land who’s not ruling out a secret pact between these two.
Status quo politicians aren’t working anymore. The Hills may beat the Trump, but sooner or later a Democratic is going to lose to a Trump. Even Sanders is too radical. If the only direction away from status quo candidates are allowed to move is right, well.