2008 presidental canidates?

Dear Wally:

Huckabee? McCain? Barack, Hillary? Nadar? Super Delegates. It’s all so confusing and I’m feeling dirty. Advice please…?

Sincerely,
JD

Dear JD,

First, don’t dismiss Mike Huckabee out of hand. He’s still got a commanding lead in the polls with white fundamentalist Christian Buick-driving women over the age of 125 who live in states that start with the letter ‘A’. And if someone throws McCain under the bus one more time (anyone remember the Keating 5 scandal? Or Karl Rove in a Ninja suit in South Carolina around 2004?), or if some really big anvil falls from the sky and bonks McCain on the head, Huckabee’s patience and tenacity might pay off big. With McCain gone, the conservative GOP brass, already pounding their foreheads in frustration with that pesky ersatz conservative Arizonian and threatening to do the unspeakable (vote for Hillary out of spite, Egads!), would eventually have to hoist Huckabee up on the chair (luckily he lost a lot of weight) as the default candidate because, well, no one is left. Unless you count the guy that works the midnight to 4am shift making cruellers in the shape of Florida at Dunkin Donuts. Or unless they exhume Mitt, who I imagine to be leaning on a broom right now at an empty Romney ’08 headquarters amidst a field of discarded posters and saying to himself, “Well, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said I was gonna sweep the elections.”

And John McCain seems like damaged goods, ready to explode at any moment with the slightest provocation and spin his block clockwise right off his shoulders. Do we dare give him The Big Red Button? I feel that his little “In Case of Emergency Break Glass” pane has already been shattered (maybe it was crushed by a nearby hottie lobbyist who was trying to cool down a melting reactor?). It’s true he’s had a tough life and served the country honorably. He’s still the front runner in Wisconsin with 62% approval from Middle to Upper Class white and yellow cheddars. But silver hair, patience on the sidelines and longevity in politics simply do not entitle him or anyone to command, else we might just as soon ask Bea Arthur to help out.

How can you not be confused JD? Or feel a little oleaginous. The already Byzantine process for amassing enough delegates through state primaries and Caucasus (I thought this was a rugged mountain range in former Soviet Union??) to cinch a party’s nomination is compounded by a ferociously expensive and manipulative advertising campaign. If they were peddling Pepsi, we’d all be filling our pools with it by now. Never mind the so-called super delegates who threaten to anoint the Democratic nominee despite the democratic will. That can’t be good for store front windows in Denver this August.

I’m guessing you want to feel that after decades of BS-ers trotting out lofty promises of affordable health care sometime just shy of election day, this time maybe someone will actually pull themselves up from the primordial goo and deliver a workable plan. You’d be right to be skeptical, if you , like me, are getting hammered every month when the insurance premium comes. If I sound bitter it’s only a side effect of the lactic acid build up in my check writing hand.

Or maybe JD, you are scratching your head and wondering why it is that more than 51% of the 100 senators wouldn’t easily pass a really aggressive fuel efficiency standard for cars. Every single person in America wants this (except the people who stand to profit from selling more oil). When the states of California and Connecticut et al (this list has since grown) challenged the recent, fairly underwhelming federal standard and demanded HIGHER MPG rates for cars sold within their state borders, they were dressed down and told not to step out of line with the EPA’s lower MPG rates. Lower? Penalized for being greener? Wah-huh?. This fuel standard decision should transcend political affiliation or party ideology and when it doesn’t, we all feel dirty. Which candidate is talking about that? None I’ve seen. Please pass the soap.

Maybe you are confused by the forced congeniality between Barack and Hillary when they debate on national TV and split hairs on the semantics of near identical platforms so intensely that it makes Bill Clinton’s erstwhile burp that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” seem pretty goddamn cut and dry. For Barack and Hillary, it feels like a viscous bowl of Thanksgiving gruel shared between estranged family members who only show up to gnaw on the exposed ribcage of a departed rich tycoon uncle. They both seem very smart. They both could do the job. They both represent busting the injection mold that has produced white male presidents since day one. So I can’t tell you which one to vote for other than either one will be a monumental accomplishment for minorities and arrive, if it is so fated, not a day too early.

Ralph Nadar’s recent announcement to run for President was met with yawns because , well, who wants to race a car with square wheels, even if it does have safety belts and door locks?

So what do we do JD? I wish I could tell you. This I do know. Supposedly, for the first time in our NY lives, those Wizard of Oz voting machines with their dingy drab curtains and crescent finger levers and two handed handles that dwarf Amtrak’s track switches will be gone and in their stead, new machines. Hopefully these new machines will make us New Yorkers feel at home and rudely tell us with a thick Bronx accent who we need to vote for, that our coffee is no good and our breath not much better. Or maybe if they are ‘electronic’ enough, they will have the courtesy to inform us that our votes have already been cast but 'thank you please try again next time...'

Good luck!

-Wally

(Got a question that needs answering? Email Wally at bsplori@aol.com)