I still have never received an “I VOTED!” sticker, by the way.

Surprising absolutely no one, including, one hopes, his opponent, Mayor Buttigieg was re-elected last night by a fairly astonishing 80-20 margin in an election with turnout so low that they mayoral election was determined on the basis of less than 11,000 votes.  One of which was mine.  As I’ve said before, one of the weird things about elections lately is that I’ve been in the weird position of knowing, or at least being acquainted with, many of the candidates.  I’ve known Mr. Buttigieg’s opponent for something like five or six years (and she is a crazy person par excellence; I suspect the vast majority of her votes were from people just voting straight ticket rather than voting for her specifically, and I can probably come pretty close to proving that with math if I need to) and I knew both candidates in one of the city council races and the winner in another.  I have not actually met the mayor, but your may recall that I nearly killed him once.

The last time this feeling was this strong was in 2008 and it was worse; not only had I been living in Barack Obama’s district when he was a state Senator and thus had already voted for him a couple of times, but I’ve met and talked with Jeremiah Wright and, well, take a look at the dedication page in Searching for Malumba if you’ve picked it up already.  Hell, I think you can get to it through the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon if you want.

I will say this: other than the mayor himself, our ballot was not exactly rich with fine public servants this time around.  In particular, the local Republican party badly needs a kick in the ass; this is the third election in a row, I think, where most races either went unopposed, meaning the Democratic primary was the actual election, or the Republicans ran a local malcontent or obvious lunatic for the role.  Mr. Buttigieg’s opponent had this to say about the mood of the city:

 Honestly, I think the city is just ready for someone who is just the average person. Someone that’s just like the rest of them.

Call me an elitist if you want, I’m fine with that, but shut the fuck up.  No, I do not want an average person to run my fucking city, and I sure as hell do not want someone who is “just like” the 90%-of-these-motherfuckers-didn’t-show-up-to-vote assholes who populate this place.  I want my town run by people who are visibly and clearly above average in a lot of ways.

Note that, for the record, I’m entirely capable of being critical of Democrats when they run afoul of my standards as well.  Remember, I lived in Chicago for ten years, so I know a corrupt Democrat when I see one, and the city’s being run by a cabal of corrupt scumbags even as we speak who have Ds next to their names.  One of the two city council races was populated by a local madman who has been arrested on a number of occasions and once posted a picture to his official Facebook page of a man fucking a dog.  His opponent, who I know, was mired in some ethics difficulties of her own, but frankly I accept her explanation for what was going on and she passes the “not obviously crazy” criterion which elevates her far above her opponent.  And she won by a 2:1 margin, too.

This is part of the reason I want a more functional local Republican party despite disagreeing with damn near every single one of their policy positions: because whenever you have one-party government, that party gets fat, lazy, and corrupt.  Better Republicans, please, but better Democrats too.

And, because I may as well go ahead and point this out: y’all who just met me as the proprietor of Infinitefreetime have not seen me during a Presidential election season yet.  Expect the number and volume of posts about politics to begin ramping up.  I’ve done my damnedest to keep politics to a minimum here (yes, that’s been a minimum) but that’s probably not going to last much longer.  For the record, I don’t really have a dog in the Democratic fight; I’ve had massive issues with Hillary Clinton in the past but she appears to have learned from previous mistakes and while I don’t like Bernie Sanders’ fans all that much (honest truth: they remind me of Hillary’s people from 2008) I have nothing against the man himself and I’ll vote for whichever of them wins the primary.  I don’t know who I’d vote for in the primary yet but there’s plenty of time before then.  I recognize that Martin O’Malley still thinks he’s a candidate, but… c’mon.

As far as the Republicans, I’d like it if they get over this thing they do at the beginning of every primary season and give each of the non-politician crazies a chance before setting on a politician who may or may not be crazy.  Trump appears to (finally!) be waning in favor of Ben Carson, who is not much better and may well not be better at all, and since Jeb! doesn’t really seem to actually want the job I expect the nomination to eventually go to Marco Rubio.  I have no idea how Ted Cruz even got elected in Texas; the man literally has the most punch-demanding face I’ve ever seen in my entire life and in general he has the look of someone who must have seawater poured over him by a slave with a silver cup every night in order to keep his outer covering moist and yet free of its natural protective layer of slime.

I will admit that a Presidential contest between a woman and a Latino (what’s Rubio’s precise background?  I should look him up.) would make me happy on some level.  I’m not including Cruz in this because he has to convince me he’s not a lizard before being half-Cuban counts.

The rest of those nitwits aren’t worth comment.

(NOTE: Rubio’s Cuban.  And an actual anchor baby, which I wasn’t aware of. Suddenly very curious about his position on immigration.)