I live in Indiana.  I live in one of the bluest parts of Indiana, don’t get me wrong, but I was born and raised in this state and for whatever the hell it’s worth I’m likely to die here.  I am, as a mostly-lifelong Hoosier (I lived in Chicago for nine years in there, and still occasionally refer to myself as a Chicagoan when the mood and necessity strike me) used to being ruled by Republicans, although Indiana is not remotely as monolithically red as most people who live outside the state think.  I’ve had a Democrat as a Senator for most of my life, a couple of Democratic governors, and most of my House representatives have been Democrats.  In fact, Joe Donnelly, my current Senator, used to be my House rep. He is only my Senator because he read the writing on the wall after redistricting and decided he would lose his seat and then lucked out against a truly abysmal Republican opponent.

Jackie Walorski became my Congresscritter after that election and has been re-elected a couple of times since then.  She’s running against a guy named Mel Hall right now.  I didn’t want Mel Hall to be the Democratic nominee.  I didn’t want to vote for another old white guy, I could detect no enthusiasm anywhere for his candidacy, and of the three he seemed to be spending the least effort trying to be my candidate.  Pat Hackett, who I voted for, and Yatish Joshi, who I didn’t vote for but wasn’t at all unhappy with, were everywhere, and they were both visibly working for votes.  Mel Hall was just the default old white guy.  I seriously thought, judging from what I’d seen, and in the absence of polling, that he was going to come in third, and I was shocked when he won.

My problem with Mel Hall, now that he’s officially the candidate, is that it’s becoming increasingly clear that Mel Hall doesn’t want to be the Democratic nominee either.  None of his TV ads mention being a Democrat, and we just got a flier from him today and the only place the word “Democrat” appears on it anywhere is the legally-required little line in the corner about who paid for the damn thing.  Instead, it talks about how he used to be a minister.

I don’t vote for ministers.   I sure as hell don’t vote for ex-ministers who decided to go show the poor people of Detroit the way and the light until he and his wife had kids and then decided that being a missionary wasn’t important any longer.  You were already a shitty minister and then you stopped for a shitty reason– and then got rich as a businessman, so fuck your religion one way or another.  Not one single thing Mel Hall has released as a political candidate has given me a reason to consider voting for him.  If I wasn’t the type to pay attention, I would think that we had two Republicans running for office.  Which is what he wants.

And Jackie Walorski is going to spend the entire campaign calling him a fucking liberal anyway.  Everyone to the left of any Republican is a liberal.  That’s how it works.  There is no such thing as a centrist to Republicans.  There is them, and there is the demonrat liberals, and that’s it.  And Mel Hall’s TV ad, which doesn’t mention the fact that he’s supposedly the Democratic nominee, does find time for him to say that “both parties are to blame” for Washington’s dysfunction.

Fuck you, Mel.  We have a center-right party in Washington and we have a party that is rapidly degenerating into fucking fascism if it’s not already goddamn there and I don’t wanna hear shit from you about “both fucking sides” right now.

Which brings me to Joe fucking Donnelly.  This fucking asshole is actually running an ad right now with video footage of the person claiming to be the President praising him.  Meanwhile, I can’t watch a fucking home renovation show on Hulu without seeing six dozen ads about how he’s a filthy liberal who wants open borders and hordes of illegal Mexicans to come rape all of our pristine pure white women.  One of their ads actually calls him “Mexico Joe.”  That’s not an exaggeration.

These fucking assholes are not going to vote for you, Joe.  And it would be a really good idea for both of these two shitbirds to realize who their goddamn base is and maybe try to goddamned motivate us to vote for them.  Because here’s the thing: as much as I piss and moan about it, and as much as I’m going to hate doing it, we’re not in a position right now where I am capable of not voting for the Democrat on the ballot.  America is in too much fucking trouble for me not to.  I’ve said “fuck your conscience” on this blog and on Twitter a whole bunch of times, and “fuck your conscience” applies to my ass too, as much as I don’t want it to.  Hall, as much as I hate to admit it, might have an outside chance if enough sexist assholes look at him and look at Jackie and decide that even a shriveled white librul Demonrat penis is better than no penis at all.  Maybe.  But I kind of doubt it.  But Donnelly?  Donnelly has nothing to offer to Republicans that his opponent doesn’t offer more of.

Gimme a reason to vote for you, you assholes.  Just one.  Some fucking thing I can hold on to when I vote.  Because the thing is, there are a lot of us out there, and while I’m going to be in that ballot box come November there are a lot of people who just might not bother if they see no one who represents them.  And frankly, if either of these two loses, they kind of deserve it.  I’d hate for control of the Senate to hang on whether Joe fucking Donnelly gets re-elected in Indiana or not, but it very well fucking could.

So get out there and act like you want the goddamn job, you milquetoast pricks.

EDIT:  I should make something clear here, actually: while I would really like to vote for someone who is at least as far left, if not farther, than I am, I am aware that the majority of this state and even this district are more conservative than me.  I’m well used to voting for people more conservative than me, and I’m not even that bothered by it.  It’s actively working to avoid representing the party that you’re running as a member of that is pissing me off so much about these two.