In which I try to rank Elizabeth Warren and a bunch of people I don’t want to vote for

The last time I did this was– Jesus— almost a God damn year ago, and since then not only has Kamala Harris dropped out, but so has everyone else I wanted to vote for except for Buttigieg, who has spent most of the last eleven months making me dislike him. I have gone from a Democratic presidential primary where I went through eight people before even entering “meh” territory to one person I want to vote for– Warren– a bunch of people who I despise, and Amy Klobuchar, who I wouldn’t have even considered a serious candidate any longer until New Hampshire, and frankly I probably shouldn’t start treating her for-real seriously until she does better in more than one state.

What I have been saying for the last several months remains true: this race is still Biden’s to lose, despite his poor performance in Iowa and New Hampshire, because unless the poll results have shifted radically in the last couple of weeks he’s still the only candidate with a serious base of support in the black community, who are still the base of the Democratic party and who haven’t had a chance to vote yet because of how fucking stupid our nomination process is. I have heard tell that those numbers are starting to shift, though, and if they are, Biden’s fucked, which is kind of fine because I think he’s slowly losing his shit and I don’t really want to vote for him.

But … God, I don’t want to vote for any of these fuckers other than Warren, and every time I try to think seriously about ranking them, I spend most of my time pondering the inevitability of death instead. I mean, to be clear: I’m voting for the fucking Democratic nominee in November, full stop; I don’t give a fuck who it is. But I really don’t like any of them beyond Warren, and I remember enjoying being able to vote for candidates who I wanted to hold office, damn it.

So.

2. … Klobuchar, I guess? Who is an asshole, and a moderate, and she’s shitty to her staff, but that’s all I’ve got and she hasn’t managed to personally piss me off yet? Plus, she’s a woman and she doesn’t have one foot in the grave or any obvious decline in her mental facilities? So, yeah, sure, Klobuchar’s second, I suppose, mostly because someone has to be.

3. Buttigieg. I have voted for Pete Buttigieg literally every single time he has run for office, and I don’t want to ever vote for him again. Yes, in March I was somewhat enthusiastic about his candidacy. And he’s spent damn near every second since then trying to drive me away with his Jesusiness and his Kumbaya approach to “working with” people who would literally rather see him dead than in office. But much like Klobuchar he has the advantages of not being senile or nearly dead, and I’m not convinced he’d be a shitty President, and he’s smart, if perhaps not as smart as he thinks he is, and if he made a sensible pick for VP he might not be a disaster as a President, although of the current group I think he’s the one most likely to run for a second term and lose.

4. Fuck it, Biden. Who is running an absolute shit campaign, and who is perhaps not as senile as I thought he might have been a bit ago (I was unaware until recently that he has battled a stutter his whole life, and that explains a couple of things) but is still noticeably not as sharp as he was a decade ago, and has run for President three times now and so far still has not ever managed to finish higher than third in a primary. And he clearly doesn’t understand the nature of the opposition he’s facing, either, because he’s competing with Pete for the Kumbaya naïveté awards. But at least he’s not either of those other two assholes, and of the group of three he’s the one most likely to have some fucking sense and not run for a second term in the first place. Leaving me with …

Bernie and Bloomberg, and fuck both of ’em, I’m not ranking them. I loathe Bernie Sanders. I like his policies but Warren’s are every bit as good as his and she’s not a garbage human and she’s actually got some accomplishments in her life, unlike Mr. Myocardial Infarction Where The Fuck Are Your Taxes, whose life’s work boils down to not having a job until he was 40, naming a couple of post offices, and exactly three black-and-white photos of him being a massive civil rights hero on par with Malcolm X, Jesus and Martin Luther King combined. He will be a desperately shitty President and nothing will be accomplished during his single term in office, if he even lasts that long without dying, because who the hell knows what kind of condition his God damn heart is in; his campaign has lied about it endlessly and he’s refused to release his medical records. Which is not fucking forgivable even before you get to the part where he’s basically a cult leader and I cannot tolerate the idea of an America where the Bernie Bros have political power.

(Am I calling every Bernie voter a cultist? No. I am explicitly not doing that, and if you are a Bernie person and I know you I am also explicitly not calling you personally that. But I stand by the statement nonetheless, particularly in the context of the vile hordes of his people I have to deal with online.)

Bloomberg, on the other hand, is a racist piece of shit and a blood-gorged tick on the nuts of humanity, and he’s carefully and clearly exposing every single thing wrong with what we are still calling our “democracy” for some reason. I have no idea why anyone would ever choose to vote for him, and the fact that he’s registering in the polls at all is a sign of how dangerously and completely fucked we are. If somehow the race is down to these two by the time the Indiana primary rolls around I’m probably just not going to vote. Again, I’ll vote for the nominee even if I hate him, which is looking more likely by the day, but I’ll be damned if I endorse either of these fuckers twice if I don’t absolutely have to.

(EDIT: When and if Bloomberg turns out to be a serial sexual harasser and/or a rapist, which I’m figuring even odds on, he immediately falls off the list altogether. That would be one thing that would definitively shove him under Sanders for me.)

One way or another

…nevertheless, we persist.


giphyI had a stunningly easy day at work today, to the point where I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never really did.  No drama, no nonsense, I had time to get shit done, which blows my mind– that never happens– and now I have tomorrow off.

My wife has to work and my son has school.  So I’m at home, by myself, on Election Day, trying my good Goddamnedest to keep myself distracted.  If there was some sort of drug I could take that could guarantee I could just wake up Wednesday morning and have the carnage already dealt with, I’d already have taken it.

I mean, I could make predictions, but I was literally the wrongest I’ve ever been about anything two years ago, so I’ve got no room left for optimism right now.  I also think I’m probably not capable of being surprised, but the world has a way of proving me wrong about that too.  I considered finding something, anything to volunteer for tomorrow, but to a certain extent I question my own ability to keep my shit together in scenarios where people are talking politics around me, and if I go volunteer for something it’s gonna be kinda difficult to avoid politics.   Better for my mental health to spend the entire day stuck in 1899 robbing caravans and hunting bears.  I gotta stay the hell off Twitter until at least 7 or 8:00; I will fail utterly in this goal.

More tomorrow, I suppose, if the world doesn’t end.

Hey Indiana

It’s primary day.

Go vote.

(Pat Hackett for Congress, if you happen to be in IN-02!)716F4qqNhnL._SY355_

America!

freedomI’m not sure that I really “made freedom count,” but the grandiosity of the phrase appeals to me somehow.  There was a primary election today, entirely for local offices and more or less serving as a surrogate for the actual election this fall.  For the most part the Republicans refuse to run remotely credible candidates and whoever gets out of the primary is virtually certain to win election in the fall provided that they are still alive at the time– and whether that is actually necessary has yet to be tested empirically.

I happen to know the Republican candidate for mayor.  Her daughter is a former student, in fact.  She is madhouse, bugfuck, shitheap crazy, and is less qualified to be Mayor than I am to give birth.  Luckily, she’s also less likely to be Mayor than I am to give birth; she’s managed to raise $225 for her campaign so far and the Republican establishment is running from her as fast as they can.  When I say the Republicans refuse to run credible candidates, this is what I mean, as she’s running unopposed.  The last time they ran a credible candidate for Mayor was eight years ago, I think; the last time round they ran an assortment of local malcontents and an actual, no-bullshit hobo.  The guy eight years ago came reasonably close to winning, especially considering that he made a critical mistake in his campaign and ran against the city instead of running against the mayor.  This has always seemed to me to be a common problem with Republicans; “this thing sucks and is terrible and unnecessary so put me in charge of it” is not a winning proposition.

But anyway.  Mayor Bootyjudge will coast past his primary opponent, and so I’m mostly looking at the City Clerk’s race and the City Council.  I’ve met five of the candidates, which seems weird.  It’ll be interesting to see how quickly the races are called tonight.  Polls close at seven; I’m betting it’s all over by eight.