Mike's Election Guide (8 page)
Tami Lane
Norman, OK
ANSWER:
Well, first of all, don’t even
think
of leaving us behind to deal with another god-awful frickin’ mess! You’re staying here just like we all are! Call us masochists or call us Americans but we’re here for the long haul, buddy.
Ok, listen, I feel your pain. Who hasn’t at one time or another in the last eight years thought about making like Rocket Man and flying off with Major Tom? It sucks to watch the country you love being shoveled into the gutter and made either the laughingstock of—or the most hated force in—the Empire.
But if you have to head north after a (gulp!) McCain victory, here are a few tips that could be useful, based on living most of my life within earshot of a nonstop loop of Gordon Lightfoot:
1.
Canadians will subtly say the opposite of what they mean, often keeping a straight face. It’s called “irony.” They also apply this in a form of humour (bring a lot of “u”s with you) known as “satire.”
2.
Canadians have very little desire to wreak violence upon you—unless you have a puck they want.
3.
You will need to learn the metric system (this should be reason enough to convince you to stay here). And you’ll never truly master it, thus holding up the line at Tim Horton’s every single day.
4.
You will not need to learn French. The Canadians will claim to be a bilingual people, and you will see a lot of signs in English and French, but don’t worry—it’s just for show so that the people in Quebec don’t split off and join Greenland. In fact, if you do move to Canada, move to Quebec. They’re so pissed at everything, you’ll feel right at home. None of them will speak English to you, so if you’re looking for some peace and quiet, Quebec is your place. Eventually you’ll pick up French and that will allow you to move again (when you’ve had your fill of Canadian politics) to that other country we all want to move to—France!
5.
Finish any dental work you’re in the middle of before you leave the U.S. While the Canadian healthcare system is much better than ours (it’s free, it’s for everyone), they don’t cover dental. Enter the country with good teeth and you are guaranteed to live two years longer than if you had stayed in the USA.
6.
Get ready to listen to a lot of complaining. Things are so good in Canada, after a while people there tend to take it for granted that 40 million of their people don’t live in poverty—heck, they don’t even
have
40 million people! The crime rate is low, the schools are decent, and the chocolate is real. But they get bored easily and, with no real problems to bitch about, they start making shit up. Like the Irish and the British, they absolutely hate it when one of their own ends up doing better than everyone else. They’ll tear him to shreds. This keeps many afraid of doing well, and that’s why no great inventions since the telephone have come out of Canada.
7.
They still drink like a sieve and smoke like a stack. I don’t know why this is. See #6.
8.
Learn whatever you can about American government and history before you head there because whatever you think you know about America, they will know more. It’s uncanny and it’s scary. But I guess that’s why they’ve studied up on their next-door neighbor.
’Cause their neighbor is sorta scary.
How to Elect John McCain
Or, How Many Democrats Does It Take to Lose the Most Winnable Presidential Election in American History?
A blueprint for how to blow it.
“Let’s snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” “We never met an election we’d like to win.” “Why get elected when you can be defeated!”
These have been the mantras of the Democratic Party. Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it. And they don’t just simply “blow it”—they blow it
especially
when the electorate seems desperate to
give
it to them.
After eight years of Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, the public had seen enough. The Democrats chose Michael Dukakis as their nominee. Two months before the election, he was ahead of Bush I in the polls. Then he went to an army tank factory in Michigan, put on some kind of stupid-fitting helmet, and rode around in a tank with a goofy smile on his face. Weeks later, when asked what kind of punishment he would like to see be given to someone who might rape his wife, he started mumbling some sort of bleeding heart gibberish instead of just saying what anyone would say: “I’d like to tear the bastard from limb to limb!” The voters were so put-off by his wimpiness, they elected an actual wimp over him, George H.W. Bush.
For years now, nearly every poll shows that the American people are right in sync with the platform of the Democratic party. They are pro-environment, pro-women’s rights, pro-choice, they don’t like war, they want the minimum wage raised, and they want a single-payer universal healthcare system. The American public agrees with the Republican party on only one major issue: they support the death penalty.
So you would think with more than 200 million eligible voters, the Dems would be cleaning up, election after election. Obviously not. The Democrats appear to be professional losers. They are so pathetic in their ability to win elections they even lose when they win! Al Gore won the 2000 election, but for some strange reason, he didn’t become the President of the United States. If you are unable as a party to get the landlord to turn over the keys to a house that is yours, what the hell good are you?
Well, in 2006, the Dems had a come-to-Jesus meeting with themselves and, under the leadership of Rahm Emanuel, won so many House seats they just waltzed in and took the place over. What a great day that was, seeing Nancy Pelosi bang the gavel down to open Congress.
And what was her first act? To declare that ANY discussion of the impeachment of George W. Bush was verboten and no one was to ever bring it up again. And that was that. It sent a clear message to Bush that he could just keep doing what he’d been doing for the first six years. The result? That’s exactly what he did, with Congress authorizing every war funding bill he sent to them. How did the American people respond? Congress’s approval rating sank
lower
than Bush’s. How disgusting do you have to be to sink lower in the public’s eyes than a man who can’t even successfully choke himself on a pretzel?
So when you hear Democrats and liberals and Obama supporters say they are worried that McCain has a good chance of winning, they ain’t a kidding. Who would know better than the very people who have handed the Republicans one election after another on a silver platter? Yes, be afraid, be very afraid.
After the debacles of Iraq, Katrina, gas prices, home foreclosures, our standing in the world, the failure to capture bin Laden, and revealing the identity of a CIA agent in an act of revenge, it would seem that Barack Obama should be on a cakewalk to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The man should be able to sleep his way through the rest of the campaign season.
Ha! Think again. How many Democrats does it take to lose the most easily winnable election in American history? Not many. Just a few “close advisors” to Barack Obama who tell him a bunch of asinine stuff and he ends up listening to them instead of his own heart. As the party hacks in the past two elections have proven, once they get the candidate’s ear, the rest of us might just as well order pizza and stay inside the next four years.
In an effort to help the party doofuses and pundits—and the candidate himself—spare all of us another suicide-inducing election night as the results giving the election to the Republican pour in, here is the blueprint from the Democrats’ past losing campaigns. Just follow each of these steps and you, the Democratic Party establishment, can help elect John Sidney McCain III to a four-year extension of the Bush Era.
What the Democrats Can Do to Get McCain Elected:
1. Keep saying nice things about McCain.
Like how he’s been “good on global warming” and campaign finance. Keep reminding a country at war that he and he alone is a war hero. Not to mention just an all-around good guy. Say that enough, and you know what happens? The same thing that happens when you repeat over and over “Apply directly to the forehead . . . Apply directly to the forehead . . .”—people start to believe it! You’ve sold them on the idea that McCain isn’t a bad egg, and they do NOT hear the rest of what you have to say:
“But John McCain is four more years of George W. Bush.”
If you keep saying he used to be a “maverick,” our less-attention-span citizens only hear the “maverick” part, not the past tense verb included in that sentence.
This is not to say that you should in any way demean John McCain as a human being or as an American. Disagreeing strongly with his policies or the direction he would lead the country is not the same as denigrating him as a person. This particular style of politics is the cesspool that the Right and the Republican Party apparatus swim in. We do not further our agenda by imitating them. Fight, fight back, and fight hard—but fight clean. It’s ultimately what I believe the majority of Americans would like to see.
There is also nothing wrong with saying nice things about McCain’s
constituency,
and you should. We want to hold our hand out to people who have voted for Republicans in the past. Many of them are tired, a good number are disgusted. They won’t agree with a lot of what we stand for, but they’ve had it up to here with the Republicans and we should make sure our tent is big enough to welcome them in.
So if you want to help elect McCain, keep blessing him as if he were the white knight who accidentally hopped on the wrong horse. Forget to continually point out that he is truly up to no good. Keep pulling your punches. Don’t remind people McCain wants to help the oil companies even
more
than Bush did. Don’t bring up that he wants to outlaw all abortion. Back away from painting McCain as the guy who thinks it’s a good idea to stay in Iraq until pigs fly. That way, if you keep praising him, you can send a mixed message to the less-informed who are simply not going to figure it out. When they walk into a voting booth, they will see two names on the ballot:
_
BARACK OBAMA
_
WAR HERO
Trust me, this ain’t Sweden you’re living in. War Hero wins every time.
2. Have Obama pick a Vice Presidential candidate who is a conservative white guy, or a general, or a Republican.
Yes, it will seem like smart politics at first.
Shore up Obama’s lack of military experience with a hawk.
Be true to Obama’s message that he’ll be a president for
everybody
by having him run with a Republican.
Make a pitch to the purple states of Virginia and Indiana to vote Democratic this time by putting one of their own on the ticket.
Or swing for the fences and make the red state of Ohio happy by handing the vice-presidential slot to its governor.
But by doing any of this, you will upset the base that not only must come out on election day, it must also be
active
and
work
dozens of hours during the campaign. They have to personally bring ten people each to the polls with them if we are to avoid the disasters of the past two elections. Many of them won’t do this extra work if Obama picks the wrong Veep. It will suck the air out of the balloon in a big way.
Obama electrified the nation on the notion of change and hope and a new fresh direction in Washington. If he picks a running mate who screams “Same old same old,” it will make it harder for him to attract all the new voters he needs to bring to the polls to win. Remember that there are nearly 100 million adults who choose
not
to vote. That is a large base from which to draw millions of new votes. Obama should not desert a strategy that has worked well for him.
There is nothing wrong with picking someone who can help him win a swing state or someone who has more experience than he does in certain areas. But when I hear pundits say, “He has to pick a Catholic,” well, John Kerry was a total Catholic and the Catholic vote went to Mr. W. I mean, here’s one of the largest groups in the country—66 million Catholics—and they/we have only allowed one Catholic to be president in 208 years. You would think they would have been flocking to Kerry in 2004. THAT IS NOT THE WAY PEOPLE THINK. IT IS THE WAY PUNDITS THINK. Keep listening to them and you can help elect John McCain the next President of the United States.
3. Keep writing speeches for Obama like the one in front of the American Israeli lobbying group the day after the final primaries.
Here’s what he said:
“The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.”
and
“. . . Let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation.”
Sounds like a speech McCain would give. Sounds like he’s ready to invade Iran. He staked out an even worse position for the Palestinians vis-à-vis Jerusalem than the one held by George W. Bush. Keep that up and more and more supporters will be less and less enthused. It will be harder to keep the base motivated if they continue to hear how Obama wants to expand Bush’s “faith-based” initiatives, doesn’t have a health plan that covers everyone, and wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. The implied message of all of this is that the Republican plan is a good plan. So why would voters want to elect the candidate imitating the Republican when they can get the real thing? Talk like this gets McCain elected.
4. Somehow forget that this was a historic year for women and that there is more work to do.