Last time: I spent four word document pages attempting to show how generally good an idea it is to maintain a balance in most walks of life, from athletics to economics. I gave one or two republican and democratic examples of how maintaining a balance in representative government with republicans v. democrats in our local, state and federal offices where that standard does not apply because of how they continue to mis-represent the middle class. Politicians from these two parties are simply too beholden to those who help to get them elected, or who have helped to push through a candidate’s policy initiatives.
The relative, unfortunate future condition of the middle class is not readily apparent, but neither is an illness which can incubate in a person’s circulatory (heart disease) or respiratory system (pneumonia) or in their blood streams or bone marrow for days, weeks, and even years prior to its bursting out and manifestly weakening or killing a person (cancer); yeah, this country is sick, “[it] has a fever, and the only prescription . . . is more cowbell,” or more votes for centrist/populist candidates so that a cure for the middle class may be found.
My son also rises: I am waiting on another balancing issue- It isn’t known when my son will reward his parents with their desire for him to balance his hopefully forthcoming lack of interest in causing havoc with his ability to do so. Word to the wise, if a child squirts liquid soap all over his grandmother’s carpeting, don’t add water as a way of fixing the mess. Soap + water = lather; this compounds the problem and literally expands it by making it more of a three-dimensional calamity. There isn’t room in this installment for a complete listing of things that my adorable young lad has been up to in the last two years. Not to worry, I’ve been thinking like a prison warden since he was crawling up the stairs at seven months. He would have to levitate to get at the steak knives . . . yeah, maybe I should move them to the padlocked shed in the back yard. How often do you really need cutlery anyway.
Middle Class job: The job of the middle class voter is to vote for someone who better represents those caught in the middle- who are not considered by either the democratic candidate who generally panders to the poor, the immigrant, the economically weak, and the republican candidate who generally caters to the rich, the executive, the corporation, the economically strong. The first objection that someone will have toward this proposal, if they haven’t already promised their vote to either side, is to say that a third and fourth party candidate needs economic support (i.e. money) and that once they procure it, they will be just as beholden to their constituencies who provided the money to them as the democrats and republicans whose representation of the citizenry of this country millions of people have already informally called into question. I have just one thing to say about those people . . . they’re right. Friggin’ bastards!
But this is only true until such time as the politicians responsibly pass real campaign finance reform legislation that limits the amount of money candidates can accept and how much they can spend on an election . . . . . . . . But it is more likely that a nomadic royalist cleric lioness will have demographically irresponsible sexual relations with a eunuch marmoset (don’t ask) with a multiple personality disorder going through couples therapy by itself (see, because of the multiple personality disorder- ahem) than we have of enacting laws limiting campaign finance intake and outlays. We can’t control how our money is spent when the blood-sucking politicians are in office, there is not much chance in curtailing the money spent by big corporations who aren't getting something for nothing, when they financially back a politician's candidacy.
Right not to party: You can’t win an election without support, which primarily comes in the form of money. However, what needs to happen is to break up the monotony, the duality, the polar opposite viewpoints a voter is confronted with when they are undecided about who to vote for. Completely favoring one side over the other is far too simplistic for the more realistic voter, a member of the middle class who should not favor either party. The Beastie Boys were not telling the whole truth- we also have to “fight . . . for [our] right . . . [NOT] to paaaaaaaaarty!”
Bad Taste: Those who are voting on strict party lines, see nothing wrong with voting based on their best interests and completely ignore the overall health of the entire country. Legitimizing third and fourth parties, so they get equal press coverage, equal debate time, ensures that all economic and social classes are considered and ensures that some of the candidates, backed by the middle class, get elected. Me personally, I like to look at a menu- if I head to a craphole of a restaurant and if I don’t feel like consuming the overly-breaded E. Coli chicken wings or the seared to the point of cinder-pattied hamburger, I might want to choose something more palatable. As voters, continually supporting candidates who represent the democratic or republican parties, who are pretty much just spokes-people for a collection of a fairly predictable, seldom-nuanced, political, social or economic set of principles is in bad taste. Jeff Goldblum’s line from Jurassic Park while standing before a giant heap of triceratops dung could be used to adequately summarize most any republican or democratic candidate’s platform- “that is one big pile of shit.”
Political Mimes: Getting a number of politicians elected who aren’t republicans or democrats also eliminates the next issue that the narrow-minded republican and democrat will bring up when trying to strike down the idea of not voting for their respective parties—which is a nothing argument if you vote your conscience, your interest, and your country’s best interest. Yes, the democrats and republicans are better at making something out of nothing than the Momenchantz. Ahh, they were a mime group “popular” in the 1970s . . . think of a mime inside of an invisible box- ah, that would be making something out of nothing. Considering the double-speak of candidates, adopting southern drawls, and waffling on issues (see part 12), they aren’t definitively saying much of anything anyway and may as well be mimes.
The Elect: Electing multiple populists, libertarians, green party, or centrist candidates will ensure that presidents, governors, and congress-people have to work with them- which will mean that middle class, as well as the whole country’s interests are not pushed aside. The third/fourth party politicians wouldn't be attempting to conduct business with his political peers on an island if more of them were elected. If only a few populits are elected, and the votes on bills that could really help the middle class don’t go well, then the assumption by the voter is that the populist the middle class helped get elected has been politically compromised, has fallen under the spell of one of the other parties, or has otherwise failed. So then, support for these third and fourth party politicians will waiver and subsequent candidates will lose elections because voters didn’t elect enough of them to storm the castle of government- not because they were terrible representatives as combatants against the rampant status-quoism of oligarchy. In an age where people want instant satisfaction, advocating something where the payoff won’t come in 20-30 years is hardly a popular stance. Often the army with the most soldiers wins the battle.
People need not worry that they’ll feel like the last person picked at kickball because the lesser of the two evils they voted for didn’t win. Many things in life are about compromise, the game of politics is no different. I have never been a politician, so far as I remember, but I’m mindful of the old adage about the possibility of success in any endeavor, whether that is voting for a political candidate or plunking down a couple bucks on a steed at the track- you only have a chance to win when you have a horse in the race; the horses we’ve been betting on aren’t running with us in mind.
Segway paragraph: When I do go to the track, which is about once a year, I find that in the program there are opening odds on the likelihood that each horse will win the race. There are favorites and long shots and sometimes betting on the long shot makes the most sense because you get a better return on your investment- the possible reward is worth the risk. The odds change based on the amount of money placed on the respective horses that will be racing. The horse-racing analogy may be a good one to use as a comparison to the current contestants running for president. There would need to be two heats (one for republicans and one for democrats); there are plenty of nags, and even a philly running for the job to be the next person to screw over this country at the highest level. Candidates given the chance to debate the issues, resort to name-calling, lying, specialize in revisionism or simply dig up a misrepresentation of someone’s voting record and we lose out on real policy debate. I've seen some of the post-debate recaps on Fox News and CNN and read articles after the debates and this is exactly what has happened- it always does. I believe it is historically accurate to say that races involving a third candidate for any office contain a better discussion of issues than the bi-partisan variety we are usually treated to. I will forgo the opportunity of attacking the current field of presidential candidates individually and instead will do so collectively. And anyone that dismisses the notion of voting for a populist because of the election of a former wrestler to the governor's mansion in Minnesota in 1998, and his subsequent rocky political road, is dealing with a rather limited number of test cases. The two guys he beat were highly representative of their respective parties, which didn't serve them well. Ventura won for a reason.
Here piggy, piggy, piggy: There probably aren’t odds for this, but the primary election cycle would more aptly be compared to a race of pigs, especially if we were to know how much money the candidates had earmarked to their various pet causes—called pork-barrel spending; starting January 3rd (Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s primary date) there will definitely be a few pigs/candidates who will get slaughtered. There are plenty of boars/bores and one sow on the democratic side leading the herd; they wallow around in the mud, especially after one of their opponents has slung it at them . . . that might be enough pig analogies. And plenty of the porcine-egoed candidates have gone hog wild attempting to court voters. I couldn't resist.
Oddsmakers: I may be wrong, there may be pig-racing odds, but a contest that garners much more attention, and wagered money, is one that is fought by placing 11 men on both sides of a field fighting over- huh . . . the pigskin. I am talking about football. One way of influencing the outcomes of games, outside of videotaping opposing coaches using hand signals to direct one team’s defensive players and never really being punished for it, is to provide odds for a sporting event as a way to level the wagerable playing field for the purposes of drawing betting money to it, is to provide odds. Just kidding- I just had to take a shot at super-Satan Bill Bellicheck.
Oddsmakers II: Open the sports section or go to any casino in Vegas and you will be made aware of all kinds of spreads/lines/odds on which teams are favored to win games. Vegas is a place where you can bet on almost anything- who will win the game, by how much, who will win the opening coin toss, which team mascot will be more inebriated by the time the game concludes- everything! Vegas oddsmakers are pretty slick. It is their job to know all kinds of things that I can’t list because this post is already too damn long. The most important part of their job is to set the line (the number of points given to the underdog- i.e., how many points the oddsmakers would expect the underdog to lose by, to encourage betting on both sides for the favorite and for the underdog.) A line of 6 ½ for the Cowboys over the Packers, means that the Cowboys would have to win by 7 points (covering the point spread) for the person who placed the bet to collect their winnings. In politics, poll numbers accomplish pretty much the same thing- Clinton leads by 5% points over Obama or Paul trails Romney by 37%. The difference is, that in elections, by voting/betting on either a democrat or a republican- you lose your money (think tax money), because if any voter thinks the person they help elect will actually reduce or prevent a rise in taxes . . . well, let me know when I can stop laughing. This will be more obvious when/if you hear them trying to figure out which side of each issue to be on so as not to alienate potential voters who might vote/bet on them. When Clinton attempts a southern accent, Obama tries to act more black, Giuliani pretends to act tougher on immigration, or when Huckabee is deciding which red tie makes him look more presidential, they are attempting to manipulate the public and win voter approval, a practice commonly referred to as shading. Put simply- the republican and democratic parties balance each other out by appealing to one set of voters or another on any issue you can imagine. Their platforms seldom intersect: where the republicans are in favor of gun control, the democrats are against it; where the democrats are pro environment, the republicans are apathetic; where the democrats would over-tax the rich and middle class, the republicans would tax the poor and middle class. Hmmm. They are their own oddsmakers, who set the odds and benefit from having successfully fooled their half of the sheep who vote for them. Generally, there is more variety, both claimed and actual, on a top 20 radio station hosted by the Dr. Johnny Fever of the anteater species who himself knows he should vary his diet by eating more arthropods than there is amongst the candidates distinctively separate themselves from any number of rivals belonging to the same party.
I mentioned that each democrat is pretty much the same as their democratic counterparts. So it is important for them to remain competitively balanced, and not attempt to express themselves in the political margins. During the republican debate in Iowa on December 11, 2007 an MSNBC.com article was critical of a Huckabee tax position because it "could be used to paint him as outside the mainstream." And the problem with that would be? The candidates must be careful not to lose the vote of the immigrant, of the rich, of the farmer, of the union member. Often, candidates win just as many votes by staying on the fence on issues as they do when they make their intentions known. The public, even the debate moderators aren't making them alienate people on one side or the other. This too will have to happen in order to get third and fourth parties legitimized. Sometimes I feel like you couldn't get these waffles to come down against eating broccoli dipped in turpentine because it might offend all light-shaded coniferous trees and all members of the cabbage family. (Turpentine is derived from pine trees and the cabbage family enjoys broccoli as one of its members.)
Polls: I mentioned political poles a couple paragraphs above- these too are to the detriment of the public. Polls will be conducted within a week after the 2008 presidential election to get a preliminary read on who could be interested in running for president in 2012. Ridiculous! Why would the American public need to be told four years in advance who might be running for president when we haven’t even started getting screwed by the satan that just got elected? Poll results months and weeks before an election is bad enough. These polls influence voters who are only semi-aware of a few candidate’s positions on a limited number of issues. Likewise, the press, television, newspapers, magazines, even bloggers can’t focus enough time, attention, or space on more than two or three candidates from each party- because they don’t have it. Poll numbers put the idea of a fair election in jeopardy from the get-go. Asked by phone if one approves or disapproves of Ron Paul or Bill Richardson and we respond that we don't know. Well, we don't know because of the lack of news coverage, so then the news decides to focus on the leading candidates who are leading as much because of polls taken and news coverage as anything else- a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.
On Strike: I wandered across the news that the December 10th democratic debate was cancelled because of the writer’s strike. I initially thought the debate was cancelled in lieu of the absence of television and movie writers. But the reason the debate was cancelled was because the politicians didn’t want to cross the picket line- of the news writers, who have been working without a contract since April 2005. I assumed the debate was cancelled because writers who get paid for making stuff up wouldn’t be able to provide the candidates with fictitious platform stances, fresh new ways to waffle on issues, and the ‘devil is in the details’ clever turns of phrase that would perk up the ears of political pundits, words that impact elections by too often finding their way into the nightly news (ie. sound bites)- things like “read my lips” and “I actually did vote for . . . the bill before I voted against it.” Funny, there isn’t actually much “sound” (sensibly impactful) policy verbally delivered, relative to the noise of what religion someone is, whether they served in the military or come out against a Siamese mosquito species desiring the legal right to co-habitate.
Feed me: Besides, we should demand a meal from the candidates, and not just a bite, or we should learn to bite back; the best way for a voter to get a better political meal, and to beat the odds, is to stop betting on the favorites, demand another course, and to go on strike. A week out from christmas- I can’t put a better bow on the problem than that.
Next Time: A shorter blog? A columnist who will attempt to become a better friend to the animal kingdom he has alienated by discontinuing the practice of affixing physical or psychological maladies to various species in order to hyperbolically demonstrate how ridiculously unlikely certain desires might be? A new topic? After how successful this topic has been? That would be positively goofy.
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