This is shaping up to be the strangest and most brutal presidential election any of us are likely to see. That’s with luck: there may be worse ones down the line, but if so we’ll all be too busy gathering roots and berries to care.

It’s hard to see any Republican candidate coming out of the primaries intact, let alone the general election. Mitt Romney has his little Mormon problem, along with his entire pocket liberal public career, dragging him down with the fundamentalist freaks. Giuliani is more or less insane (one could say that about all of the Republicans, but he’s clinically ill), and is toting Bernard Kerik, Norm Podhoretz and a city-financed adulterous affair from stump to stump. Mike Huckabee’s God-powered campaign apparently is running without benefit of anyone who follows the news, while convicted rapist “Dear Wayne” Dumond won’t stop following him around. John McCain hasn’t yet taken a bite from an opposing candidate’s leg, but the moment is edging ever closer. Ron Paul is Ron Paul—he has the massive GOP anti-war vote sewn up, and he’ll probably finish primary season with more money in the bank than any other losing candidate, but that’s as good as it gets for the government-hating squirt. Tom Tancredo is likely to prove the most successful of the whole crowd, not because he’ll win anything but because his signature issues, xenophobia, jingoism and racism, have really caught on with the others.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is hauling in tons of cash from the fine people who brought you the housing bubble, and otherwise doing her best to prove (as if we need more proof) that a lack of good judgement is no bar to high office—she recently floated the notion that Colin Powell, now most charitably viewed by the rest of the world as a well-meaning dupe if not a full-on war mongering whore, would make a fine ambassador at large (along with other, unnamed Republicans). Barack Obama is busy attempting to destroy confidence in Social Security, and seems determined to out-God the Republicans. John Edwards is running a well-financed and not too stupid campaign that the press are doing their level best to ignore; Chris Dodd is talking sense into the void; Joe Biden is despondently waiting for unofficial campaign orator Neil Kinnock to make a speech strong enough to land Biden a cabinet slot; Kucinich is gunning once again for prophet-without-honor bragging rights.

And things are going to get even uglier. The general election will play out amid what threatens to be a truly nasty recession, with large numbers of people struggling to keep a roof over their heads and otherwise survive. Iraq is going nowhere, in whatever sense you care to take that, and despite the general happy talk about the new NIE having scotched an attack on Iran, the situation with that country remains the same: it’s a war in search of a rationale, not the reverse. Dick Cheney is still a man living on borrowed time with an unfulfilled mission and only a year to pull it off.

The press—well, the press will continue doing their fine job of sucking up to the administration where they can and simply blowing stories where they can’t. Cases in point are Joe Klein, whose latest gem involves describing Bush’s lie about when he learned that Iran has no nuclear weapons program as “an amazing moment of candor,” and CNN, which just cancelled a “speculative documentary” called “We Were Warned — Iran Goes Nuclear”.

“Speculative documentary.” Featuring Christie Todd Whitman, James “WW IV” Woolsey and David Gergen. The Most Trusted Name In News.

Despite the press and the determined Democratic strategy of avoiding anything that even hints of progressive politics, Republicans, the economy and our lying, demented president seem set to help Democrats win very big. On the surface that seems like a good thing, but the end result will probably be a Democratic administration and Congress who think that winning without exertion implies a mandate for governing the same way.

It’s a damn shame Hunter Thompson killed himself, because this election could have been scripted with his peculiar talents in mind. There’s voodoo in the wind.

Bookmark and Share

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl Google

Hugg Jamespot Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinkedIn LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb

Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Twitter Webride Windows Live Worlds Movies Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

Powered by Bookmarkify™