Author’s Note: I originally wrote this piece in 2019. I’ve revived it here because many of the same principles apply for the appalling slate of candidates now lining up for the most important job in the world. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
The field of candidates for the 2020 Presidential Challenge Blowout is taking shape just in time for pitchers and catchers — they report for spring training in early February – and what makes this timing so marvelous, so utterly serendipitous, is that it is also beginning to look a lot like a mid-season Sausage Race.
The Sausage Race is a baseball tradition born in Milwaukee where, during the seventh inning stretch of Brewers games, sausage mascots dress up like different sausages and go racing around the park. It’s a fan favorite, because nothing beats watching a ten-foot kielbasa faceplant on the infield, or a tottering chorizo slamming into an andouille, or an out of control bratwurst veering off course and flipping wildly over the dugout rail.
It’s hard not to see the burgeoning field of candidates for the American presidency in much the same way.
To wit: video posted by Mother Jones magazine of Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke wearing a onesie, and what appears to be a pig mask, while covering Blitzkrieg Bop – an otherwise terrific song by The Ramones. To be fair, Beto hasn’t formally announced, perhaps because he was too busy live-streaming from a dental chair while getting his teeth cleaned, but I sincerely hope he runs — if only to see how low the bar is actually set for the most important job in the world.
Not to be outdone, software gazillionaire John McAfee has announced his candidacy, albeit from exile on the high seas. McAfee has not paid taxes, by his own admission, for eight years, and has some trouble with the IRS. As to his platform, McAfee recently told reporters — via satellite phone while bobbing around in a severe nor’wester: “…do not ask me about immigration, foreign relations, education etc. I have no idea.”
At least he’s honest. Other candidates in the field will undoubtedly wax endlessly about their brilliant solutions to these problems, but on the heels of a month-long government shutdown it’s quite clear that no one in American politics has any solutions anymore. For anything.
Instead, it’s every weenie for himself.
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