Election Blues Approximately
Here we are more than a year from the next presidential election, and already I’m tired of the whole thing.
Let me rephrase that a bit more precisely. I haven’t really been following the “campaign,” although it certainly seems like Hillary Clinton and Obama Barack have been running for president since, well, the last vote was counted in the 2004 election. But really, despite the barrage of publicity, most of us are only now getting around to even thinking about who we will support in next year’s election. So at least as far as this voter is concerned, they have wasted the last couple of years of campaigning. Until next year, I really don’t give a shit.
Except for some clips on YouTube and The Daily Show (love the fly on that Republican candidate’s hair), I haven’t watched a second of the dozens of forums or debates, and why should I? I generally tune in to the presidential election about the time of the Iowa or New Hampshire primaries, and already pundits claim that Hillary Clinton has wrapped up the nomination for the Democrats. Does this make any sense whatsoever?
When Jon Stewart asked this question of Sen. Joe Biden, who’s running a low-key campaign far in the shadow of Clinton, he said that he thinks people have real lives to take care of (or, out here in Denver right now, imaginary lives through the Colorado Rockies), and don’t really have time to think about the next president until, oh, next year.
If you read the media or watch TV, it’s a whole different world. Already, black leaders have complained that certain Repubs snubbed their forum and inferred that it’s because they don’t care about blacks. Commentators spent more time analyzing Hillary Clinton laugh than her health plan (and isn’t that a bit early to release something like that?). Fred Thompson has been criticized for not getting in early enough and, by inference, not spending enough money. Can a person be president if he doesn’t wear a lapel pin with an American flag? More than a year to go, and we’re down to this, folks.
Everything that the candidates say will be scrutinized, overanalyzed and trivialized. And whenever they slip up and say something suspicious, there’s YouTube so we can all overanalyze and trivialize it. Whoever we elect, we’re gonna be sick to death of them.