Hunter S. Thompson:
How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but ‘regrettably necessary’ holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.
[Update] On an up note, Chris Bowers won a seat on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee in a write in campaign yesterday. Chris mostly hates me so I expect some sort of putative action coming my way in the near future, but I’m happy for the guy nevertheless. The revolution isn’t always sexy. Getting heavily involved with the official organs of the party at the local or state level is one hell of a way to shake things up a little.
it was out of sheer frustration.
That’s BushCo’s wish for all of us.
Stonewall us into terminal depression.
It’s hard to resist…
AG
Pfui. Vote for the Democrats. Do your best to make them the best Democrats. Everything else is Vanity–like all of Hunter Thompson’s work and death.
wow, thanks for the insightful, inspiring words. Voting as bodily function … necessary, unavoidable, might as well just do it.
Too bad you’re too wrapped up in your happy little world to learn from the insights Thompson had to share.
The Democratic Party needs to DIE!
Get the hell out of the way and let Americans have a democracy.
Democracy is a lie and a fraud as long as the single party right wing that runs both the GOP and DNC is in control.
The only solution left for me is to resign my voter registration and burn my voter registration card. Being a registered voter in America gives the fraud of American democracy a facade of validity that it does not deserve.
Between gerrymandering, mass criminal disenfranchisement and apportionment manipulation, practiced by both the Democrats and Republicans, American democracy is a sick joke.
In the history of the U.S. there have probably been few elections where people liked their choices. Picking candidates through primaries is a new concept, most candidates over the years have been picked in smoke filled rooms and voters had no say anyway. Your candidate doesn’t win a primary? Sorry. But move on.
For me it all boils down to this — Defeat Republicans. Any action that achieves that goal is good; any action that hinders that goal is bad.
Thanks for the words Mary. You are very kind. I didn’t expect anything other than what I got. None of us did. I’ll speak for myself and say that I moved on long ago, but that doesn’t make the issues raised by the marginal candidates in this campaign any less pertinent. The issues that both Sandals and Pennacchio brought to the table were life and death and as serious as a heart attack. Both were compelling in debate and on the stump, but it didn’t make a shit’s worth of difference. But that’s the game, right?
It is way to easy to clear a primary field for any office anywhere. I’m sad that my party filled it with a candidate whose positions are for shit.
Look, I’m used to shit senators and shit representatives and shit district attorneys and shit city council people and shit mayors and shit committee people and a whole lot of really awful shit that I don’t care to write about in a public forum — and I do move on. I move on every day. Everybody does. What choice do we have? That said, the huge heaping pile of shit polluting every piece of our public policy doesn’t keep me from expecting better. Is the Pennsylvania senate election this year a holding action? God, I hope so, because if Bob Casey is the new normal I want the old weird.
might as well submit … nothing will ever change. Geez.
Good thing the suffragists, the abolitionists, the labor activists and civil rights activists didn’t take words like yours to heart.
For me it all boils down to this — Defeat Republicans. Any action that achieves that goal is good; any action that hinders that goal is bad.
I think that’s a laudable goal but in this case it does not hold up to close scrutiny. Why do you want to defeat republicans? Presumably because you don’t like the way they govern (at least that’s why I don’t vote for them)
I don’t like their attitudes towards women and their assumption that I and my daughters are 2nd class citizens. I hate and fear the religious right and disagree with everything they represent including their very notion of the proper place of religion in my culture and the proper place of women in that culture. I don’t like their contempt towards the poor either. And Casey gives the religious right such hope and he fills me with despair. I hope he loses to Santorum because if he is elected in a majority pro-choice state that will only encourage the assholes who ran him in the first place.
Santorum didn’t wait a day before he started hammering at that hack Casey:
The Republicans fight hard. The Republicans fight dirty. The Republicans fight for keeps:
Casey is a weak, whiny and ineffective candidate. Mirroring Santorum’s policies on so many social issues takes away a whole range of weapons with which to attack him.
I’m predicting that Casey is going to lose, and he’s going to lose badly … so I think you’re going to get your wish. Hopefully, snatching this defeat from the jaws of victory will finally put to rest the centrists hacks in DC destroying the so-called party of the left.
Yup. And Santorum is a theo-fascist thug.
The only real choice for Americans: a mealy mouthed appeaser of theo-fascists or a theo-fascist.
Democracy in America? Stick a fork in it its done.
Democracy in America? Stick a fork in it its done.
It’s a bad race. The long term prospects for Democracy are better served by a Casey defeat.
I’ve got a lot of hope for the Lamont/Lieb primary. Sending jomentum to spend time with his family would be a real triumph. And I like Tester in Montana very much indeed.
The two really depressing races this year are Ford in TN and the religious right debacle in PA.
That quote bothered me more after his death. He was a guy known for letting loose. Was he really holding back, or was that bluster? Maybe if he had let loose he’d still be alive today. Maybe if he had learned to let the nascent blogosphere help him out.
As long as we are on legendary journalists… I.F.Stone was the sort of journalist that the ‘blogosphere’ has become at it’s best.
Truth without proof is just biting comedy.
Democracy in America is a lie and a fraud!
Participating on American elections give them a facade of legitimacy that they do not deserve.
Our (Fightin’?) Democratic Governor Brad Henry has sided with the GOP-controlled State House in its wrangle with the Democratic-controlled State Senate over what to do with our $1 billion budget surplus (brought about largely by high oil and natural gas prices).
Rather than expanding needed state programs (infrastructure and education, e.g.), or even fully funding existing commitments, Gov. Henry (D, remember) and the Senate want to cut taxes, including abolishing the state’s estate tax. And guess who gets the lion’s share of the money? The top 5% of the earners in Oklahoma (what a shock!).
The kicker is that state law makes it nearly impossible to raise taxes, so in addition to being a shortsighted use of this $1 billion, it will also put the state behind the fiscal eight ball for the foreseeble future.
The moral of the story: This is what you get when you blindly vote for anyone with a “D” after his or her name. Yes, the GOP is worse. But precisely because the GOP is methodically ideological, it will predictably pull the public debate rightward unless we elect candidates who clearly stand for progressive values. Gov. Henry is an almost cartoonishly perfect centrist. He does everything possible to avoid leading on any issue facing the state, and then carefully tacks to where he senses the prevailing winds are blowing. In our current political climate, such people do nothing but carry water for the far right, for whom it is particularly convenient that they are Democrats. Hope y’all in the Keystone State enjoy your Senator Casey.
That’s Gov. Henry and the State HOUSE who want simply to cut taxes. The Democratic-controlled State Senate boldly proposes a combination of needed state spending and tax cuts for the rich.