You can't order Kung Pao Chicken at an Italian Bistro!
I had a dream last night I was at a restaurant with some of my old friends. It was an Italian bistro and they had the usual pasta dishes and the veal cutlets - good hearty food. But one friend, who was younger, and believed "The customer is always right!" said, "I'll have Kung Pao Chicken, I'm in the mood for Chinese food!"
The waiter responded, "Ma'am, this is an Italian restaurant, we serve Italian food. What we have to offer is on the menu in front of you. What can I get for you?"
But she was having none of it. "Kung Pao Chicken, like I said! I'm the customer and I get to have exactly what I want! No excuses!"
I woke up in a cold sweat and realized why I don't go out to dinner with old friends like that. But it got me to thinking about the election and the complaints I read online (which are likely from Russian troll-bots) along the lines of "Is this the best we can do with Presidential candidates? Maybe Biden or Trump should step aside and let someone else run!"
Andrew Yang, the ersatz billionaire (even moreso that Trump) has been beating this drum - Biden should "step aside" and let someone else run! Yea, someone else! Maybe Andrew Yang? Talk about a self-serving argument!
The reality of politics is that you have a menu in front of you and you can only order off the menu. There are no secret "off-menu" choices that the kitchen can make for you. And while you can stamp your feet and hold your breath until you turn blue in the face, the kitchen can't make you Kung Pao chicken without the proper ingredients and expertise.
But this does not mean you don't have a choice or that your choices don't matter or that they are poor choices.
The media is having an orgasm over the "debate" as the media likes to generate controversy and drama because they make money this way. I generally don't watch these "debates" as I am not an idiotic "undecided voter" who thinks "both sides are the same, so why bother?" and other attention-getting statements. While both political parties are indebted to corporate sponsors and big-money donors (act shocked, and then grow up and grow a pair) they do have markedly different philosophies.
And bear in mind, we are not anointing a king, but electing an administration, which includes twenty-five cabinet members. Not only that, there are appointments to various administrative agencies, from the Patent Office to the Post Office to the Pentagon - and yes, who is appointed and their philosophies makes a huge difference in how our government is run.
Then there are judicial appointments, which, as we saw during the Trump years, makes a huge, huge difference in how our lives work out. People are upset at the Supreme Court, but fail to realize it was Trump and a Republican Congress that put the conservative majority there - a majority that is engaging in "judicial activism" in redefining the separation of powers itself. According to the Supremes, unless Congress specifically authorizes a regulation in excruciating detail, the administration is powerless to interpret and enforce the laws. This reduces the role of the Executive Branch to little more than an HR office. Might as well toss the C.F.R. in the trash - promulgating regulations is so last-year!
So yes, it makes a difference who you choose, and you can only choose what is on the menu. That is still one helluva choice and bear in mind in many parts of the world (e.g., China, Russia) you have no choices. And one "choice" on the menu this year is to eliminate all future choices and let the waiter order for you, in perpetuity. One bowl of gruel, coming right up!
But what about third-party candidates? Why not have a system like in Europe? Well, taking aside the problem our European friends are having right now, they have Parliamentary Democracies which are structurally different from ours. Their system is designed to have a plurality of parties and as a result form coalitions of power - which often fall apart. I am not saying one system is better or worse than the other, only that the odds of completely re-writing our Constitution to move to that system is about as likely as the EU moving toward our two-party system.
It just isn't going to happen. It isn't on the menu. So stop trying to order it and having a hissy-fit when they tell you it is not available. That isn't a practical solution to anything. But yea, when I was younger, I thought I was a genius for pining for pie-in-the-sky ideas. Then I grew up.
Third party candidates are spoilers, plain and simple. And in a way, they are like the obscure menu items that some restaurants offer on the back pages of the menu that no one in their right mind orders because the kitchen rarely makes it and as a result, it sucks. It is akin, as I noted before, to my friend ordering an obscure pasta dish at a pier-side shrimp shack. It not only sucked, it arrived after everyone else had finished eating. Trying to "get what you want" often backfires.
Crazy Kennedy à la Brain Worm is a poor menu choice.
I mentioned earlier that "debates" are sort of pointless as most people make up their minds early on, based on their political views. A die-hard MAGA fan isn't going to suddenly change their mind because Biden made a good argument. Similarly, a pro-choice liberal Democrat isn't going to suddenly become a Trumper because "He didn't seem so bad" in the debates.
The whole political debate thing goes back more than a century. One of the most famous debates was the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Lincoln lost. But the main issue - slavery - was eventually decided against Douglas' position. I would not place too much weight on debates.
The Nixon-Kennedy debate of 1960 was another famous debate, this time televised. Perhaps the candidates back then were closer together in terms of political spectrum. Kennedy expanded the Vietnam War, as did Nixon, before the latter finally ended it when it was apparent it would never be won and it was draining the coffers of the Treasury. Supposedly, people who watched the debate on television thought Kennedy "won" while those who listened on radio thought Nixon the winner. I suspect that rural voters with radios tended to vote Republican and city-dwellers with their newfangled tee-vee sets, tended Democratic. Again, I doubt the debate changed many minds.
The Sarah Palin debate was interesting only in that it sealed the fate of the McCain campaign. And I guess that is one reason why debates can be important. Elections in the US are close (despite the lopsided appearances of the Electoral College). And those people who vote based on personality or "which candidate you'd like to have a beer with" or "which candidate eats his pizza with a fork" and other trivial bullshit, can sway an election one way or another.
Trump won because Hillary lost. Biden won, in 2020, the States that Trump beat Hillary in, in 2016 simply because he wasn't Hillary. I am not taking a dig at the former First Lady, just recognizing that two decades of Hillary-hate on right-wing media seeped into American culture. Particularly among blue-collar workers, admitted support for Hillary would be akin to announcing you were gay. Now Trump, that's a guy who grabs 'em by the pussy!
Hence why Democracy fails sometimes.
Obama, of course, famously "lost" his first debate (who decides who is the "winner" - the media?) and went on to rout Romney in the second and win re-election. Maybe Biden is playing the long game here - setting exceptions low, so even a mediocre performance later on is seen as a "win." It's a trap, Donnie, run!
Myself, picking a candidate is a very simple proposition. I choose the candidate who is least likely to set up a death camp and have me exterminated. I know, that is selfish, but that's just me. And in the past, that seemed like a bit of a long-shot proposition, of course. But this time around, we have a candidate who has promised to make himself dictator-for-life and extract revenge on his enemies and surrender the country to Russia.
I mean, gee, it is a tough choice! After all, Biden is old.
