Ooooooooh! Spoooooky!

I've come up with an analogy I like so much, I've used it about fifty times today: the embarrassment I will feel if Bush is reelected will be approximately the same embarrassment I felt when Marion Barry was reelected. And that, for me, is pretty much the crux of the matter. I don't think Bush invaded Iraq to help out Haliburton, I don't think the world will end if he wins on Tuesday, and I do not think the rest of the world will suddenly fall in love with America if John Kerry wins. But it will be pretty humiliating to have to say, "Yeah, I'm from the place where we not only had a retarded man in charge, but we had a retarded man in charge and liked him so much, we voted him back in after he did a really bad job."

This will be the fourth presidential election for which I've been eligible to vote, and perhaps the second in which I actually will vote. '92 and '96 I was in college and did not bother with absentee ballots. I wanted to vote in '92, though, as I was high enough to take Bill Clinton at his word, ignore the fact that he was using Fleetwood Mack's "Don't Stop" as his campaign song, and pretend he'd never appeared on Arsenio. Jesus Christ. Arsenio. I never got that guy. He was good in Coming to America, though. I'll admit that much. But his show was painful. Not that most late night talk shows haven't been painful. Really, Letterman's the only one that never made me want to put my fist through the TV. Uh, but, back to Clinton... I had an awful lot of faith in the guy. He really made me feel like he was the man to lead this nation (and--let's be honest--by extension, the rest of the world) into the 21st century. Shame he accomplished just about nothing.

Clinton instilled confidence in the people, though, which I think is a vastly underrated measure of a leader's success. Confidence begets confidence, which in turn bets Yehoshua, who in turn begets Shmuel... Oh, but--ha ha ha--that was a joke there! The point is that Clinton still had enough potential to make me root for him over Dole in what was probably the only election race of my lifetime to feature two decent candidates.

In 2000, I voted for Bill Bradley in the primaries because a) Al Gore was a total stiff, b) Al Gore is married to the lady who founded the Parents' Music Resource Center, and c) Bill Bradley is not Al Gore. Also, Bill Bradley was in the NBA, which is kind of cool. Of course, neither Bradley nor any of the other highly forgettable Democrats running for the nomination stood a chance, and we were left with the aforementioned Mr. Gore. In Gore's favor was his commitment to the environment and his belief in the importance of technological advancement. Which tells you right there what a fucking dud the guy was. I think he was one of those establishment types who really wanted to be down with the counterculture, to act like he was really "with it" and "totally groovy, daddy." Still, his opponent was George W. Bush, some numbskull out of nowhere, who'd achieved nothing beyond being born with a slightly better pedigree than that of Al Gore. That's not fair, though. Bush had accomplished one extremely important thing: he'd accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.

Which leads us to the here and now. Democrats I've talked to all seem to think Kerry will win. The one Republican I know thinks Bush will win (but he would only say that he is probably going to vote for him, and couldn't bring himself to mention Bush by name). As for me, well... my money, as always, is split evenly between the late Gus Hall, the even later George Lincoln Rockwell, and the for-all-intents-and-purposes late Lyndon LaRouche.