The Campaign Is Over, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #286 | @MDWorld

August 6, 2012 Mike Gold 6 Comments

It’s now just a game of Red Rover. On one side, there’s the hardcore right, the “we’ve got to get rid of that Muslim Commie Obama” crowd. On the other side, there’s the hardcore left, the “The Tea Party’s Coming! The Tea Party’s Coming!” crowd.

Except nobody’s breaking through the lines. Get used to it. The hardcores are so hardcore they’re X-rated.

What’s left are the so-called independents, the ones who find neither Obama nor Romney appealing. Perhaps they’re scared by the people behind the candidates. Perhaps they consider Obama a nice guy but ineffective and Romney a panderer who will take any position to get elected. Perhaps they’re put off by Obama’s race and/or perceived religion, and they’re equally put off by Romney’s actual religion and his hidden tax returns.

Let’s face it. Some see Barack as Nipsey Russell and Mitt as Chatsworth Osborne Junior. These are people we call “morons.” And these morons are going to do what morons always do every four years: they either don’t show up, or they cancel each other’s vote.

So the only real game in town is called “getting out the vote.” To win this game, you’ve got to get your hardcore to come out 100% while hoping yours is bigger than the other guy’s. In politics, size counts.

Make no mistake about it. Romney’s infuriating performance in England, Poland and Israel got his core to stand up and cheer. “Screw the A-rabs! Screw the Brits! This is white Christian America and god loves us!”

No politician ever went wrong pissing on the Brits during an election. My favorite story involves (of course) former Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson, best known for being the last Republican ever elected mayor – he lost the seat in 1931 – and for selling Al Capone the keys to the city. Big Bill once stood before the City Council and stated King George V of England was the greatest threat to the United States and that, if George V were to visit Chicago (there were no plans) Thompson would “bust him on the snoot.”

The ravings of a childishly stupid politician? Hell, no. Chicago had – and has – a preposterously huge Irish population. Add to that the hardcore right’s view that the Queen of England, the Jews (particularly the Rothschild family) and the other dynastic families run the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and most of the global intelligence agencies, and you’re rallying the troops.

As for Romney’s insulting the Arabs, well, if you don’t think that’s been a matter of great sport here in the freedom-loving United States of America ever since Giuliani Day, I suggest you try and open up a Muslim cultural center.

Obama is playing to his base of blacks, women, Hispanics (hand-delivered to him by the Republicans), liberals, Muslims, socialists, and just about everybody who isn’t either a Christian zealot, a white middle-class male, and/or stupidly wealthy. And even that latter group is split. His supporters wish he got to that point years ago, but clearly losing his Pollyanna glow has bolstered his hardcore.

What’s going to affect the outcome? As I said, the size of the hardcore turnout and, to a lesser extent, the whim of the so-called undecided independents – many of which, history tells us, won’t make up their minds until it’s too late for them to show up in the polling.

There are three other important factors that will affect the outcome. First, the tsunami of Jim Crow laws being passed by the Republicans all across the nation, targeted to disenfranchise blacks, the poor, and others more likely to vote Democratic. Second, individual precincts’ abilities to steal the vote – a factor in any national election – by such tactics as lying about polling places, times, and even dates.

Finally, there are the local elections. A good solid race on the municipal, county or state level will mobilize some voters. You might not care about Obama or Romney, but you just might care about your Senate race or the Gubernatorial campaign or gay marriage. And as long as you’re there anyway and you made it through the new voter voir dire, you might as well select between the incompetent jerks on top. “It doesn’t matter anyway; they’re all the same.”

Yeah. Say that to the next Supreme Court justices.

—-
A man who loves voting so much he shows up for school board elections and votes Libertarian, Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com , every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week (check the website above for times) and available On Demand at the same place. He also joins Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.