Friday, January 26, 2024

Does Dean Phillips Have a Path?

 

Andrew Yang tantalizes us with this question: Does Dean Phillips have a path to the Democratic nomination?  The answer is something like, Dean Phillips plays hockey and will feel familiar to people in Michigan. I don't know what that has to do with politics. Andrew Yang doesn't know what that has to do with politics. Andrew Yang doesn't get politics, and I don't think Dean Phillips does either. Dean Phillips is carbon-based and bilaterally symmetrical. It feels familiar. Is that something? 

Being 51 years old doesn't qualify you for president. I mean, it's older than the requirement to be at least 35 years of age. I'm 51. Dean Phillips, Andrew Yang, Nikki Haley, Beto O'Rourke, and all the members of Green Day are around the same age. So's Elon Musk. The idea that politics is about demographics and branding feels really business school and dumb. So are the packaging ideas:  I do a sport, so I'm relatable. I wear a vest. I have a haircut. I look presidential. 

The lesson of New Hampshire should be--Dean Phillips doesn't have a path, because there were no delegates to be awarded there but 1) $5 million got spent on him and 2) a mostly grassroots write-in campaign said "drop out Dean" and he got hammered and he isn't dropping out. Clue-having he isn't.


So the lesson will be repeated. In South Carolina. Where in 2020, if Andrew Yang recalls, that primary field got gathered. And the path significantly narrowed for important reasons that have not changed. Trump is still a major threat to democracy. We still have to deal with the question of whether this nation, or any other so conceived, can endure. 

And these COMFORTABLE dickheads want to fucking wishcast and visionboard some shit about how we need new blood because our $56K divers watch says it's time?  GET FUCKED. 

Speaking in my most Generation X voice about anything: Who the fuck died and told you we need another talking head No Labelsing and Green Partying like it was the year 2000? We have been disappointed by bullshit our whole lives by Boomers, and now your fresh asses come around to give us the same shit with "X" flavorings? We are not the same generation because did your asses ever live enough to know why we can't go back to the 1980s? Were you scared queer bullied teens? Were you aware how racist white people get to be when they don't know anti-racist people are listening? Are you going to sweat ever retiring because the cost of living is fucking you while working and retirement will suck harder? 

Are you going to ID your generational birth year at me and then not know what my life is like? Are you chatting it up with people who would deny me the right to an abortion when at my age, I BEST not be trying to get pregnant, but I might slip up? And no, very little good is coming from my geriatric lady business. 

What I'm saying is--I know what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris mean in office, and I don't need a change. I need Donald Trump wiped up like a spill on a vinyl tablecloth. And I don't know where Dean Phillips fits into all that, except by not playing, not putting down someone who did the work, and recognizing he isn't going anywhere so he needs to stop trying to do damage on his way, most definitely, out. 

And if that's not Pepsi Crystal, let's make that Tab Clear. 

2 comments:

Dan Kleiner said...

well said. as an analog/cyber straddling gen Xer, i concur. seriously, where the fuck does andrew yang get off? "oh, i should be the president!" (narrator: he was not the president). "oh, i should be the mayor! (narrator: he was not the president). it's like he's bob shrum 2.0.

FFS.

thank all the gods that the domestic enemies of democracy are really, really fucking stupid.

Vixen Strangely said...

Everyone has to eventually admit they are bad at something. I'm not great at math--I only passed freshman calc at college with the help of friends who were very good at it, and realized I should give anything to do with higher math a miss (I became an English lit. major).

Andrew Yang is not good at politics.

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