November 5
Facebook friends, in the wake of the latest New York Times/CBS News no-shit-Sherlock poll showing most Americans tired and fed up by the 2016 election campaign and deeply pessimistic about our next president’s – whoever she might be — ability to unite the country, The Jourmudgeon has stolen a page from the cable networks’ quadrennial food fight coverage.
Belatedly, The Jourmudgeon has decided that his babblings need a snazzy branding for marketing purposes. Here it is: Election 2016: The Race for the Outhouse.
The Jourmudgeon is assured this marketing ploy will practically guarantee the success of his post-election, nation-unifying initiative: Jourmudgeon TV. Jourmudgeon TV will be a guaranteed hit because if, as seems likely, more than 40 million Americans will vote for Donald Trump, then they’ll buy anything. The Jourmudgeon urges you to send him – The Jourmudgeon, not Donald Trump — all your money so that you can get in on the ground floor of this sure winner. In return, The Jourmudgeon promises not to waste your hard-earned dollars on paying contractors, or workers, or other losers, and certainly not on paying taxes. In fact, The Jourmudgeon promises to declare bankruptcy immediately so that creditors will not be able to get their grubby meathooks on the money you will give The Jourmudgeon for The Jourmudgeon to spend as he sees fit. F’rinstance, The Jourmudgeon currently has his eye on purchasing a teen beauty pageant because it will allow The Jourmudgeon to walk into the little girls’ dressing room when they are in their birthday suits. Your contributions will also allow The Jourmudgeon to fondle the contestants and whoever else strikes his fancy whenever he likes.
With that record of public service as a wind at his back, The Jourmudgeon is sure to secure the Republican nomination for President in 2020. Mitch McConnell will be too busy not holding hearings on Supreme Court nominees to notice.
Sorry, Facebook friends. Please excuse The Jourmudgeon. The Jourmudgeon must be having an acid flashback. In what parallel universe could such a thing ever happen? But rest assured, The Jourmudgeon has not been spending all his time daydreaming. In a bit of investigative reporting so deft it will rival the FBI’s — if The Jourmudgeon does say so himself — The Jourmudgeon has uncovered a single email from Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to President Obama late in 2015 that explains every strategic and tactical decision in the Democrats’ 2016 campaign:
“The Republicans’ nomination of Donald Trump would occasion the most lopsided election result in history,” Schultz’ email predicts. “Who on earth would vote for a bullying, misogynistic, racist, lying, egomaniacal tax dodger, conspiracy theorist and sexual predator with no record of public service whatsoever? Our best polling indicates that with any viable Democratic challenger, unless we put our thumbs on the scale Trump would lose the general election 108,694,308 to 4. This assumes that Trump would vote for himself, and that people who are institutionalized would be allowed to vote.” (Jourmudgeon’s note: The number of Trump votes would actually have approached 16, assuming that the jurors who acquitted the Bundy brothers could figure out how to cast ballots.) “Such a lopsided result,” Schultz continues, “would also all but guarantee that we would unite the country, regain control of both houses of Congress, and even wind up with a Supreme Court that focuses more on justice than on the law.
“Obviously, we cannot allow this to happen. Our reputation as the party of empathy would vanish as a result of such an electoral bloodbath and the resulting gloating and picking at Trump’s corpse. It would also destroy our hard-earned identity as the party that could screw up a three-car funeral.
“To avert such a disaster, I urge us as party leaders to act immediately. My plan:
1. We make sure that Hillary Clinton becomes our standard bearer. In our primary and convention rule-making, we not only stack the deck against Bernie Sanders and other challengers, we also make sure to leak what we have done to the press.
2. We encourage Donna Brazile, in her part-time role as a CNN commentator, to exploit that obvious conflict of interest by slipping Hillary some debate questions in advance. Then we leak that, too.
3. We have Hillary respond to a scathing finding by the FBI’s director about her carelessness in using a personal server for sensitive State Department emails by claiming that he said she did nothing wrong.
4. We make sure, through further defensiveness, evasiveness and arrogance, to make Hillary’s connection to a foundation that has spent billions of dollars worldwide eradicating poverty, disease and discrimination somehow look sleazy and illegal.
5. We give the estranged husband of Hillary’s top aide, who is himself under investigation for an accusation that he sexted an underage girl, access to a bunch of Hillary’s State Department emails. By the time the FBI finds out about those, the director will blunder into a vague announcement about a ‘review’ a week and a half before the election.
“All of these measures are admittedly a stretch, but I think it’s something the Democratic Party is capable of doing. Our victory in November will still be safe, because not even this strategy could possibly guarantee that a plurality of Americans would vote for Trump. But at least we will make the race competitive (and we might even manage not to take back the Senate). I don’t think any of us has the heart to hurt Trump’s feelings by labeling him a loser.”
Wrong. The Jourmudgeon does. Vote, Facebook friends. Vote. You know what is at stake.
