In New Hampshire, we’ve been shot up good with presidential political shrapnel for more than a year. We get canvassed on our home and cell phones, we get out-of-state college students knocking at our doors to interrupt dinner with a smile and a plug, and (this was the worst) we get Ron Paul henchmen handing us fliers while sitting in traffic on I-93 during a snowstorm waiting for tow trucks to clear an accident up ahead.
In that case, just roll down the window and smile to accept the material, it’s the fastest way to get rid of them. Even though you might be tempted to mess with them and say “Your man Ron says he’s against something he calls ‘birthright citizenship,’ which I sense has something to do with the children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil, but my four-year-old in the back seat here is worried you are going to rip him out of our home and send him to Iceland if he gets elected so we refuse to vote for your man.” Just to show those goofy twits that you are paying attention to the race and are ashamed that they have bought into that candidate’s particular brand of jive.
This primary business can be overwhelming, but Jan. 8 is the end of it. We Granite State voters wield zero power nationally once our little popularity contest is over. The candidates won’t be back, ever, whether they win or lose the primary.
So our time is now, and we take our mission quite seriously: Thinning the candidate herd so that voters back in my home state of Ohio, for instance, don’t screw up any worse than they have in recent years.
We listen to debates. We read the papers. We can’t help but hear the spin of every broadcast pundit. Especially the loudest, crassest buffoons on the right: Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and the jack-assiest of them all, Michael Savage — unholy triumvirs who cast a putrid stench on politics, squelch intelligent debate, and in general give so many people permission to feel good about being callous, uncaring, ugly Americans.
While I am proud, flag-waving liberal, I’m also tired of my side’s reasonable, measured responses to this garbage, as John Lee Hooker liked to refer to some of the people in his personal universe. I’m tired of our side meekly offering milquetoast, spineless ripostes to the right-wing TV clowns who focus on issues that completely don’t matter: Who cares about whether gay men and women can marry if the hospital’s about to foreclose on my house because I can’t pay my medical bills? Really? Who gives a flying freak?
It’s all too much. Besides my own self, I trust one other commentator. You want political Wisdom with a capital “W,” you go to John Lee Hooker. That’s why, before I vote, I’m ordering up “Democrat Man” (download), a cold shot from the box set called, simply, Hooker.
He played his guitar in the no-spin zone, where he ain’t got no shoes. Clearly, however, he’s no fool, and can see that he’s not the only one pissed off with the situation at hand, and we’re all gonna vote. Won’t be too long, he says, until election time, and the Democrats get back in again.
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