Gore Vidal once remarked that the United States has only one political party with two right wings. At the risk of betraying my own political bias: I couldn’t agree more! Still, maybe 2020 will be different?
The ultra-marathon-up to the next election has already begun in the Summer of 2019 with the Democratic Party debates. MSNBC, a kind of Fox News for liberals network, hosted the first round, fielding twenty candidates, split evenly over two nights. Most of the presidential contestants in this “high concept game show” format were treated as bunting, or so many doodles in the margins of a Big Pharma script, more to be seen than heard.. As boutique diversity merges into statistical redundancy, the DNC theory seems to be: the more contestants, the more emphatic shall be the “win” of the eventual “winner.” But, wasn’t that the Republican formula in 2015/16?
No matter how the contest is set up, upsets are always possible–or, even desirable. For example, witness Hillary Clinton’s nomination over Bernie Sanders — “Oops!” — only four years ago. Then, lo and beholden to all the bankers who’ve bailed him out, Donald Trump “burned,” so to speak, Clinton in the general election, which he only lost by a whopping 3 million votes — and Clinton wasn’t all that popular to begin with! Just ask Bernie Sanders, or Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Indeed, contrary to conventional expectations, upsets were the order of the day during the last quadrennial election cycle. God forbid that we should be allowed to elect a Socialist-sounding Jew from Vermont! Hillary Clinton, and her big bank backers, certainly did not want that; so, why not hand the country off to a Reality TV show host like the big bank beholden Trump, instead? Was that the sound of our one political party rubbing its two right wings together?
Because American politics have become so like sports by other means, it is worth reiterating that the 2020 DNC strategy has not only copied the 2016 Republican playbook: they have actually expanded upon it by simply adding more players. Recall that the Republican side of the post-Obama campaign began with a baker’s dozen of contestants with “unelectability” literally tattooed on their foreheads — including that tweety faux-pachyderm, Trump. Given the “surprising” results of 2016, it is notable that Team Trump chose not to challenge Barack Obama in 2012, despite Trump’s weirdly well-publicized “birther” campaign against Obama, which foreshadowed both Big Media’s free press pass for all things Trump, as well as the aura of illegitimacy that has framed the Presidency ever since…Trump was “elected“? One wonders how far an illegitimate fruit can fall from an illegitimate tree?
Indeed, Trump’s strange election eerily echoes the hollow resonance of the most bizarre quadrennial in recent history, when George Bush the Second rode a single Supreme Court vote into the Oval Office, in 2000. However, before delving into that doozy, its follow-up, in 2004, deserves special mention.
There once was an anti-war candidate named Howard Dean (from Vermont, of all places!) whose front-runner status got Debbie Wasserman-Schultzed, as it were, by Presidential campaign veteran Dick Gephardt, in Iowa. Before the Gephardt take-down, Dean had been riding high on his opposition to the occupation of Iraq, which was clearly going very badly. Dean’s potential nomination meant that the anarchy in Iraq — a direct result of the illegal American-led invasion — would factor prominently in the general election. In the event, the anti-war buck was preemptively stopped in Iowa, allowing the Iraq war hawk John Kerry a “surprise” win. From Iowa, Kerry cruised to the nomination, only to play second fiddle to his Skull-and-Bones Yale fraternity mate, the incumbent Bush, and a disastrous war policy had been saved.
Later, Howard Dean was given a participation award in the form of the DNC Chairmanship. Since then, the former anti-war candidate has swiveled full circle to become a cranky Yankee who has vilified 2020’s anti-war star, Tulsi Gabbard. Put another way: Howard Dean was eaten by the one party political machine, only to be regurgitated in a more palatable form — if not rocking the War Party’s boat is anyone’s idea of a more palatable form.
Now, back in 2000, nothing very military was going on. The one party political apparatus had coughed up two equally unappealing Junior fur balls: Al Gore and George W. Bush. Incidentally, Bush would have never gotten his day in Supreme Court if Gore had won his home state, Tennessee. In fact, well before Dan Rather “called” Florida for Gore on election night, “dirty tricks” in South Carolina had pushed Bush — in a tight race — past Senator and Vietnam War veteran John McCain. McCain was later given a participation trophy for services rendered: the Republican nomination in 2008, where he was soundly squashed by the relatively unknown upstart Barack Obushma — I mean, Obama — who had himself “upset” Hillary Clinton (of all the usual suspects!) for the Democratic side of the one party nomination in 2008.
Ironically enough, both Obama and Trump have an “upset” of Hillary Clinton in common. That Obama and Trump share two sides of the same big bank coin: is this insight becoming increasingly more obvious? For example, despite 8 years of the “Change”-ling Obama, America is still making Afghanistan a “Great Game” again under Trump, as if Bush the Second’s war-mad regime were still ghosting about in office 18 years later, like it never left. And the War Party rolls on…
However, before the War Party got really rolling, in 2001, there was Green Party Candidate Ralph Nader, who remains the most interesting figure in the scandalous 2000 election. In 2000, Nader scooped all mainstream media pundits by correctly identifying his major party opponents as “Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” Nevertheless, unlike our current “Fake News” President, Nader was not granted a free press pass for “bucking the System.”
And not only that. Nader’s campaign was seen as so threatening to the one-party-with-two-faces that he was physically denied access to the sites of nationally televised debates between TweedleBush and TweedleGore (See: John Hagelin vs the Federal Election Commission, decided on June 10, 2005), for fear of Nader’s potentially “disruptive” influence. Pointing out the obviousness of duopoly: how “disruptive,” indeed!
Meanwhile, back in 2019, the “Survivor 2020” program seems hell-bent on appearing to include everyone — even if you’re Andrew Yang and your mic’s not turned on. “Technical glitches, folks; just technical glitches. We’ll get everyone a Universal Basic Income right after these words from our sponsors!” Of course, it’s a game predicated on extinction, the last contestant standing. No one wants to go home a dinosaur, having voted a dinosaur in office. Next thing you know, extinction’s your next door neighbor!
Not to beat a dead horse race, but to rest my case, I recall a certain debate between status quo Auntie Hillary and Grandpa Donny-boy Trump, in 2016, at Washington University in St. Louis, where Hillary, wearing an irradiant shade of white, accused an obviously lurching Trump of being a “puppet.” In true Trump form, the Donald shot back: “No, you’re the puppet!” Each political actor then accused the other of being “the puppet” in a seemingly spontaneous exchange of pointless, puppet blows. Which was an uncanny moment of Truth for both of these foremost Liars vying for the Presidential Throne; each recognized the “Other’s” puppet status, quite equally — and for All to see!
In case there are any questions about the Duopoly: See Gore Vidal…
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