Election buzzwords: Goodbye and good riddance
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Looking at the bright side of the past eight years, if either Gore or Kerry had been named King of America, then the chance of the U.S. electing someone as dynamic and sophisticated as Barack Obama in 2008 – from either party – would have been greatly diminished. And we’d still be in a politics-as-usual rut. So, thanks to the Bush administration for helping ruin the country enough for it to get the chance to be reborn under a dramatically different style of leadership with Obama. Eight years of George W. Bush made this historic presidential election possible.
Fortunately, this November the majority of the country actually decided they don’t like being belittled by tiresome clichés and practiced folksiness. Am I right, all you Joe Six-Packs, all you hockey moms? Are we nauseated yet? These election buzzwords are what politicians think Americans identify with, apparently. But I’d like to think most Americans are astute enough to understand that clichés only weaken speakers’ messages and demean their audiences.
So, while Rudy Giuliani is still taking meds to recover from his 9/11 Tourette’s, the country is floundering in post-election withdrawal – as the final wave of campaign catchphrase diarrhea works its way out of everyone’s system. Thus, I’d like to bring closure to the election season with an epic, cringe-worthy, run-on sentence of trite terms and hackneyed phrases. Are you ready?
Lest we forget, my dear fellow Americans, here’s some food for thought:
Look, my friends, the liberal media is completely in the tank for these abstract notions of “hope” and “change” and I fear that, as a Washington outsider, this credit crunch could be a real gamechanger if we don’t just sit down with Joe Six-Pack and stop measuring the drapes, and also too if we think about whether to side with Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers on the radical left or with all the hockey moms, mavericks and religious wingnuts on the right, 
then really, if we focus on the creation of new jobs in the Real America and avoid falling victim to gotcha journalism, that should demonstrate how we’re helping Main Street and not just bailing out Wall Street, so let me take you across this Bridge to Nowhere and see if we can’t demonstrate the Bradley Effect on election day, because, look, if you really think about it, this presidential race is all about telling the difference between rhetoric and record, and we’ve got to mend Washington’s poisonous partisan divide that splits the country into red states and blue states and learn to make a new purple America, because, yer darn right, it would be downright un-American to ignore the Heartland in favor of Washington elitists since, make no mistake, I would like to give a shout-out to all the good, hardworking voters of Florida, Michigan and Pennsyltucky, and while my opponent may appear more fervently patriotic, I’d rather see a lipstick-wearing pitbull lead this country than a socialist, you know, what we don’t need is an out-of-touch straight-talker who probably doesn’t even care what Joe the Plumber thinks about Troopergate, because the Dow plunges 400 points every day anyway, I mean, you know how it works in the good ol’ boys’ club, from Scranton all the way to Wasilla, because you see, what I want to do is reform the Zogby polls to more accurately reflect working class whites, and focus on improving the economic fundamentals under the umbrella of bankruptcy, because the surge worked in Iraq, and because I have the most foreign policy experience, I’m earmarking this groundswell of support for the future grandchildren of this great country, for every battleground state and every swing voter demographic, and then we’ll drill, baby, drill because this election is all mine, baby, mine, I really mean it, and you can trust me because I’m getting my facts on the ground, we’re gonna smoke ’em out, and you can take that red meat to the bank, my friends, because I know the most important thing is to turn out the base, even if we have to resort to robocalls and ACORN voter fraud, since true patriots aren’t on the mainstream media’s liberal agenda, you know, we’ve got to rein in spending on big-ticket items and help out those average Joes worried about making their mortgage payments, and learn to embrace tax cuts for the wealthy, because we’re all frustrated by special interest groups and out-of-control pork-barrel spending, but mostly we just don’t know what to do with all these gosh-darn pies in the town halls, even though we plan to reach across the aisle and unite our nation for the greater good, but also mainly we’ve got to support our troops and usher in a new age of traditional family values, in order to preserve the sanctity of human life and white liberal guilt, and maybe play the race card, for all the security moms who need affordable health care and for their pregnant unwed teenagers, but I’m not so sure about these Reagan Democrats, I mean, I’m all for tracking down terror-loving terrorists and enemies of freedom and democracy, but who can you trust anymore, except me, because I’m a true reformer and I think if we want to fix this screwed-up country, then you should repeat after me: YES, WE CAN, you betcha, we’re gonna git ‘er done, maverick-style. Wink, wink.
OK, that’s it. I will now light myself on fire.
You may also be interested in this impressive graphic: This Fucking Election (which is where I stole the graphical excerpt above).
We can only hope that Palin will fade into Bolivian now.