Slightly Off the Mark

 I was very curious to know what the results would be from the upcoming US Presidential election, so I borrowed a car from a friend of mine and went to check it out.

When that baby hit 88 mph, I saw some serious stuff.

First of all, I was surprised to learn of the massive grass-roots write-in campaign that led to the election of "None of the above".

It perhaps comes as no surprised that after a tie vote in the Senate, Senate President Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote to deny the results, her reasoning being that None Of the Above is not a real person. That led to a surprising challenge from California, by a person who, in 2005, did indeed have their name changed legally from Karma Applebutter to None Of the Above.

None--if I can call them that--lost their case after it was discovered they were born to Swedish parents during an airplane trip from London to Dubai to protest climate change. For those of you who haven't read it, that made them Constitutionally unable to run for the highest office. The same held true for their VP candidate, Toker Guitarsolo, although they claimed to have at least been conceived during a northern California wine tasting event.

 This left the election winner as the second biggest vote getter, which was another surprise because, it turns out, no one had actually checked to see who the second biggest vote getter was.

Vice President Harris again cast the deciding vote in the Senate, contending that, while having a tiger as a Vice President would be kind of cool and useful for dealing with dictatorships, Calvin and Hobbes technically are not real people.

This came as a great disappointment, and in the years since has generally been recognized as a great opportunity lost.

A movement to repeat the election collapsed when Donald Trump and Joe Biden announced they were leaving politics to become standup comedians. Their HBO special, "The Joe and Don Comedy Tour" broke viewership records and won three Emmy Awards.

In the end Kamala Harris was certified as winning the election by narrow margins in both the popular and electoral vote, after serving as temporary President until the recount was finished in early 2026. The last of the legal challenges was thrown out of the 9th Circuit Court just after Harris finished her second term in 2039. The attorneys pushing that lawsuit disappeared shortly thereafter.

"Oh, a sanity clause won't work here."

Harris' suspension of the Constitutional to allow her to serve longer is hardly surprising, considering the outbreak of the Second Civil War in 2029. The conflict, between one side that called itself the United States and another that called itself the United States, ended quickly when the side nicknamed "The Coast States" discovered that their opponents in "The Middle" did indeed have a lot more guns and ammunition. The US Military, busy in other countries, declared itself neutral.

Presidents Harris and Vance then held a productive meeting in which The Coast agreed to stop making reality TV shows. The Middle promised to keep sending food to the cities, whose populations had never been entirely clear on where most food came from.

The citizens of Chicago later tried to secede and join Canada, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Beiber refused, saying Chicago was "too mean".

 So, there you have it. As I predicted last week, Kamala Harris will be declared the next President. Hold your noses and vote, people.

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My son-in-law Vince replaced our malfunctioning toilet with a brand new one tonight, for which I'm very grateful (as you might imagine).

On a related note, there's an election coming up tomorrow. Ordinarily, in mid-term elections the party occupying the White House does badly. I have a feeling, though, that this time around the Democrats are going to do pretty well on a national level. That's not a hope or an offer to debate, just a semi-educated guess.

Whether you prefer the toilet or the urinal, please get out there to vote. Political offices are like toilets: They should be flushed often, or they'll start to stink. And no, it doesn't matter if they're number one or number two.

 

Looks like the Congressional Lavatory got another renovation.

 

I haven’t written about politics for some time, mostly because of certain keywords that permeate modern discourse: “Hateful”; “vindictive”; “mean”; “hypocritical” … okay, some of them aren't so new. Also, certain trigger words that cause those reactions, such as "politics", and "Have a nice day".

(By the way, "Have a nice day" is going to be my reply to any particularly wrathful comments to this post. It's time to steer away from useless shouting.)

Still, I do have a history of making predictions, so here’s what I think is going to happen over the next few years. Just to be clear, my Presidential prediction success rate is running at about 50%.

There's a chapter on politics in this book. But the rest of it's pretty good.

The Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives. This one’s crazy easy: The party opposing the sitting President almost always makes gains during off-year elections. The Dems also have their usual advantage of a fawning mainstream media, so I’m pretty confident of this one. We also had more than one “October Surprise”, and all of them screamed “go blue”. 

The Republicans will maintain control of the Senate, although just barely. This will result in a scenario in which half of Congress actively does everything in their power to keep President Trump from doing anything, including picking out ties, having brunch, or watching the Superbowl. As far as actual work getting done, things won’t look much different.

Keep in mind that over the last several decades Democrats controlled Congress much more often than Republicans did, which helps explain why they’ve been so irate the last couple of years. I understand: I’d prefer to be in charge, too.

I could be wrong on all of this; conservatives are just as fired up right now as liberals are, but they feel saying so often leads to them being personally attacked, so many are keeping a low profile. On a related note, remember when we could disagree and still be nice to each other? No? Well, I was younger, then.

What I can guarantee is that political ads will continue to be more and more vicious, which is also a pretty easy call. In my area they’ve given up on words like “misleading” and gone straight to calling each other liars. We’re getting closer and closer to political campaigns looking like the Red Wedding in “Game of Thrones”. I predict that by early 2020, ads will start with wishes that opponents campaign in Iowa without their overcoats. They'll end with suggestions that the other guy get tarred (with toxic sludge) and feathered (with arrows).

Can't we all just get along? No? Okay.

It’s no great leap to say all this animosity and lack of general niceness is connected. We probably won’t get back to any form of civility until someone from outside the country attacks America again, or a comet takes out New Jersey, and possibly not then. 

By the way, I predict the 2020 Presidential campaign will begin December 2^nd, 2018. The fact that more and more Americans are becoming infuriated by the extended campaign seasons hasn’t gotten through to politicians any more than anything else has. 

In 2020 the Presidential election will be won by Democrat Kamala Harris, after the other Democrats maim each other into bloody pulps in the primaries. She’ll have a majority of a few million and barely squeak by in the electoral college, which supporters will declare a landslide. I don’t know much about Harris, but she’s from California, so she’ll have her home state locked up. Her mother is Indian and her father Jamaican, which means any criticism of her can be stomped down with cries of “racist!” I’ve read up on Harris a little and I’m not overly impressed, but I suspect she really doesn’t give a darn what I think. 

President Trump, taking his cue from the Democrats after the 2016 election, will pout.
 

Other predictions for the next few years: 

A terrible storm will cause damage somewhere. 

A politician will fall out of grace because of something that ends with “gate”. 

Entertainment award shows will continue to ditch celebrating entertainment in favor of being political. 

Some cool new technology will sweep the world. 

A major business will go bankrupt. 

Oh: And the American economy will turn down, headed toward a recession by the end of 2019, and be in full recession sometime in 2020. Our economy goes in cycles, and we’ve been riding a wave for too long—the wave is overdue to crash. I’m just the messenger. 

Of course, by the time most of that happens you’ll have forgotten I wrote this, so right or wrong, I’m safe.

Thus, I've earned the right to complain.