Aside: isn't that awesome? In a nation that prides itself on being a democracy, our congresscreatures effectively have positions for life.
Money is pouring into this race from all over the place and their ads are omnipresent on TV, usually playing back-to-back. There's not a single positive one in the lot, save for a 30-second spot where someone says Scott Peters handed them wads of cash or something.
Carl DeMaio is this runty, gay dude who oozes loud-mouthed self-importance. Scott Peters is a diffident, WASP-y weasel who looks like the type seen in the background of Mussolini photos wearing tailored suits bought with looted money. If either of them sat next to you at a bar, you'd be handing the bartender a $100 bill to clear a $15 tab and heading for the door without waiting for the change and most of your drink untouched.
I have no idea what either of them stand for or what they'd do once elected. I do know that Scott Peters did his best to wreck San Diego by having us borrow tons of money so he could hand it out like a big shot. In any case, I don't have the slightest notion what my vote means in the race between these two.
A bigger pair of loathsome, self-aggrandizing weasels you might never find.
And there's no one else on the ballot.
Thanks to our election rules, there is no one from the Green Party, the Libertarians or even the Peace and Freedom party for whom I can vote. I can't even protest vote. This weekend, after enduring another pair of ads which informed me that Scott Peters' hand was in the till up to the shoulder and Carl DeMaio was a puppet of the Tea Party and hated students, I told my wife, "That's it! I'm voting Libertarian or Green Party or ANYTHING but these two!" She quite agreed. Then I looked up the ballot and found no other choices.
Yay for democracy.
Don't know if it is true, but I heard that in early days of voting in Russia, there was the choice to vote for none-of-the-above. I always thought that would shake things up.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia has an article about "none of the above" on ballots, and yes, the last few elections in the Soviet Union did have that option. Boris Yeltsin credited it with helping along the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia then kept it until 2006, when it got abolished.
ReplyDeleteApparently governments in general really hate the idea, and resist it strongly. Which I think is a pretty strong argument in its favor, actually.