Days of Future Past

Old Timers Day

©2013 Alan Levine used under a Creative Commons license

[A meeting in a small conference room in a hotel somewhere within the Beltway. There’s a banner on the wall reads “DLC2: The Mod(erate) Squad” and a presentation screen. AL FROM, founder of the old Democratic Leadership Council, sits in a comfy office chair at a small conference table adorned with Starbucks cups. He wears a grey fleece jacket over a golf shirt, khakis, and boat shoes, and fiddles with a laptop. To FROM’s right is JAMES CARVILLE, similarly dressed, and to his right is MATTHEW YGLESIAS, wearing a checked Ben Sherman shirt, untucked, grey Swet Taylor pants (too tight) and moccasins. JOSH BARRO, wearing a dark $3,000 suit, a white t-shirt, and black Chuck Taylors, sits off in a corner. BARRO and YGLESIAS are playing with their phones. They all seem to be in a lull.]

CARVILLE: [To FROM] You gone off coffee, Al? I see you ain’t drunk none o’ your latte.

FROM: I don’t have much of a taste for it since they went union.

CARVILLE: Yeah, they some woke motherfuckers. Good coffee though.

YGLESIAS: [Still playing with his phone] That’s just in Buffalo though.

CARVILLE: [Contemptuously] Buffalo! I tell ya, that Indira Walton or whatever her name is. We showed her ass though, din’t we. Cain’t put no socialist in the executive, no sir! Beat her on a write-in with a real Democrat, with, with, with whats-his-name! An’ now he gonna turn that place around like Julie-annie.

BARRO: [Still playing with his phone] Fifth term.

CARVILLE: What’s that?

FROM: This will be Mayor Byron Brown’s fifth term.

CARVILLE: Oh. Well, them black towns, you gotta woik harder. Get a Cory Booker in there. On’y I don’t like him much neither. I dunno. Oprah?

[Pause. CARVILLE looks around; he seems pissed.]

Well c’mon! Whatsamatter with y’all? Cain’t you get excited about this heah project? We gotta get these damn snowfakes onna run! Ideas, people, we need ideas.

FROM: Well, James, if it’s ideas you want, I think this presentation will excite you.

CARVILLE: My man! I knew I could count on you! Awright, now you boys, y’all put your phones down, an’ learn f’um a mastah!

[Presentation screens come up. FROM reads along with the captions:]

[Pause. BARRO and YGLESIAS have not stopped playing with their phones.]

FROM: That’s it.

CARVILLE: Gawdammit Al, what the fuck is this shit? Two slides? They look like sumpin’ a little retard kid cut on his desk with a penknife! You had a gawdamn hunnert thousand dollah graphics budget! Way the hell did it go?

FROM: We had a few meetings with a very reputable design firm, but we couldn’t see eye to eye so I came up with this today. I’m not very good with computers.

CARVILLE: No shit!

FROM: But it’s the idea that’s important. What do you think? McConnell said they wouldn’t have an agenda in ’22 and I think that’s a great opening for us. We could come out against criminal race theory, for example.

CARVILLE: Critical race theory, Al! It’s called critical race theory!  Aw, hell, let’s get the young’uns in here, Josh an’ Matt. You a couple bright boys, what y’all think about it?

BARRO, YGLESIAS: [Looking up from their phones as if they just heard an ice cream truck] Hmm?

CARVILLE: Will ya git off them phones! Al From, th’ savior o’ the Democratic Party, who been toinin’ elections since you was suckin’ yo’ momma’s tit, done come up with a idear! Now you take a look an’ tell us what you think!

[BARRO and YGLESIAS stare blandly at the screen.]

YGLESIAS: I don’t know what this is.

BARRO: [sotto voce] Like something out of Mad Men.

YGLESIAS: [sotto voce] Not even. [To CARVILLE] Oh, but you know we were talking to Megan McArdle? And we all just had this great idea: Dryers.

[Pause.]

CARVILLE: Dryers, whut — yuh mean like the Danish fella whut made Ordet an’ Day o’ Wrath?

BARRO: Tsk! Clothes dryers. OK so some leftists, on Twitter? Said the United States was like backwards? So we said, well if we’re so backwards, they why do Europeans have such tiny dryers, and Americans have such big dryers?

YGLESIAS: Ya. I can’t be sure, because we blocked them all? But I don’t think they had any comeback.

[Pause. CARVILLE stands up.]

CARVILLE: Y’all shittin’ me? Clothes dryers? What’s this, some kind o’ sissy Williamsburg bullshit?

YGLESIAS: Actually Woodside, which is in Queens, is the new —

CARVILLE: [Exploding] Gahdamnit shut the gahdamn hell up, y’all makin’ me sick!

[CARVILLE pulls out his phone, starts punching buttons.]

Everybody lost they gahdamn minds! Joe Biden, nevah thought I’d see the day, he all hopped up on woke shit, tax an’ spend, trillion-dollar budget — he ain’t said nothin’ ‘bout crack or welfare reform since the 1980s! That fuckin’ Obama is what, shoulda killed him when we had the chance, I tole Hillary, routine traffic stop, say he reached in his pocket, bang, all our troubles is ovah. Wouldn’t do it. Now look, we got this BLM, it’s chasin’ all the white people out of the party an’ [yelling at phone] what do you mean I cain’t get a towncar I ain’t ridin’ in no gahdamn CAMRY! OK, that’s it, I’m calling the chopper! [Points to FROM] And you’re paying for it, ya senile ol’ fool! Later, ladies!

[CARVILLE stalks out. Pause.]

YGLESIAS: So was that homophobic or…

BARRO: Well, I wasn’t offended.

YGLESIAS: Mm.

BARRO: But it was homophobic.

YGLESIAS: Mm.

[They go back to their phones. FROM gently snores. Curtain.]