Joseph DeClension, J.P. There are only 894 voters in Sanka, Nebraska where DeClension serves as Justice of the Peace, but the fifth-generation cornhusker says his town is a “cross-section of the American people — we got schoolteachers and farmers and car salesman, not too many blacks, and enough women to keep the menfolk happy.” For this reason the quiet-voiced, neatly-dressed DeClension believes his 28 years in the job — which he took straight out of high school, where he distinguished himself as a place-kicker — is good training for the one he hopes to win in 2024.
“People everywhere are just tired of weirdos,” says DeClension. “I saw one on TV the other day, very pretty girl but she was wearing a bright red dress in the daytime, just walking around the town, and a cape, and a hat that looked like devil horns, and her name was Wandavision. People vote for Democrats to be serious people to clean up after Republicans, like you hire a janitor to clean up after high school kids. This Wandavision thing is why people are turning away from the Democratic Party.”
Running under the slogan “Now What Can I Do For You?” DeClension proposes as President to “answer every piece of mail people send me, because that’s the least you can do for them,” and if there’s any time left from that “maybe stroll over to Congress and see if they need any help counting votes.” He does intend to deliver the State of the Union address, but says he’ll “keep it short and keep it clean. There’s enough swears on the TV as it is.”
Asked why he is a better choice for the nomination than Joe Biden, DeClension says, “Well, he’s not as bad as some of them, but you do see him going around a lot with that Kamala Harris, and they’re both smiling and laughing and touching each other, and I tell you, people in Sanka, that’s the kind of thing they talk about.”
Harvey Wallbanger. James Wall was an itinerant folk musician who worked under the names Howard Djalikakik and Stuffy Derma before lighting on his present sobriquet, under which he ran on a whim as a Democrat for a North Carolina state senate seat in 2020. Students at a local community college took a shine to his “Hang Loose” campaign, in which he toured local bars and engaged in drinking games until he passed out, and their support powered Wallbanger to victory.
In office Wallbanger suddenly came out as a vocal evangelical Christian, voting continually with the Republican majority and introducing legislation to outlaw not only abortion and contraception but also fornication. At the same time he continued to frequent bars in Raleigh and drink himself into a stupor. Pictures in newspapers of Wallbanger being hoisted out barroom doors and dumped onto sidewalks became known as “Wallbanger campaign posters.” Wallbanger claimed variously that he had narcolepsy or merely “pretended to pass out so I wouldn’t have to drink any more because folks were counting on it.”
Wallbanger lost his seat in 2022 and refused to leave his office until losing a fistfight with the legislature’s sergeant-at-arms. He then started a church in a defunct tire lot; videos of his apparently drunken pulpit antics went viral and inspired a trip to Hollywood, where he was briefly jailed.
Wallbanger is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, he says, because he possesses a “common touch” that Joe Biden lacks, and also because he believes the current president is too old to serve. “Folks see this man slurring his words and stumbling around, and it’s just embarrassing,” Wallbanger says, “and he doesn’t even have the excuses that I have.”
Charlton Secured Party In Lieu of © Trade Mark McGillicuddy. Though serving as a Republican Congressman, the first Sovereign Citizen in U.S. federal office does not recognize party labels and insists he will be nominated as the Democratic nominee in lieu of Biden by “the will of our Lord and Savior” even though he has not filed to run in any primaries.
“Their eyes shall be opened,” McGillicuddy says confidently. “Them so-called official papers have all the names in capital letters, which means they ain’t real. I’m the only real candidate so it stands to reason I’ll win. Selah!”
In lieu of traditional campaigning McGillicuddy occasionally strolls the Washington Mall screaming through a bullhorn at “harlots” and “people dressed as police officers” until escorted back to the Rayburn Building by Capitol Police officers. “They always gimme a cup of hot cocoa, so the joke’s on them,” says McGillicuddy, giggling.
Ann Obvious-Stalkinghorse. The former adjunct professor, naturopath, faith healer, street mime, and serial failed entrepreneur (her most notorious invention is “Cupcake Aversion Therapy,” in which sweets-loving patients desiring to lose weight were fed foul-tasting pastries, sometimes without their knowledge) retired last year at 47 after coming into a great sum of money. (The provenance of the bequest, she has told reporters, is “none of your business.”) She thereupon immediately established the People’s Golden Global Choice Party, under the aegis of which she says she will run for president if denied the Democratic nomination.
Obvious-Stalkinghorse has accused President Biden of being a “vassal of the Zionist state” and “the greatest enemy of the Jews since Hitler,” depending on her audience, and claims Biden alone is preventing Congress from passing Medicare for All, a general debt jubilee, and the three-day work week. “I represent neither left nor right, but all the people of this great nation,” she says. “America, you may not know me, but when together we turn Joe Biden out of office you’re going to find out that I’m more than you bargained for, and that’s a promise.”
OK, “former street mime” made me spit out my coffee, lol.
I’m sure we all saw the interviews with potential voters in the Times or maybe the Post, with the woman who said she wasn’t voting for Biden because she supported abortion rights and Roe had been overturned when Biden was President. It had to be explained to her how Supreme Court appointments work, and how the Supreme Court works in relation to the Executive Branch. I read that and was strongly tempted to put my affairs in order and walk into the sea.
Which is all by way of saying every third party whack-a-doo who seems like a joke to us, be it RFK Jr, Cornell West, Jill Stein, or even Joe Manchin, may not look so preposterous to the idiot on the street. We really need to get civics lessons back in schools, but since the trend has been to remove books not add them, I can’t say I’m especially hopeful.
America, where any child can grow up to be a Presidential campaign spoiler. Anyway, tomorrow is our national day of giving thanks, so let me thank Roy and the many clever commentators here for making five mornings a week more bearable as we await the destruction of democracy and the establishment of a Christofascist autocracy, now with fewer rights for women (and soon, gays and fornicators of all persuasions).