Daniel Pinkwater endorses Barack Obama and down-ticket Democrats.  It breaks his own rule.  I find it … eyebrow raising.

Others will say, “Whoa! I’m scared. This might turn out badly. We should go back to when things were simple, back in grandpa’s day, in which I never lived, and have no real idea, but I am sure I would have felt more secure, and it’s the way things were intended, by God, or dead leaders who we’ve simplified into fictional heroes.”

Ronald Reagan?

This happens every time. Luddites, looneys and religious orthodoxers get all excited. (I’m not talking about conservatives–that’s a word that has changed its meaning. Poor actual conservatives!) And some normal people get influenced. After a while, we get past the beginning, we get used to the changes, things don’t turn out so badly, and the turmoil dies down. You get this, don’t you? There was a time when some people were sure God was going to plunge the earth into fiery destruction because somebody had invented the steam engine.

Hm.  “Change beyond the way things used to be” means any number of things.  A splot somewhere near Pinkwater brings us over to this… Down down down ticket…

Senator Stephen M. Saland, a lawyer from Poughkeepsie, has served in the New York State Legislature for 32 years. In 2010, he won re-election by 19 percentage points. And since then, he has raised $788,000 for his campaign war chest — more than 40 times what his challenger in the Republican primary raised.
Yet a day after the primary, Mr. Saland clung to a 42-vote lead on Friday over a little-known opponent, Neil A. Di Carlo, and faced the prospect that he could lose his seat after absentee ballots are counted. Mr. Di Carlo waged a shoestring campaign focused in large part on one issue: Mr. Saland’s decision to break with his party last year to provide one of the pivotal votes to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.

Actually I don’t know if this race is Pinkwater’s state legislative district at all.   But it is in the neighborhood, and was the first thing I thought of when I read that.

There’s nothing much to say about the greedy criminal element that’s always among us, and doesn’t really belong to either of the two categories–they just want to manipulate the system so they can buy more stuff, or get a thrill from thinking they have power–except we should try not to elect any of them, or people controlled by them.

The Republican vice presidential nominee used to recommend his Congressional staff read Ayn Rand, which does strike me as a political cross-road crossed, even as to a great extent I do figure “Most Important Election Ever” gets over-stated every election.  Or whether this election itself represents a “Critical juncture” moreso than any other election.

Who should we elect? I can tell you who I want to elect: President Obama, and congressional Democrats. Ordinarily, I would keep this to myself, and not worry too much about how the election turns out, because I am optimistic, and believe the human race has always falteringly gone forward and slowly improved. But I think we are at a critical juncture, and it’s important to get it right this time. So I am willing to try to influence you to vote the way I think is right, and hope you will agree, and try to influence others.

This influences close to nobody.  The majority, though not all, voting Pinkwater fans are voting for Obama.  Still, this rare straight-forward political endorsement (I qualify with “straight forward” because I don’t think a social satirist can help but make elliptical political statements…  Pinkwater gave an NPR commentary at an early point in Clinton’s presidency when his presidency seemed to be on shaky ground that his problem was he had cut back on the Big Macs — a political statement of sorts, I suppose, indicating his preferences) gets gets some minor push-back —

I just wanted you to know that I am disappointed in your venturing into the political realm with you endorsemnet of President Obama in the upcoming election. I’m not sure that we should turn to the author of “The Pineapple and The Hare” for political advice, just as I would not ask Mr. Obama for tips on how to run a business.

I’m neutral on his political statement itself (The name’s familiar enough that I assume he’s left comments at “Talk to DP” before) — his “venture into the political realm” is after all echoed in the ambivalence of Pinkwater’s own statement after all, and am mostly concerned with the the “Pineapple and the Hare” jab, which for a self-identified Pinkwater fan is really a puzzling insult.  To whatever degree that he’s a Republican, I’d point out The Artsy Smartsy Club makes the Democratic Party a point of fun, but that nearly seems a coin flip decision.

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