That beer candidate thing reconsidered
I have no idea why I ever should have ever formulated an opinion on Michele Obama. I guess during the Obama presidency she took to some “healthy foods in school lunch” initiative, which you can deliberate some problems and issues on if you want. How to keep the garbage can from just being a healing mass of broccoli, and how to squelch the whining kids demanding their form dogs. Other than that, their may have been an inver-satuation of forced politeness in some initiative she brought to some educational initiative. But as an apolitical figure — I do not know how you were ever supposed to answer a poll question on favorability ratings. I am told she had the highest ratings, the most popular public figure anywhere. I do not know what that means, but good for her — I guess. I also hear she knocked it out of the park with her speech. I have not watched it, and I assume she did. Though maybe I won’t like it. I mean, I am apparently the only person anywhere who liked Bill Clinton’s speech. Maybe I will be the only person anywhere who does not like Michele Obama’s?
In 2000 a polling question was invented. It has probably had a pernicious effect on our politics. “Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?”. As an intellectual exercise, I go over the list since 2000 and expand each year to include the vice presidential candidates, as fairly frequently these candidates are picked out to balance a ticket with the “have a beer with” choice — such is the case with the Democrats this year. I see 5 Republicans and 2 Democrats here. And I guess I would be obliged to just lie to a pollster lest the answer come back to the candidates and mean something, and result in the hamming up of folksiness. And. I am of course going to be too cute by half. I am having a beer with Mitt Romney, just to send him on his way to Mormon Hell. And the question is supposed to get at some “likability” question, but that is not necessarily what I am going for in having one beer drinking meeting. To be sure, the “beer drinking partner” pick that is this year’s Democratic running mate is someone who is really wearing thin on me. I watch him up the convention — he does a pep rally. Screw this! I fled those regular high school fixtures as soon as I had the chance. Are we going to be subjected to four more years of this crap? Do it is, JD Vance. I do have the sense that if he stumbled out of electoral politics he might have another book in him that is not just careful political positioning. Maybe? No one else here does — Obama, for instance wrote one book in the nineties and then after his Senate victory it is all turgid campaign props and maybe book signing bair. Even Vance’s inflammatory statements suggest a wide ranging bullshitting that is moderately interesting for a spell. More to the point, the dude is flailing right now, and isn’t that the whole “beer sharing” thing — commiserate or something? What does this mean electorally? Jack and squat. Unless I watch a few more things from Tim Walz and decide — screw it! Jill Stein. Though. Do I want to have a beer with her? Maybe I do, actually — identify all the people she is sitting with in Russia.