when the stakes are so low
So. A special election in Ohio, for the privilege of serving the district for the duration of the summer. Trump claims victory, not necessarily for the Republican candidate who likely squeaked out a win, but for himself. The tea-leaves from the result point to Democratic victories in November, and you go round looking at what precinct turned out… all rebutted by, sure but they didn’t win, and in November the Dems will be trying to be winning a bunch of these seats and not one…
… all for a position of power that… does not matter. They’re running again in November. And sure, it’s not as ridiculous as the great Democratic pick up in the Pennsylvania 16th district — for a congressional district that won’t exist in November, and where the two candidates will now just jump to more favorable districts and probably serve together in the next House… but still, it would be easier if there could be a shout of “Okay. Punt. We’ll see in November” as opposed to any looming recount… just to ease the momentary impassioned partisan noise on what the election results signify. I suppose incumbency has its advantages — even when the candidate didn’t have the chance to do anything much — so my idea does deprive the (narrow) victor of that.
The sidebar story comes with the Green Party candidate, scrutinized and looked over as a possible “spoiler” — whose votes apparently need to deserve to be all in the Democratic category — though, if you aren’t allowed to vote for a third party candidate when the stakes are as low as they are in this race — when are you allowed to do so?
But his point six percentage points that don’t quite cover the margin of victory but come close to doing so — why, it’s Nader all over again!
And, so he gets scrutiny over facebook sidebars, suggesting he thinks he has alien ancestry, when in fact he thinks all humans have alien ancestry and it’s not all that meaningful to the campaign. Well, aren’t we all supposed to be Martians? Not quite where he goes with it, of course — he has visions of distant planets and more advanced forms of life (am I being ablist there?), but skewer it nonetheless.
And thus, he becomes the new Stan Jones — trading “took colloidal silver doses to prepare for the Y2K disaster which turned his skin a bluish tint” for “believe human life descended from advanced life elsewhere” — this becoming the main things these two third party politicians are famous for… with the key difference being that Stan Jones at least had enough votes that he theoretically may have aided Jon Tester’s election in Montana.
We’ll just have to wait a few months to see if he beats his .6 percent… and recapture his lost glory of 3.6 percent (in a race where the Republican trounced the Democrat by 36 points, so the “spoiler” wasn’t a focal point — and suggesting that, you know… we’ve from 2016 and 2018 arrived at that core of voters whose choice isn’t Democrat and Green / whatever else is on the ballot, but not voting and Green / whatever else is on the ballot.)