TROUBL

After a long and grueling campaign, Hillary Clinton emerged as the leader from the Democratic convention. She extended a token spot as her running mate to Barack Obama. Barack, knowledgeable of his youth and good political future, politely declined…

“The people of Illinois are going to get what they voted for: A senator who can bridge the gap between the past and the future, Black and White, and Republican and Democrat. And I’ll be happy to be in the majority party, working with President Hillary Clinton! Working together for universal health care, and to end this war, and to change politics as usual, to the politics of change! Yes we can, and yes we will!”

But, the moment he stepped off the stage, trouble was brewing. The thousands of Oba-maniacs, just like the Dean-iacs before them, are feeling disheartened, disillusioned. They suspected that it really was politics as usual. Clinton just greased the right number of palms, called in the just right number of favors, and took too much money from too many former enemies; and somehow, she walked off with the 50% plus one vote.

Without nearly as much fanfare, one day later, Mike Gravel tapped Ron Paul as his running mate, making an announcement that they will run as the “Middle Party,” although everyone knows that is a euphemism for “Middle Finger Party.” Combining the best aspects of civil libertarianism, Eisenhower republicanism, FDR progressivism, and JFK idealism, the “Middle Finger Party” makes few waves at first:

Major party platforms:
• Leave Iraq, get all soldiers and contractors out within two years
• Investigate Halliburton and KBR for fraud and threaten to investigate them criminally if they do not cooperate
• Investigate the Bush Administration for Torture, Psy-ops against the American People
• Lower gas prices in the short term by jawboning the oil companies to take lower than record profits, or face an anti-trust suit, and in the long term by investing in green infrastructure that will create jobs here in America
• Raise taxes on anyone making over $250,000 per year.
• Cut the military budget over time, with an expectation of cutting it in half within ten years
• Cut the federal prison budget by at least 1/8 immediately by legalizing marijuana at the federal level, and letting the states regulate it like alcohol, tobacco and prostitution.

Then, the You-Tube clicks started coming in. Then, the fundraising numbers came in. Pretty soon, the momentum was getting harder to ignore. The endorsement of former Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura, was a given, but Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader’s support was unexpected, given their own political goals. The tipping point came when John Edwards and Jimmy Carter broke ranks with the Democratic Party and endorsed Gravel and Paul.

But, for all that fanfare, the biggest obstacle was getting ballot access. The biggest advocate they had was comedian Stephen Colbert, who had been denied ballot access due to his publicity stunt in South Carolina, when he ran for president.

But, one comedian wasn’t enough to turn the tide. The primary purpose of any self-sustaining system is to sustain itself, and sustain itself, it did. The election of 2008 still went to the candidate with a long political legacy and a history of flip-flopping on the issues. And the war took a brief pause, but began anew when, predictably…