Throwing in the towel on the 2014 campaign, and while we're at it the 2016 campaign as well

"I get 'The Temple will be rebuilt' and 'The Messiah
will come.' But what does 'Hillary will run' mean?"

by Ken

Just as I was about to make the official announcement that I'm officially sick of the 2014 election campaign, along comes The New Yorker's David Sipress, on his current stint as newyorker.com "Daily Cartoon"-ist, with the above cartoon, to remind me that I'm actually already officially sick of the 2016 election campaign. Is this what they mean by early voting?

In case you're wondering, the moment when I decided it was time to pull my personal plug on the 2014 hootenanny came Saturday evening while I was waiting in the Manhattan-side Staten Island Ferry Terminal for the ferry to take my to my Open House New York rendezvous with the designer and lighting designer of the great Staten Island "Postcards" 9/11 memorial. It turned out to be an utterly extraordinary event, and maybe we should talk about that sometime, but for now we're still back in the Manhattan terminal. I happened to glance up at the terminal's electronic crawl and realized I was seeing some sort of campaign ad for the Democrat-ish challenger to indicted GOP Congressman "Mikey Suits" Grimm. It was jarring because the crawl intermingles ferry news such as there occasionally is, like boarding announcements, with advertisements, and to an onlooker who happened to forget this delicate mixture it could appear as if the NYC Dept. of Transportation, which operates the Staten Island Ferry, was encouraging ferry riders to vote for Domenic Recchia.

As anyone who has been following Howie's coverage of this race knows all too well, the idea of voting for either of these slugs is enough to make a person wonder whether it isn't time to give up on this form of government we've devised here in the U.S.A. -- even granting the principle that anybody has to be a better choice than Mikey Suits. The principle seems sound enough, but it isn't entirely clear that Domenic Recchia crawls in under the heading of "anybody."

Speaking of the Suits-Recchia race, it breaks my heart to have to be the bearer of this news, but if you had your heart set on attending the Great Debate, "Recchia and Grimm's only live televised debate before an audience" (as the Staten Island Advance's political editor, Tom Wrobleski, put it in his silive.com post this afternoon), to be held October 28 at the New Springville campus of the College of Staten Island, well, here's the headline on the Wrobleski story: "One hot ticket: Ducats for televised Grimm/Recchia debate are all gone." The 430 tickets went up for grabs today and were almost immediately snapped up.

Luckily (I guess), you can still watch the Great Debate, courtesy of both cosponsors. Time Warner Cable channel NY1 will of course be televising it live, and it will be live-streamed both on NY1's website and on that of the Advance, the aforementioned silive.com. The debate is being moderated by NY1's estimable political anchor Errol Louis, and the panelists will be aforementioned Advance Political Editor Tom Wroblewski and NY1 political reporter Courtney Gross. It sounds like there will be more talent on the questioning than on the answering side. It remains to be seen, though, whether the questioners will enable viewers to grasp just how preposterous a choice they are being offered.

Of course around the country there are occasional candidates genuinely worthy of voters' attention -- obviously including the slate of Blue America '14 endorsees -- but more often than not they're treading water alongside way better-funded candidates from either the Establishment or the Right-Wing Freak Show political shop. And across the country 2014 political contests have devolved into freak shows in their own right. In which connection you might want to check out the washingtonpost.com "Fix" post by Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake, " The 9 most ridiculous campaigns of 2014," which the writer tells us he has arrived at by mulling over "the most ridiculous of the ridiculous" for a while.

You can check them our for yourself, but I'll clue you in that Aaron's choices are:

1. The Kentucky Senate race
2. The Texas governor's race
3. The Iowa Senate race
4. The Texas lieutenant governor/Senate GOP primaries (tie)
5. Louisiana's 5th district
6. The Illinois governor's race
7. The Mississippi Senate race
8. The Pennsylvania governor's race

And yes, apparently just making the cut --

9. New York's 11th district

That's Suits vs. Recchia.

The biggest choice I'll face on my ballot is whether or not to vote to reelect Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It's hard to think of any good reason to vote for him, and it doesn't look as if there's going to be any need to vote against his opponent, certifiable idiot Rob Astorino. In case there was any anxiety that the idiot Rob might somehow slip through the electoral machinery, surely the nail in his gubernatorial coffin has been sealed by the ringing endorsement, in the form of a blistering attack on the governor, by some guy named Willard Romney. About all you can say to somebody like this Willard guy is, "It takes one to know one."

My guess is that hardly anyone in NYS has any idea who the idiot Rob is, and that includes the hard-core voters who will cast their vote for whatever Republican is put up. "Whatever Republican is put up" seems like the best description available for the idiot Rob.

Which means that the result on Election Day may be closer than anyone would dare to forecast, and a lot closer than the governor would wish. Which seems to me the best result we can hope for. Voting for the guy will just give him ideas.

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