It's going to be a long season..... 19 months.
Not Spring, which officially started about 3 weeks ago. That's only 3 months until we melt into Summer here in Northern California. (And "melt" is the operative word here.)
Not baseball season. Though they've extended the schedule, that will mercifully be over in just under 7 months from now. Though sometimes it seems like a single game feels like 7 months.
Nope, I'm talking about the political season. Or, specifically, the Presidential Campaign Season.
Oy.
Within the last couple of weeks, we have the first two official entrants in the race - Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Both first-term Republican senators, Cruz hails from Texas and Paul comes from Kentucky. Both also sit on the edges of the Republican party, with no description of either getting very far until the phrase "Tea Party" comes up.
It's only a matter of time (Sunday?) before Hillary declares, we know that's inevitable. Other Democrats likely to run include current VP Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren. It's likely to be a crowded Republican field, with names such as Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio expected to join the fray, and potential entries from previous candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee.
Pretty clear how things are going to line up on the national scale - the Republicans are going to be trying to fix all the disasters that have happened while we've had a Democrat running the country, while the Democrats are going to be trumpeting the progress that has been made over the past few years, despite a highly obstructionist Republican-led Congress.
Oy.
So let's go to COW. You don't remember what COW is? Well, it's Chuck's Own World, which I introduced a few weeks ago in a post. It's where I make the rules. Don't like it? Fine, you don't have to live there. You can live in YOW (Your Own World), but I like COW just fine.
(On a related note, we're having steak for dinner. But I digress.)
Here in COW, we handle politics quite differently. And it's all so simple. You see, here in COW, there are no political parties.
Candidates will simply be nominated and elected based on their own personal policies and statements. There will be no assumptions made, based on a candidate's affiliation with a party. And, probably most importantly, there'd be very few situations in which a politician voted against their own beliefs, simply to make sure their vote fell along party lines. Does anybody really believe that every Congressman or candidate actually believes everything that they vote for (or against)? Or do some become obligated to vote a certain way, purely because that's the way his/her party is voting?
Pretty clearly, politics has become a very polarizing subject in the U.S.. Identify yourself as a Democrat, and you must be a free-wheeling liberal who wants to give handouts ("entitlements") to everybody, raise taxes, and cow-tow to every foreign government. If you're a Republican, you want to hoard money with your wealthy friends, have everybody subscribe and ascribe to "traditional values", and declare war on any government that doesn't fall in line with us.
Nuance? Not fitting those profiles perfectly? Sheesh....... I don't think that's possible in the U.S. You're either "with us", or you're "against us".
In fact, if you think about it, you have to ask a question about the dominant political parties in the U.S.. Regardless of whether a candidate declares themselves a Democrat or a Republican, is simply aligning with either party an asset, or is it a liability? I don't really know much about him, but my understanding is that one of the challenges Rand Paul is going to have is "aligning more closely" with his own party. Apparently he has a bunch of views (again, I don't know details, I've simply read this) which are somewhat at odds with the prevailing platforms of the Republican Party. So, if you think about it, Democrats aren't gong to vote for him (because he's a Republican), and it sounds like many Republicans likewise don't believe he's "Republican enough."
Paul is an example of a general trend. Both parties have become extremely splintered, to the extent that there are almost "micro-parties" which don't get along within the main party. So as a candidate, you not only have opponents in the other party (presumably 100% of that party is against you), but you also have opponents within your own party. So isn't it a liability to even declare yourself as a Republican or a Democrat, given that not even everybody in your own party will be behind you (except, maybe, with a knife in your back)? It seems to me that it is.
Oddly enough, Paul's dilemma is exactly the kind of thing that will work perfectly in COW. In COW, we want people who think through every major issue, have an opinion, and stand behind it. (Note: I have no idea what Paul's actual views are, and I don't mean this in any way as an endorsement of him. I am simply using his situation as an example of the semi-dysfunctionality in our current political system.) What we don't want are people who adopt positions almost exclusively because those positions work best within the framework of their parties - even if they don't understand them, or worse yet, don't fully believe them.
In COW, we're going to do things kind of like the recent Chicago mayoral election...... and kind of like your school board, or other local elections. No primaries on COW - everybody just runs on their merits and viewpoints. While in Chicago, the candidates did ascribe to political parties, they all ran against each other in February (i.e. there weren't any primaries), and since no single candidate received a majority of the vote, the top 2 candidates then had a run-off. As it turned out, both candidates were Democrats - something that could obviously not happen in a national election, where each party jockeys to send their best candidate to the single, big deal in November.
Can't wait to see the jockeying for the next year. Republicans, fighting Republicans, Democrats fighting Democrats, while simultaneously flinging mud at the other side.
Actually, I can wait, because by the time November 2016 rolls around, the remaining candidates will likely just be caricatures that have been shaped by the two parties. And, along the way, who knows what they really believe, because then it becomes more about forming a narrative. And some of those narratives may be "well, I'm from this party, but here are the things I disagree with from my own party....."
Oy.
Party on. Or in COW, party off. You are who you are, can say what you really believe, and there we'll end up with a system, and a President, we can all stand behind. He won't be Frank Underwood - Frank's definitely a U.S. politician. (But dang, is he entertaining.)
As the next 19 months certainly will be.