The Political Whore

By Tom Bortnyk
PoHo correspondent

The notorious Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara spent his entire life fighting the evils of capitalism and murdered anyone who did not agree with his socialist agenda. Yet here we are today, in 21st century America, where any hipster can walk into a Target super-store and buy a Che T-shirt and a “Yes We Can” poster. Apparently the college students wearing the shirts missed the chapter on irony in English 101; they must have been attending a “hope & change” rally. Politics, it seems, has become just as much of a battle of commercialism as PC vs. Mac or Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi.

There is no doubt that this is a distinctly 21st century phenomenon. Mass media and explosion of the internet into every household has only fueled America’s consumer culture, to the point where even our political candidates must be marketed and sold. If Billy Mays were still around, and the Sham-Wow guy didn’t beat up a hooker, odds are good we’d see them recruited for campaign ads in 2012.

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From the Palm Beach Post:

Census figures released Monday show that of the 579,000 new voters who participated in Florida last year, nearly all were either Hispanic or black. Turnout among young voters increased from 39 percent in 2004 to 49 percent last year.

Young Hispanics and blacks helped boost the state’s voter rolls by 10 percent and lowered the average age among voters by one full year, to 50, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis.

Meanwhile, turnout among white voters remained stagnant last year while some of the state’s oldest voters stayed home: Turnout among voters 75 and older dropped from 72 percent in 2004 to 69 percent in 2008.

It’s November 6, 2008 in Hillsborough: Do you know who your county commissioner is?

No, you don’t. And that’s exactly what Kevin Beckner’s campaign manager, Mitch Kates, predicted. He’s currently slightly ahead of incumbent Brian Blair, who has yet to concede as early votes are still being counted.

Check out Kates’ prescient concerns from this video, shot at 10:30 p.m. on Election Night at Gaspar’s Grotto in Ybor City:

I woke up excited and nervous. While I didn’t have any trouble voting in the previous few elections, my husband was turned away both times due to ongoing address issues; he submitted an address change on three separate occasions, but none were ever recorded anywhere official. This time around, we had proper voter ID’s in hand when we took the short walk to our local precinct in St. Petersburg, the Dwight H. Jones Neighborhood Center, which is located in the heart of a city-operated low- and mid-income housing community and across the street from two many-storied assisted living facilities.

The line was short, primarily made up of minorities, and everyone was in good spirits. We all seemed to be on the same boat — not a McCain supporter to be found – and all of us agreed that change was in the air.

My hubbie and I made it to the first pollworker table together and both of us had pollworker-related problems almost at once. I signed “LPolk” next to my name and knew I’d made a mistake as soon as the woman compared it to my license signature, which read “Leilani Polk.” The woman damn near had a heart attack when she saw what I’d done and spent the next few minutes anxiously hemming and hawing.

“I’ll just write out my first name,” I said lamely, but just as I scrawled an “L,” she snatched the book away from me, freaked out a little more, then firmly lectured me on the laws and how she could get in trouble and did I know that my signature had to look exactly as it did on my license? But then she talked herself down, admitting that she was the only one who’d see both sigs and after I pleaded with her to let me vote, she relented and let me through.

Phil’s pollworker couldn’t find his name in her book. When she asked if he’d moved recently and he answered yes, she started to tear off a provisional ballot. This was just as they’d found my name in the book. “Woah, Woah, woah, hold on there a minute — my wife moved at the same time and she’s in there,” he told his pollworker. That’s when he found out she wasn’t even looking at the right name. His last name is “Bardi”; she mistakenly looked up “Baron.” Once she had the right name, we were set and we both voted successfully.

Thanks for the revelatory information.

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book reportedly makes the unbelievable claim that the Bush White House relied on lies and propaganda to sell the war in Iraq.

No way.

More specifically, no way McClellan is making this claim almost five years after it became common knowledge. Thank God he told us; now it’s official. (Although not according to the White House and Karl Rove, who are both denying the accusations in the McClellan book.)

Apparently, Bush lied about a lot of things — like golf. (Then again, what golfer hasn’t lied about his game?)

However, we found out about these lies a little late, I guess. It’s too bad we didn’t have this information in 2004. Maybe we could have avoided four more Bush years.

The sad thing is that the Bush administration making things up to justify an unnecessary war is old news. We know and we have all moved on. It has lost its immediacy and we seem to have lost our outrage.

It’s too bad GW didn’t lie about getting a blow job. Maybe then we would have had a chance of getting rid of him.

At this point, I just can’t wait until January 20th, 2009.

Of course. That is (and here comes the really big caveat) if he gets the match-up he needs in the election, the right Democratic and Republican candidates who leave a big enough hole in the middle for him to drive his personal fortune through.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday severed his membership in the GOP (stop laughing, my Republican friends who insist Bloomberg was never a real Republican anyway) and declared himself a free agent, an Independent. As he met Tuesday with another politically confused creature (the Govinator), the billionaire swore he wasn’t running for president. But speculation ran rampant.

Bloomberg is clearly positioning himself for an independent run if the right situation occurs, and if polling next year shows there is an opportunity. I don’t see either of those scenarios coming to pass, however. The most likely nominees — Hillary Clinton and Fred Thompson — don’t seem to leave a lot of room in the middle, even thought Hillary is very liberal and the Rear Admiral is very conservative. Their personalities (and acting career, in Thompson’s case) transcend the polarization that you would normally find with their political resumes. And even though people are unhappy with Congress, President Bush, politics and the system in general, Bloomberg doesn’t seem to be the answer to those dissatisfactions. When was the last time you heard anyone say to you, “Ya know, I really wish the munchkin mayor of New York would throw his hat in the ring”? Or “God I wish we had a centrist problem-solver and not just some egotist career politician running things in Washington”?

As this assessment points out, what would his platform be? I got things done in NYC? Rudy is playing that card to the hilt and is about to be passed by Fred Thompson anyway.

What’s more likely at play here is a very smart politician (with beaucoups bucks) who now can either run for president or become a player outside and above the system, much like Arnold Schwarzenegger has done in California. Bloomberg can work outside the existing confines on issues he cares about (immigration) just as Ah-nold has with his issues (the environment).