Despite a crashing economy and angry liberals, Barack Obama runs unchallenged in the 2012 Democratic Party primaries.
Democratic Primaries Minus Democracy
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Any chance that Hillary will challenge him?
Ya think?
I saw you and you saw me.
I swear I’ve seen this before, but if I’m the only one who remembers…
@Tyler: It’s from the 1984 film version of 1984.
@derlehrer: There’s a chance of anything, but not much chance. I think Hillary is eager to retire and write.
Usually, it’s the same cartoon on the gocomics site as on this site (unless gocomics gets late about updating), but today the two sites have completely different cartoons, both dated 1-11-12.
Is there an interesting explanation?
@michaelwme – I think Ted has finally gotten with the program and is now “efficient”, “lean”, “more productive”, and “working smarter not harder”, and can therefore do two cartoons in the time it used to take to do one. Of course, we do not pay him any more than before and in fact are thinking of asking him to move to an office downstairs. We are considering allowing him to keep his stapler.
I saw this cartoon last week when it was posted early.
Now you don’t remember??
Call me Winston.
Do you know what history says the inevitable result of the party primarying a sitting President is?
Handing the general election to the opposing party.
Enough of us understand that it is vital to the very survival of the nation to get Obama re-elected that there is no appetite for something as sucidially stupid as a primrary challenge.
Obama has the lock on the nomination. Hillary can’t rally enough support against all the Obamatons who continue to lecture the rest of us about how we don’t understand politics. I understand pretty good. The unemployment rate — the REPORTED unemployment rate — continues to drop, as any idiot (e.g., this idiot) could have told you. The unemployed who’ve pissed through their 99 weeks aren’t remaining in homes! They’re ending up on the street. Or in shelters. Or squatting in a friend’s home. Do you think these people are going to be accurately reflected in any telephone polls?
Take a look in your neighborhood. I walk down Broadway in New York every weekday. There are closed storefronts. In my own neighborhood, the three stores closest to the subway entrance are all vacant. Am I seriously to believe that in a healthy economy three PRIME storefronts can’t find renters? Count the homeless you run into each day. Is the number increasing or decreasing?
If Obama wins, he’ll lose. Even with a supermajority in House and Senate, he’d still end up allowing one Republican to block everything. “Now, folks — that’s right, I call you folks, just like my good friend Dubya did, because that’s what I think of you as, uneducated hicks — we can’t just push through things the 99% want, like universal health care or a safe pension system that doesn’t depend on the state of the stock market at the moment you retire. …”
If Obama wins (which I don’t think he will), the Republicans will block whatever milquetoast efforts he makes to sort of, kind of, get anything done. Biden in 2016? Are you all high? I don’t think Biden could get elected to open a supermarket. So it’s either a lame-duck four-year follow up to the first lame four years, or the Republicans will get in for 2012 and finish wiping out the country.
In a way, I think that’s the only real hope we’ve got. The current crop of maniacs in the Republican Party are completely divorced from any notions of how to run a country. They think that gutting the government, giving the rich tax cuts, and letting people die from lack of access to health care, is the way to go. And it will work. We’ll all stand around in parks holding signs and singing. Someone will bring a kid to the thing and the adowable video will go out on YouTube.
But you know that when the masses finally wake up it’ll be a bloodbath that’ll make My Lai look like a schoolyard shoving match.
@Alexthetired: I agree with every word of your post.
Ted, you want to lay some Benjamins on the November election? regardless of the GOP candidate, I’m willing to wager Obama wins easily….you wanna put down some of your cash on that, dude?
@Aggie:
Betting cash is boring.
Let’s make it interesting. Where do you live? That will help me decide what to suggest.
Here’s the problem Ted, who is going to run in his place that would actually be different (out of the known democrats) Nobody, the Democrats are just as thin as the Republicans, by thin I mean all the people in the part are the same.
Aggie-
Define your terms. There’s no question Obama is going to win, but what constitutes “easily”? I think the Republicans will cheat enough to make it a 51-49 squeaker, myself.
Fantastic 1984 reference, but now I feel kind of old for catching it.
Who cares? Obama is a sociopath who has made it really clear that he does not give a damn about anyone other than his buddies in the 1%, He is a war criminal and a fascist at heart. He and his worthless wife delight in rubbing our nose in the fact that they can travel and throw lavish parties at public expense – his version of “let them eat cake” during these bad economic times. And what Democrat is better? And why does anyone think that these people are the lessor of two evils? The difference between the two parties is the difference between hitting a brick wall at 100 mph or hitting it at 99 mph. A difference without a distinction. The sooner things get out in the open so even the average American slug can see how we are being fucked the better. Worse case is that the country collapses and we accept it without a fight. So far we seem to be a nation of people who don’t care about freedom and a nation of pussies who refuse to fight for it. At least our devolution into a 3rd world shit-hole might keep the rest of the world safe from our military madness. Best case, Americans wake up and grow a pair and take back the country from the likes of Obummer and Scalia and the banksters.
@Ted. Great Idea, yes, betting cash is boring! I’m in Lansing, Michigan….you should remember, one of your trolls a few years back was stalking me for a few months.
@Aggie: My trolls are freelance. Like Ron Paul, I don’t know what my armies of minions are up to.
OK, so how about if Obama wins, I’ll send you the original of your choice (if I have it) and if Romney (or the GOP nominee) wins, you agree to post unabashedly complimentary posts to my cartoons every day for a week?
Ms «obliterate Iran» Clinton as an «alternative» to Mr Obama ? Wow, now that would really galvanise the 99 % in the United States, in addition to bringing us in the rest of the world to our feet in a rousing cheer ! Can’t wait !…
Henri
That sounds like a fantastic agreement, Ted! It’s a deal!!!
@Aggie: let the Web be our witness.
Remind me in November! I’ll totally forget.