CSotD: Sittin’ On the Dock of the Disarray

When I was a lad of 16, I trained to earn the Red Cross’s Junior Life Saver designation. It required passing a variety of swim tests, with the finale being a simulated rescue of a drowning swimmer.

My “victim” was a camp counselor who, during the school year, played lacrosse at Cornell and, while lacrosse players don’t have to be large, he was, while, at that stage of my life, my school-year sport was wrestling, which I did at 133 pounds, fully dressed.

So I swam out to him and he grabbed my wrist and began to drag me under.

I did as taught: Put a foot in his chest to push him off and slid the thumb of my free hand along my other arm to break his grip.

Then I swam back to the dock. The counselor grading my performance inquired as to WTF, and I replied “He’s too strong. I’m going to wait until he tires out so we don’t both drown.”

It was an unexpected but correct answer, and they called out to him to ease up a bit, whereupon I “rescued” him and earned my patch.

 

So here’s Jack Ohman‘s rendering of the current Democratic field and, while I should probably offer an in-depth analysis of each candidate, I’m just gonna swim back and sit on the dock until they tire out a bit.

Because, whatever the merits of each wing, this sumbitch reminds me of the old joke,

“How long does it take this flight to get to Cleveland?”
“I don’t know; we’ve never made it.”

 

And while I agree with Matt Wuerker‘s take, I’m less inclined to blame CNN for putting on a circus than I am to blame the Democrats for serving up such a large troupe of monkeys.

Last time around, I backed Bernie because  the DNC had obviously distributed a whole lot of horse’s heads and nobody was challenging The Chosen One, except for poor old Martin O’Malley who seemed like he’d wandered out on the stage looking for the bathroom.

Somebody had to challenge Hillary, if only to get her to stop campaigning on autopilot, and, having lived next door to Bernie for a few decades, I liked him well enough and figured, at his age, he’d only serve one term even if he somehow won.

There’s probably no better evidence of the current mess than that Bernie is right back in the middle of it all.

 

Juxtaposition of a Half Century

(Gary Varvel, today)

(Herblock, following the 1968 Democratic Convention)

In case you either forgot or weren’t born yet in 1968, the Democrats beat the crap out of each other physically as well as metaphorically before settling on Hubert Humphrey, who was not unlike Hillary Clinton: Well-qualified but with more baggage than the Ringling Brothers.

The result was President Nixon.

Today we all pretend we hated Nixon and couldn’t get him out of office fast enough, but if you believe that, you probably also believe that winning 51% of the Senate would be enough to provide the 2/3 majority required for impeachment.

 

Which, to continue the circus metaphors, turns RJ Matson‘s car full of whiny children into a clown car, which works just as well to make his point.

We can look back and say “Everyone hated Nixon,” just as we can look back on the Civil War and say “Everyone wanted to free the slaves” and we can look back on the Revolution and say “Everyone wanted to be free of English rule.”

Which, if true, would have meant “President Humphrey” and no need to fight two costly wars.

 

Ann Telnaes has found at least one viewer who is enjoying the spectacle, to which I would add that, if you think “Nobody likes Trump” and we’re all sorry he won last time and that whatever Democrat wins the nomination is sure to win the election in November … well, President Humphrey might disagree and so would President McGovern.

 

Though there is this

Steve Brodner both provided the tip on this Raw Story unearthing of a 1979 Washington Post story and also furnished a nice illustration to go with it.

It seems that, while Jared Kushner may be one of the slumlords making a small corner of Elijah Cummings’ otherwise above-middleclass Congressional district into a hell-hole, it’s not like the kid didn’t learn from the master, who in his turn was well-schooled.

Ol’ John Trump, son of a draft-dodger, father of a draft-dodger, was arrested — not just fined, but arrested — for being such a defiant, unabashed slumlord in Maryland.

Well, the road apple doesn’t fall far from the horse’s ass.

Which would only be an amusing confirmation of what Trump’s enemies already believe, except that while everyone has been arguing over health care solutions — because whoever wins the presidency will just wave a magic wand and get whatever specific program they want — nobody seems to have been asking a lot of questions about the minority vote.

And even when Hillary thought she could wrap up the northern rust belt without campaigning hard there, she was smart enough to have John Lewis throw Bernie under the bus on the eve of the South Carolina primary.

(Though, after the votes had been counted, he explained that he didn’t really mean it.)

Too bad she wasn’t that canny during the general election, but, the point is that, this time around, somebody had better have the sense to leverage Trump’s outrageous racism into some Democratic votes.

I don’t think expecting black voters to automatically fall into line is any more sensible than expecting Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to drop into your lap.

Meanwhile, cartoonists and columnists have not finished pointing out that, even though Mueller confirmed all the horrible things his investigation turned up about Trump, and that the Russians not only fiddled with the 2016 election but were in the process of fiddling with the next one as well, he didn’t sing, he didn’t dance, he didn’t shoot fireworks out of his bum.

Tom the Dancing Bug applies these current standards to past moments: