Simplicity and Hilarity on the Campaign Trail

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Just as every race has a winner, every race also has the fat kid, huffing and puffing, chest stuck out defiantly, imploring people not to pack up and go home before he can drag himself across the finish line. The race to the White House is no different. It’s just as sad to watch, and just as funny, if you possess the sort of cruel humour that leads one to laugh at obese people attempting feats of athleticism.

Today’s ‘Hey Guys … Wait for Me!’ moments come from John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani, respectively.

Rudy’s is just sad. Edwards’ is the most amusing and pathetic statement of an inconsequential truth in a political debate since George Bush informed John Kerry that he forgot Poland.

Rudy’s first. He has lost every primary he’s been involved in. Ron Paul, he of the internet fan base, isolationist foreign policy and generally very little real chance of becoming a candidate, has outperformed Rudy at every turn. Rudy, however, is still going strong, he says.

“It’s playing out the way we thought it would play out,” he says, when asked about the results so far.

He’s also currently trailing in his home state of New York. In fact, the only state he isn’t trailing in by a wide margin is Florida. So, naturally, “it’s all about Florida,” is his latest campaign slogan.

You can watch video here.

Edwards, meanwhile, is just trying to find some way to get himself noticed in between the Barack-Hillary brawl. It’s worth reading a transcript of a recent debate, if only for Edwards’ comment at the end:

Clinton and Obama’s testy exchange after Obama tried to defend his comments about Republican ideas and Ronald Reagan:

OBAMA: Now, let’s talk about Ronald Reagan. What you just repeated here today is …

CLINTON: Barack …

OBAMA: Wait. No. Hillary, you just spoke.

CLINTON: I did not say anything about Ronald Reagan.

OBAMA: You just spoke for two minutes.

CLINTON: You said two things.

OBAMA: You just …

CLINTON: You talked about admiring Ronald Reagan and you talked about the ideas …

OBAMA: Hillary, I’m sorry. You just …

MODERATOR: Senator …

CLINTON: I didn’t talk about Reagan.

OBAMA: Hillary, we just had the tape. You just said that I complimented the Republican ideas. That is not true.

What I said — and I will provide you with a quote — what I said was is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to. Because while I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.

I was fighting these fights. I was fighting these fights. So — but I want to be clear.

So I want to be clear. What I said had nothing to do with their policies. I spent a lifetime fighting a lifetime against Ronald Reagan’s policies. But what I did say is that we have to be thinking in the same transformative way about our Democratic agenda.

We’ve got to appeal to independents and Republicans in order to build a working majority to move an agenda forward. That is what I said. Now, you can dispute that, but let me finish.

Hillary, you went on for two minutes. Let me finish.

The irony of this is that you provided much more fulsome praise of Ronald Reagan in a book by Tom Brokaw that’s being published right now, as did — as did Bill Clinton in the past. So these are the kinds of political games that we are accustomed to.

CLINTON: Now, wait a minute.

Wolf, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Just a minute.

MODERATOR: Senator Edwards, let them wrap up. Then I’m going to come to you. Yes?

CLINTON: I just want — I just to clarify — I want to clarify the record. Wait a minute.

EDWARDS: There’s a third person in this debate.

“Hey! Guys! I want to talk, too! That’s not fair! You guys ALWAYS talk. You just yell at each other but I’M RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, TOO!!! Let ME talk!”

I’ve been looking for video footage of this, but I haven’t found it yet. I think it might even be better in print. This whole exchange pretty much sums up the Democratic race so far, I think.

But, at least the Edwards campaign has a sense of humour about it:

Now — onto the moments of such ridiculous simplicity that none of them deserves more than a single sentence and link. If you needed to be told any of these things then you are too stupid to vote, possibly too stupid to live and you probably aren’t reading this right now because there is a very good chance you are illiterate.

Please keep in mind that I’m not rehashing anything. These are all new stories that are making “news” now. In other words, don’t blame me that the media thinks you’re such a retard that they have to inform you that:

• George W. Bush lied in the months preceeding the Iraq war.
• Bill Clinton enjoys being the centre of attention.
• Ralph Nader has a hard time learning his lesson.
• Barack Obama — a Christian — is being portrayed as Muslim in emails that are totally not the doing of any staffers on his rivals’ campaigns or anything remotely like that.
• The actual headline will suffice: “Obama Faces White Resistance In South, Polls Show”

And finally: Bill Clinton, much like Martin Luther King, has dreams. He just has them at inappropriate times. Knowing Bill, the subject matter is not quite so noble as MLK’s:

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