Great Election News: It's Almost Over!
Tuesday is Election Day, and that's very important to me: It means that by Wednesday, I won't have to hear any more radio spots that feature Lyndon LaRouche. A perennial "LaRouche Democrat," as she calls herself, is running pointlessly for some office in Virginia, and all her ads have offered voice clips from her notorious conspiracist leader. While there's been nothing in this Virginia media campaign about Queen Elizabeth's alleged drug dealing, Mr. LaRouche hasn't been a complete letdown. The end of the world is at hand, he suggests in one spot, thanks to the criminal and warmongering Bush cabal. For all I know, these clips are recycled from the first Bush presidency.
I'm not a Virginia resident; what I am is a hostage of the Greater Washington media market. Here, citizens are bombarded every other autumn with the political campaigns, local and statewide, from Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and, with the extension of the local D.C. media via satellite and cable, even West Virginia. Why candidates in Delaware aren't also paying to get my attention is a mystery, but I'll let it slide. You, wherever you are, may be sick of the political miasma around you, but I've got no sympathy for you.
Not that this political smorgasbord doesn't sometimes offer up a diverting spectacle. For example, I'll actually miss (well, almost) the slugfest in Maryland's 8th congressional district, where I don't live either, because that's a campaign that could only have been scripted by Lewis Carroll's Chesire Cat. The 8th is Connie Morella's district; she's a nominal Republican who has managed to serve eight House terms by 1) offering exhaustive constituent services, and 2) keeping her Republican party affiliation a complete secret from voters.
This year, however, Morella's district was gerrymandered, and she's facing a serious challenge from a Democrat. Her response has been astounding: She's had a TV spot in heavy rotation that charges her opponent, Chris Van Hollen, with acting like—you'd better sit down—a Republican. (By the way, Van Hollen's campaign has so utterly distorted his own press coverage that Time magazine actually threatened to sue him.)
Still, I have some sympathy for Morella. Maryland's Democrats exploited the recent sniper horror to advance themselves publicly while excluding Morella, even though she has represented Montgomery County (Sniper Central) for 16 years. Following the arrest of suspects in the case, for example, there was a celebratory "press conference" in the county seat, where the sniper task force was headquartered. Democratic office holders, including everybody from the county executive to the governor to both senators, took turns in the feel-good spotlight. Morella wasn't invited.
Actually, the recent sniper spectacle lives on: It's even now in the middle of Maryland's governor's race, where Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has managed to blow a 15-point lead in the polls by running the country's worst campaign. Townsend's media efforts to exploit the fear backfired; she didn't exactly suggest that the Republican candidate, Robert Ehrlich, was the sniper, but she came close enough to offend Marylanders. Ehrlich, by the way, knows how Republicans win elections in areas like this: He's been ignoring gun-control accusations and instead promising to ease commuter traffic.
Actually, it's a good thing that Washingtonians like me get immersed in all these foreign campaigns, because the city itself is as much as one-party town as is Pyongyang, and D.C.'s political misadventures are rarely worth following. The fairly popular sitting mayor, Democrat Tony Williams, is so politically inept that he couldn't get himself on his own party's primary ballot, and had to run as a write-in candidate. The city's Democrats are so inept that he won anyway. The city's Republicans hardly exist; they originally hadn't even planned to run a candidate. One is running a quixotic campaign anyway, but never mind. Except for the recriminations, lawsuits, challenges, and demands for recounts, it's almost over.
