The Poolish - Home Stretch Edition, 27 October 2024

The last Election 2024 edition, mercifully

Heyo, Halloween’s coming up real soon, and you know the spookiest thing about spooky season 2024? America is about to decide whether or not it wants to live.

Shit, even if you manage to not vote for the open fascist, that’s just the easy part. Then you have to stop him from just going ahead and trying to take control anyway, which is something that he, you know, does. Halloween’s going to last a few months longer than normal this year, is what I’m saying.

The Endorsements Are In. Who Will You Choose?

This is it, folks, it’s Election 2024. It’s the home stretch. Many of you are still sitting on the fence unsure where you stand, and that’s okay because politics has just sort of been a blur for the past 8 years or so, hasn’t it?

Let me try to make it simple, America. You live in what’s known as a Constitutional Republic, which means a two-party system that wears the aesthetics of a three-party system in which the third party is meat scraps assembled into a political homunculus that will never be president but pretends they will for theater.

You actually live in an American Constitutional Republic, which means that your ideological choices are: Far Right, Center Right, or Post-Left (Right with left aesthetics).

If you’re in a red state, you can also vote for the Kennedy who eats roadkill but actually just wants Trump to win.

So who do you wanna go with? Well, like any job interview it’s important to check their references, so let’s see who’s in each candidate’s corner:

Donald Trump: All the Nazis

This probably isn’t too surprising about the dude who suggested there were fine people at the Charlottesville white supremacy rally a few years ago. The guys who don’t want you to think that Trump empathises with the 1488 crowd of course will point to the Snopes article nobody actually read which doesn’t actually debunk what people think it debunks.

In any case, yes, all the Nazis are voting for Trump the same as they did back in 2016. That’s the Proud Boys, the Blood Tribe, the Groypers, and all the other embarrassing words. They show up to all the parades and wave their angular logo flags, and their 2pm salutes and their dumb frogs.

Kamala Harris: All the Cheneys

One of the craziest things about American politics is that up until 2009 everyone thought the two major parties were polar opposites but then a black guy was elected president and the Republican party blasted off so hard and fast toward the far right that suddenly the Democrats and the pre-Trump Republicans looked pretty much the same in comparison.

Anyway, former vice president Dick Cheney, the evil piece of shit architect of the Iraq War, has thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, because Democrats and Neocons have more in common with each other than either of them do with dictatorial fascists. They can bond over their shared love of drone warfare and bombing brown people in other countries, and while they have their differences on topics like women’s rights, they wouldn’t dream of putting other Americans in concentration camps.

Boy, don’t these joint Kamala Harris/Liz Cheney Girl Power rallies make you want to scream and never stop? (in joy, I mean)

Jill Stein: Vladimir Putin and the Ku Klux Klan

With federal elections driving more and more people toward suicidal ideation every four years an ever increasing number of Americans start asking “What if there were a third option?”

That’s why every four years a person named Dr Jill Stein, who is otherwise not in any sense a visible player in American politics, suddenly "activates” like some kind of… agent? Not that I’m suggesting anything.

Ostensibly the leader of the American Green Party, Stein’s allure to voters is that she’s the liberal-leaning candidate for people who don’t like who the Democrats are running, or who don’t like the Democrats’ approach to Russian relations, or who would kind of prefer to vote for Putin actually and would settle for someone who attends his private dinner parties with known Russian asset and Trump co-conspirator Michael Flynn—wait, she is a liberal, right? Checking my notes, here.

Anyway, Jill’s a great alternative option this November, and you don’t need to just take it from me or Putin or Flynn, you can also ask… David Duke, the KKK’s most famous former Grand Wizard, who appears to be backing Stein over Trump this season thanks to her opposition to Israel, notable for its large Jewish population.

Okay so if this is all a bit distressing, you can always pick Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party. He’s gay, which, being a right-wing libertarian, kind of earns him a pass and a fail simultaneously, so it sort of evens out that way.

Good luck, America!

Trump Campaign Desperate to Have You Believe Everyone's Trying to Kill Him

Given that Donald Trump’s campaign are basically jettisoning battleground states by being openly racist against their inhabitants, it’s pretty clear that they’ve all but abandoned the electoral strategy of “getting people to vote for them” and are probably going to lean on the more familiar strategies of “crimes” and “rioting” because they’ll tell themselves the only reason that didn’t work last time is Trump got banned from Twitter, which is incredibly unlikely this time for reasons that rhyme with “keel on tusk.”

They do have one last legitimate vote-winning strategy, however, and that’s riding the wave of enthusiasm about people trying to kill him. (I don’t know why I’m using surfing metaphors).

The problem is that they can’t muster a wave momentous enough to last until November so they have to kind of keep poking it.

The first, and by almost all accounts legitimate (zip it, conspiracists), attempt on Trump’s life was all the way back in July, and he actually got bullet grazed and a phenomenal snap with the secret service and the flag and everything, it was perfect and amazing, all the polls said that the election was just a formality now, he just won the damn thing. Tubular!

But the election was still four months away and Kamala Harris said some cute stuff about coconuts, and—look, this isn’t 1963, this is the TikTok era. That party lasted only as long as it took JD Vance to say some really weird shit.

Also the assassin was a Republican, so this was a hard sell to begin with.

Then in September, news broke of a second assassination attempt. Holy shit! This clinches it. Donald Trump was officially John Wick. There are assassins behind every tree, lurking in every shadow. Surely this was the popularity surge that Trump needed to carry him through to November on a glorious red wave. Cowabunga!

Sure, they didn’t get any cool photos this time because the perp never squeezed off a shot. And he was kind of just skulking around the golf course with a gun and never had a line of sight to the former president, and they caught him without a fuss, and he was kind of a nutbag with no clear intentions.

Also he was a Republican, so… you know. But he had a history of donating to both parties, so maybe the crazy liberal narrative can get a foothold… No?

Okay so assassination number two kind of died in the ass much more quickly than the first and we’re still a whole three weeks from the election and it’s still so frustratingly close to the wire!!! Maybe it’s not too late to start trying to appeal to voters with something that isn’t RFK Jr or Racism but a secret third thing. Even Trump’s people know you can’t just keep playing the same failed gambit over and over—

Surf’s up!!!

Now it’s undeniable. The communist socialist liberal left Democrats are trying to kill Donald Trump because they all know he represents the biggest danger to America’s domestic enemies, and it’s crucial that you cast your v—

Aw, bogus.

Elderly Man Holds a Rally, Just Kind of Stands There For 40 Minutes

In a fascinating vision of what’s in store for America if Donald Trump is re-elected next month, the former president/prospective next president/possible infinity president(?) held a town hall in Pennsylvania but instead of answering questions just stood there awkwardly while music he didn’t have the rights to play blared over the speakers.

The event that was supposed to go for an hour or so, I guess, just resulted in a lot of confusion when Trump answered a couple of questions badly and then after a few minutes just straight gave up or something.

“Let’s sit down and relax,” he said, like the tired near-octogenarian that he is. I can’t blame him, really. They keep making him get up and do these high energy events and there are loud noises, he needs to shout all the time, people are fucking shooting at him sometimes. He just wants to sit down for a bit, maybe take a nap.

For the next nearly three quarters of an hour the DJ cycled through the lamest and most pedestrian golden oldies playlist ever while Trump did those crappy dance moves that he does. It quickly turned into the world’s most awkward party as everyone had to just stand around, talking amongst themselves, occasionally dicking around on their phones.

At least the people in the crowd could get away if they wanted. Which they did, reportedly in a steady, confused meander. For the people seated behind him, they could only steel themselves for the punishment they knew they deserved. The best part of an hour of Donald Trump silently moving around like a racist Barney the Dinosaur.

The only highlight of what otherwise looked like an infomercial for euthenasia was watching the host, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, best known for causing controversy even among fellow conservatives for proudly shooting a puppy in the face, squirm around and smile painfully for the run time of an entire episode of event television while whatever she has that might approximate a soul very gradually left her body.

If nothing else, this really captures the essence of how life feels in context: Four years of president Donald Trump, then an additional four years of Donald Trump campaigning to be president again, then staring down the barrel of a further four years of president Donald Trump. I think we all feel a little like this:

Historically Important Election Comes Down to Fake McDonald's Cook-Off