Every news day needs a burning question. So today we’re asking: Who will capture Bernie’s millennials?
Hillary? Not after Debbie’s (and Hillary’s) emails. Hillary’s big problem is that it’s just more fun to hate her. Especially when she’s trying so hard to be loved.
Donald? No, he’s the plumber’s candidate. Bernie’s own Young Socialists will wave a Soviet flag but won’t march with the white working class.
So who will herd Bernie’s lost lambs into the fold? The answer is rising from the grass roots: Gary Johnson. Two millennial State Senators from Montana have endorsed him and more will follow.
Gary is the cool candidate. He’s a triathlete. He climbed Mt. Everest. Spurning pharmaceuticals he used medical marijuana to ease the pain of a paragliding accident.
Just a guess, but I’m sure he kept smoking after he healed. After all, there’s always a pain somewhere.
Trying @oculus in the @facebook lounge at #DemsInPhilly pic.twitter.com/gkIaItDhYc
— Gov. Gary Johnson (@GovGaryJohnson) July 28, 2016
Gary opposes US intervention in foreign wars. He’s honest about abortion, saying he would advise his daughter to have a baby out of wedlock “but I would not for a minute pretend that I should make that decision for her or any other woman.”
He supports gay marriage and legalized prostitution and wants to abolish the Department of Education. Why not? You can date the dumbing of America from the time it was established.
Gary says the NSA was supposed to spy on our enemies, “but now its cameras are turned on us.” He’ll change its mission.
Gary accuses the Commerce Department of fueling “crony capitalism, giving those that have money more money, as opposed to leveling the playing field.” Off with its head!
He’s not great on Medicare, but that won’t hurt him. Bernie’s Bros are all for pulling the plug on geezers like me anyway.
Gary’s running mate, William Weld, is no sop or coat holder. Formerly Governor of Massachusetts, he’s a Yankee aristocrat with a long history of principled public service.
Once a rising star in the GOP, he blotted his copybook by trying to indict then-AG Edwin Meese on a corruption charge and then resigning from the Justice Department when he wasn’t allowed to prosecute. He so antagonized the right wing of the party he was denied the Ambassadorship to Mexico by Senator Jesse Helms.
Weld is a Master-strength chess player, known for playing multiple games blindfolded. Chess trains you to consider how your opponent will respond. To move cautiously and attack when you sense an opportunity. According to the Boston Globe, Weld is attacking. His strategy is “to take advantage of the anticipated media attention paid to two former governors from different parts of the country joining forces, to win sufficient support to land in the televised debates.”
Johnson and Weld need a minimum score of 15% in the polls to get them on stage with Donald and Hillary, Tim and Mike. They are confident that their victory against those weak opponents will bring money and support. That they will win sufficient electoral votes to deny the other candidates the 270 needed to win the Presidency. This will put the election into the Republican controlled House of Representatives.
Given the amount of animosity for the other candidates, the former governors calculate that voters from both parties could instruct their representatives to vote for them. It’s a pipe dream, but they just might bring it off.
The Johnson-Weld candidacy brings back youthful memories of pot smoking and chess playing in Washington Square Park in the 1960s. Hunched over a chess table under the street lights as the old anarchist winos inveighed against the “military-industrial complex” that was pushing the country toward military interventions in Cuba and Vietnam.
They ridiculed my hero JFK as “the pretty boy,” the “son of the fascist bootlegger,” they said the two party system was a ruse to keep the power in the hands of the ruling class. They predicted a major war and warned that expanded technology would be used to crush the rights of the individual. It was easy to laugh at these shabby Jeremiahs. But everything they said came to pass.
The Republicans and Democrats have ruled by consensus since 1945. They have pushed power back and forth between them like chips in an endless poker game. Now entropy has set in. The two party system is grinding to a halt.
Johnson and Weld are waiting in the wings. I’m jumping on their bandwagon now while there are still some seats.
Heywood Gould is the writer of Cocktail and the director of One Good Cop and Trial By Jury.