CSotD: Most times, something is a cool hand
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Today's Deep Cover speaks for many, I'm afraid.
I'm certainly not in favor of burning down the barn to get rid of the mice, but I can't say the same for the people who rallied for Obama in 2008, thinking that he was going to accomplish miracles.
At the time, I compared him to RFK, who had liberals (in the counter-revolutionary Phil Ochs sense of the term) convinced that he would be inaugurated on January 20 and the troops would be home from Vietnam on the 23rd at the latest.
Sirhan Sirhan kept us from becoming disillusioned with Bobby and we can all hold him in our memories as the last vestige of Camelot, even though, upon sober reflection and with a little more experience in life, we realize deep down that it was really just a load of unrealistically optimistic horseshit.
Camelot? Hell, Jack Kennedy started the goddam war.
On the other hand, the alternative to Bobby turned out to be Dick Nixon. And here we are again, more or less.
This time around, the Chosen One got into office and was thus put in the position of actually having to show the cards in his hand, and the royal flush his adoring fanbase thought he was holding turned out to be two pair, 10 high.
People forget that's actually a good hand. But, no, it's not a royal flush.
Or, to quote Wanda Sykes yet again, "He went to Harvard, not Hogwarts."
On the other hand, and bringing us to today's cartoon, maybe someone needs to remind Obama that you don't have to fold when you're holding two pair, 10s high. And that, until the midterm elections, he was holding four aces.
Which he kept folding whenever the pot got too rich for his blood.
So I'm sitting here in New Hampshire, where you can walk into the polls for the primary, register as a Republican, cast a ballot and then re-register as an independent again on your way out, and I'm thinking that it would be very dangerous to vote for the biggest nincompoop on the list in hopes of promoting an unelectable candidate, because life has taught me never to assume that being a complete nincompoop makes a candidate unelectable.
Especially if all the hopelessly naive liberals who thought Obama was going to work miracles stay home because he didn't.
And especially especially if the independents who expected him to stay in the game if he had jacks or better transfer their support to "Anybody But Obama."
So I'm thinking of voting for Ron Paul on the theory that he hasn't got a chance of winning the nomination but the more support he gets, the more pressure there would be on him to run as a third party candidate and draw away the hopelessly naive conservative vote.
The most likely outcome of that would be a split that Obama walks through, back into the White House. Where he damn well better do something this time.
The least likely outcome would be President Paul, and, if you think Congress was reluctant to make nice with Obama, folks, you ain't seen nothing yet. We'd have a guarantee of absolutely nothing happening for four years, which is better than some of the alternatives.
I think the old fox knows this and that a third party candidacy is very unlikely, but it takes 10 minutes to vote and the polling place is only two blocks from my house. I'm willing to make that much effort to save the nation.
Meanwhile, I hope some of the liberals are able to come to grips with the difference between four more years of "Hamlet on the Potomac" and a full-out disaster.
And that somebody will make up one of those little cheat sheets that novice poker players keep on the table next to them that shows what beats what, and that Obama will learn to at least glance down at it before tossing his cards into the middle of the table.
(It would be easy to attach a video here of Phil Ochs singing "Love Me, I'm a Liberal," but that point has been made, and made too often. He covered a lot more territory with this one, and we're still right where he left us.)
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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