On March 5, you’ll be asked to go to the polls and choose nominees for president of the United States from a dwindling selection of inflatable pool toys and thrift-store underwear.
I’ll be skipping this non-event, and if it turns out you have more important tasks to perform that day (rescuing rats in Portland’s Harborview Park, binge-watching every episode of Two and a Half Men, shopping for former TV anchors Lee Nelson’s and Cindy Williams’ endorsed cosmetics), you can take solace in knowing your participation, or lack thereof, in Maine’s presidential primary will make no difference in deciding who next occupies the White House.
That’s because March 5 is Super Tuesday, when approximately 114 states, many of them considerably more populous and slightly more fictional than Maine, will also be holding primaries. This place won’t matter and any candidate who bothers campaigning here should be examined by medical professionals for signs of severe cognitive impairment.
Let that serve as a warning to those passionate reformers pushing for a National Popular Vote. Such an alteration of the U.S. Constitution would effectively eliminate Maine and other sparsely populated states from having any influence on presidential campaigns. We could rage until our blood pressures exploded without eliciting from the candidates so much as a call for an EMT.
This state had its moment in the national spotlight when Secretary of State Shenna Bellows decided in December that Donald Trump didn’t qualify for the primary ballot on the constitutional grounds that he is an unmitigated turd (Article 5, Section B, Floor 3, Apartment C). Once the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Bellows’ ruling (sorry, should have given you a spoiler alert on that) and restores the divine right of turds, there’ll no longer be any point in paying attention to Maine.
There’s another reason I won’t be going to the polls next month. Oddly enough, it’s because I can. Thanks to the latest in a string of ill-considered electoral reforms (ranked-choice voting, taxpayer-funded campaigns, term limits), voters like me, who aren’t enrolled in a political party, can take part in partisan primaries. That means people with no political stake in who carries the standards for the Democrats and Republicans will be able to influence that decision for reasons that may be at odds with those parties’ fundamental principles — assuming, against the evidence, either party possesses any.
That could be fun — and an improvement over the choices of partisan hacks — if only there were suitable options on the ballot for encouraging disruptive behavior. But Bellows’ ruling notwithstanding, both major parties’ rosters offer little beyond the decided stench of turdishness.
The GOP side has been flaking away like a sufferer from chronic dandruff. In addition to Trump, there’s Nikki (the Civil War was caused by George Soros) Haley and Ryan (weren’t you a comic-strip character in Bloom County?) Binkley. Ron DeSantis dropped out after New Hampshire voters rejected him without even voting. Vivek Ramaswamy, president of the Sucking Up to Trump Club, quit after Iowa voters told him he sucked too much. Doug Burgum, the governor of some state, withdrew from the race nobody knew he was in. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie collected enough signatures to get his name on the ballot here, but accidentally submitted them for validation to the secretary of state in American Samoa.
As for the Dems’ field of contenders, it’s thinner than conservative candidates’ prospects in Portland. It consists of Joe Biden, our most senile president since Ronald Reagan, and Dean Phillips, a previously unknown congressman from an unknown state, who thinks Elon Musk would make a swell cabinet member (Secretary of Antisemitism?).
It’s a shame the Green Independents and Libertarians, both legal parties in Maine, aren’t holding primaries, because they’ve conjured up some presidential bobbleheads who are custom made for treating the nominating process with as little dignity as it deserves.
While Jill Stein, the Greens’ 2016 nominee and erstwhile dinner companion of Vladimir Putin, seems certain to again become that party’s standard bearer, she’s opposed by one candidate billed as “Avatar of Earth” and another who’s a self-proclaimed Christian prophet. As for the Libertarians, their top contenders include a guy who wants to open the borders and abolish Medicare and Social Security, as well as another whose prime qualification is being a former owner of Penthouse.
Then there’s No Labels, also an official party in this state. In addition to its self-proclaimed lack of labels, the group has no candidates, no platform, and is making no promises it will get around to remedying those deficiencies in no time.
If you’re feeling guilty about skipping the irrelevant March election, assuage your conscience by pledging you’ll vote in Maine’s June primary, which features candidates for Congress and state offices. With so many positions up for grabs, there might be a few political hopefuls with more intelligence than a potato and higher ethical standards than the average purveyor of cryptocurrency.
Although none has surfaced yet.
Alternative prospects for entertainment on March 5 can be e-mailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.
