Democracy Schmemocracy
I went to vote on my way in to work this morning. Machine politics lives on here in the City of Boston, and one of the ways you see it is when your polling place is never more than a hundred yards or so from your house, and a ten-minute walk could get you to two others. Eastie has a rump Republican streak, and so there was one old codger with a McCain-Palin sign out in front chatting with a lady who works for the Menino syndicate pumping for contributions. And of course "No On 1" signs everywhere. I can't see it winning but OMFG I'd die a happy man if it did.
But the legacy of the machine lives on in another less charming way. Below Electors for the President and Vice President, and Kerry's Senate seat, there were a half-dozen races from the House down to city council and Keeper of Ye Game. I will freely confess I have no idea what the Registrar of Deeds and Probate does, and strongly suspect that the winner of said office matters only insofar as deciding whether the patronage goes to the micks, wops, beaners, or eggplants.
Nonetheless, I was gobsmacked to see that from the mongoloid townie congressman Michael Capuano on down, not one of these offices was contested, and Kerry's senate race was contested only in the sense that his challengers would not be executed after the election. The Presidential race is meaningful to the extent that the popular vote has some PR effect, but otherwise, the only reason to bother showing up for this were the ballot questions, all of which were the product of cranks.
I have a simple rule, along the lines of what Heinlein suggested, which is that when I don't recognize a name on a down-ballot race, I vote for the challenger. So, needless to say, if M. Mouse should win a City Council seat, I hope he'll fix some of my parking tickets, and I also have high hopes for D. Duck, W.E. Coyote, and R. Runner in their respective races.
In any case, I have toyed with the idea of registering as a Democrat in order to vote in the primaries, which is where many of these races are really decided, but that would presume that those races actually concern anything other than which particular tribe gets to divvie up the loot. Perhaps it doesn't matter who the register of deeds is, but shouldn't a city councilor or congressman be forced to, you know, run?
I went to vote on my way in to work this morning. Machine politics lives on here in the City of Boston, and one of the ways you see it is when your polling place is never more than a hundred yards or so from your house, and a ten-minute walk could get you to two others. Eastie has a rump Republican streak, and so there was one old codger with a McCain-Palin sign out in front chatting with a lady who works for the Menino syndicate pumping for contributions. And of course "No On 1" signs everywhere. I can't see it winning but OMFG I'd die a happy man if it did.
But the legacy of the machine lives on in another less charming way. Below Electors for the President and Vice President, and Kerry's Senate seat, there were a half-dozen races from the House down to city council and Keeper of Ye Game. I will freely confess I have no idea what the Registrar of Deeds and Probate does, and strongly suspect that the winner of said office matters only insofar as deciding whether the patronage goes to the micks, wops, beaners, or eggplants.
Nonetheless, I was gobsmacked to see that from the mongoloid townie congressman Michael Capuano on down, not one of these offices was contested, and Kerry's senate race was contested only in the sense that his challengers would not be executed after the election. The Presidential race is meaningful to the extent that the popular vote has some PR effect, but otherwise, the only reason to bother showing up for this were the ballot questions, all of which were the product of cranks.
I have a simple rule, along the lines of what Heinlein suggested, which is that when I don't recognize a name on a down-ballot race, I vote for the challenger. So, needless to say, if M. Mouse should win a City Council seat, I hope he'll fix some of my parking tickets, and I also have high hopes for D. Duck, W.E. Coyote, and R. Runner in their respective races.
In any case, I have toyed with the idea of registering as a Democrat in order to vote in the primaries, which is where many of these races are really decided, but that would presume that those races actually concern anything other than which particular tribe gets to divvie up the loot. Perhaps it doesn't matter who the register of deeds is, but shouldn't a city councilor or congressman be forced to, you know, run?
posted by The Snob at
6:58 AM
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