I have to vote in an election coming up. This one is somehow more interesting than a lot of local elections, because it’s a california state senate seat. In case you don’t know, the California state legislature is fundamentally broken in the same way that the federal legislature is broken – they refuse to compromise. This election features two candidates who are caricatures of their party, and so is the district, which stretches over 220 miles long and was obviously gerrymandered by the parties at some point. The people at opposite ends of the district never heard of the towns in their district.
On the republican side, there is Sam Blakeslee. In the special election he got just short of 50%, which forced this regular election to be held. Since he found himself so far ahead, he has decided to make absolutely sure that he never answers a question from a reporter, and never appears in a public debate with his democratic opponent. As a former employee of Exxon who has supported offshore oil drilling in california, you couldn’t ask for a more obnoxious candidate.
The Democrat is a guy whose platform seems to be “we need to break the 2/3 rule and we need to raise taxes”. Great thinking you fuckwit – have you ever thought of why the California budget is always broken?
No wonder California is broken if this is what we end up with.
But I saved my biggest criticism for last. These candidates have met in a debate once, but somehow nobody thought to videotape it and upload it to youtube. There were a grand total of 200 people present at the debate, but none of the news outlets thought to do this, and neither party thought of doing it, and the organizers of the event never thought of it. Democracy FAIL.