by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I may be just a lowly drunk Internet crank that can’t even get literary types to give me the time of day even if I pay them, but I have a pretty good bead on politics in America.
At least, sometimes.
I know a lot of the time, ok, most of the time, I’m totally wrong. But this one time I was right — I have long suggested that Twitter liberals / progressives are so desperate for some sort of leadership that they would embrace people like Liz Cheney for POTUS.
And, lo and behold, since the beginning of the January 6th Committee hearings, this very thing has happened. A number of pieces have been done suggesting Cheney should run as either a Democrat or as part of some sort of “Unity Ticket” of Biden / Cheney.
I probably should give you links, but I’m too lazy.
But this raises an interesting question, if liberals are so ready to embrace Liz Cheney for high office just because she hates, hates, hates Donald Trump and MAGA, wouldn’t the same principle apply to the big kahuna of Mike Pence? Just imagine if Mike Pence went to the January 6th Committee, totally turned on Trump and MAGA to the fullest extent possible.
He would instantly become a liberal darling — despite everything else — and he could very well bankshot himself into being the Democratic nominee in 2024. That sounds totally fucking bonkers, but we’re in very, very dire times for our democracy. So dire that a Unity Ticket of Pence / AOC makes a huge amount of fucking sense to me.
Of course, there would have to be some sort of power sharing agreement for that to work, which would make the US government very schizophrenic, but at least we would be able to punt a severe political crisis down the road a few more presidential election cycles.
There are two obvious problems with this above and beyond the obvious . One is, the administration of elections could be so corrupt in 2024 that not even a Hail Mary Unity Ticket could work. The other is, I’m not so sure that we actually have the gumption to do something so drastic to save our democracy.
Americans talk about democracy in the abstract very well, but the country is too big and too divided for a Unity Ticket to work. If we were Canada, maybe. But we have 335 million people to get on the same page, not 35 million.
Anyway. We’re fucked. Nothing and on one is going to save us. Get ready. The next few years will be lit.
