Many people have expressed unhappiness about the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath. Of course, not everybody has been unhappy, or unhappy about the same things. Current civic happiness levels have extreme variance, maybe as extreme as those that theoretical physicists speculate could exist in alternative universes.
It’s easy to experience such divergence in perceived reality. Just switch back and forth between CNN and Fox News. You could experience similar antipodal realities by attending an English football match and moving back and forth between the seating sections of each team’s fans (a tad barmy they are, matey!), waving first one pennant, then the other. That is, you could experience those realties as long as you remained alive.
Subsidized loyalties and less-than-thoughtful tribalism now can make you wonder how much more malignant American politics might get. It produced a pair of 2016 presidential nominees who made me wonder whether we should bring back the Free Soil Party. The Clinton Restoration v The Apprentice Goes To Washington resembled other horror movies in drawing a large audience of horrified people. Will the next election inspire Batman v Superman v K Street? Ponder your terror. Keep the lights on.
It might be a stretch to imagine any 2020 experience more unpleasant than the 2016 election, but it is imaginable:
- Attending a caged sports contest featuring roller derby professionals competing against rookie javelin throwers, your seat inside the cage.
- Sitting through a staging of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with all roles performed by Justin Bieber.
- Finishing a big bowl of the Norwegian ice cream treat Jamoca Almond Lutefisk.
Let’s try to project the 2020 election (without wishing for intervention by asteroid). Since I’ve developed a high threshold for political pain and a keen eye for disaster, I’m making an early prediction about the presidential candidates our two Freddy Kruger-imperishable political parties will present us in 2020.
First, predictive stipulations concerning the 2016 nominees: President Trump will not run for re-election. He’ll move on to head The Trump Consortium, leveraging projected casino revenue while hedging with bankrupt real estate, or some high-stakes paper deal like that. Hillary Clinton is apparently — apparently — not going to try for a third time to gladden the pained expressions of people subjected to her strangely shouted speeches. Rather than fight the headwinds of her party’s 74 oh-so-enraged candidates, she and Bill will move on to establish a new, two-employee foundation encouraging big donations from tax exiles.
The usual presidency suspects — senators, governors, unindicted co-conspirators — will again poll at about the level they polled in 2016: feeble, maybe feeble-plus if they make cute performances on talk shows.
Still, two candidates will be found. Those two parties will find them. They always find them.
Meet Your 2020 Republican Nominee
The Grand Old Party will nominate someone who is, at least, old. Phineas Fester, the CEO and ruthless 97-year-old ruler of his kerosene oligopoly The Fester Company, will be the standard bearer (although he will require two hardy young staffers to keep him standing up). “Phinny” will run a populist-nationalist-nativist campaign advocating deportation of illegal immigrants not working in the kerosene industry, massive tax cuts, massive increases in military spending, wiping out the national debt, and establishing a White House “hot line” to God.
Mr. Fester’s expressed preference is to serve as both President and Vice-President, but if the party insists on a running mate, the likely choice will be the candidate’s wife, recently retired lingerie model Tiffany Fester.
Meet Your 2020 Democratic Nominee
The anti-capitalist enthusiasm generated in 2016 by Bernie Sanders’ crusading socialist campaign will in 2020 inspire grassroots Democrats (especially those who really, really like grass) to become even more “progressive.” Democrats will excitedly nominate socialist firebrand Joe Steele, who made his bones as a community organizer for Abbondante Waste Management. Steele will campaign on an economic justice platform similar to the one with which socialist Hugo Chavez brought economic justice to Venezuela, though Joe will promise to do something about that long-lines-for-toilet-paper justice.
Balancing the ticket in the manner demanded by today’s militantly inclusive Democratic Party, Joe’s running mate will be a woman of Indigenous Peoples-Pacific Islander-Gambian-Venezuelan heritage who is undocumented, diabetic, and left-handed.