This time around I’ll tackle the positions up for grabs at the federal level. See my previous post here on the ballot issues and my overview of these voting roundup posts.
Senate
Incumbent Blanche Lincoln is up for re-election. She’s already held the position for two straight terms (12 years) and previously was in congress for three terms (6 years) for a grand total of 18 god damn moderately liberal years. Yeah, I think it’s time for some change alright.
Not only is it time for new blood, let’s not forget how awful Lincoln has been. She is a dyed-in-the-wool politician, and damn good at it (not a compliment, really). I’ve written a couple times in the past on her already, and it coulda been a lot more before I started this blog. Even if I had a hundred dollars for every stupid piece of legislation, resolution, and malarkey she’s vomited up it wouldn’t come close to the gobs of taxpayer cash she’s wasted.
Unfortunately, our choices for replacements make me want to cry in my [non-existent] libertarian beard. Let’s review this crass menagerie:
John Boozeman - Republican
Currently a representative, he’s trying to upgrade this time around. I’ve written about him before too, but he’s your garden variety conservative. He ranks pretty low on the power meter, meaning he’s pretty non-confrontational, compromising, and generally gets along well up there on the hill. Not a good thing. Voting to increase debt ceilings, deficits, bailouts, and expensive stupid wars only to try the “I’m for cuttin’ spendin’! Promise!!1” line… not buying it, sir. Sorry.
I have little doubt he will win. I also have little doubt that I’ll be able to tell that we even swapped senators.
John Gray – Green
Sweet baby Jesus in the manger — do I really need to tell you why not to vote for this raving lunatic? Christ, just look at his “platform planks”. He makes Nancy Pelosi look like a liberal pussy. He’s about as statist and centric as they come. No, no, no!
Thankfully, he has no chance in hell of winning. That’s what you get for running on an extreme platform, bucko.
Trevor Drown – Independent
He’s basically just a Republican that knew he’d never have a chance in hell of beating Boozeman in the primaries and so didn’t even try. His campaign site looks like he hired a fourteen year-old “professional web site maker” to slap it together. Without the political machine behind him, he has even less chance in hell than Crazy John Gray above.
Despite all of that… I kinda like him. Only kinda.
He claims to be the first independent senator on the ballot in 30 years. I don’t know whether that is true or not, and frankly it doesn’t matter really, but hey. I like underdogs. Actually, I don’t. What I like are people who can shake things up and cause real change in Washington. Well, maybe not change in the effective sense but change in the diverts-attention-from-the-humdrum-go-alongs like Boozeman.
Truly, though, this guy isn’t much of that, but he’s at least on the right track. Unfortunately, he’s basically just a conservative who’s trying to distance himself from the obvious conservative choice of Boozeman. He has no chance of winning. He’s not that much different, really. He also has no previous political experience, which, while it isn’t a bad thing in my book, means I have nothing to go on but his campaign promises. And we know how reliable those tend to be.
I’m not stupid. I know this guy just wants to get elected. All told he probably wouldn’t amount to too terribly much. But he does give a lot of lip-service to libertarian-sounding positions (then again, so does Boozeman, though his votes clearly say otherwise). I like a guy who is unabashedly conservative (something I am NOT!) but yet has the balls to say it isn’t the federal government’s job to define marriage. Coming from someone who has to mention god every other sentence (gotta rally up dem Chris-chun votes!) that’s a breath of sweet, sweet fresh air.
Still, he’s a religious-nut and a military-nut (no surprise since he’s ex green beret). Most of my major disagreements fall under that sort of stuff, so he’s big on war, stupid amounts of defense spending, killing people for trying to cross an invisible border, and anti-choice. Thankfully, there’s no chance any of the pro-lifers can actually meaningfully affect Roe v. Wade and I’m actually okay with them trying to block federal dollars going to support abortions (because I support blocking federal dollars going to non-abortions too).
I know I usually don’t want to compromise on principles, voting for lesser-evils and all that, but I still might vote for this guy. Maybe. After all, he has no chance, right? So what the hell, right? I like that he’s got no party to influence him and that he’s taken no special interest money, but then again that’s easy to spin as a “plus” when the reality is no party would take you and nobody wants to give you money, right?
Ah, I dunno. I don’t much like hard-ass conservatives. But we really do need more fiscally-minded 10th amendment types up there right now, so… I dunno. I’m still undecided on this one.
Because there’s always the last choice: not voting for any of the schmucks! I’m registered, I went in the booth, but none of them got a vote from me. That still goes in the statistics. It sends a message, albeit a very, very quiet and miniscule one. It’s still important in principle.
Congress
Even less action going on here, since it’s only open due to Vic Snyder not seeking re-election (‘cause he was trailing far behind in the polls even almost a year ago, apparently). Let’s take a look at this lot, too:
Lance Levi – Independent
Uh. Well, he’s running as an independent. Yep. That’s about all I could discern.
While his site is markedly better looking than the other indie mentioned above, it’s completely devoid of content. There’s some vapid air message and anecdotal bio, but nothing of any use. No platform issues, nothing at all. He even has big navigation links to YouTube and Twitter campaign accounts, both of which have zero videos and tweets, respectively.
Dude. Did you even try?
Tim Griffin – Republican
Rosy-cheeked token American Family™ pictures abound on his campaign site, with a few national guard outfit shots thrown in for good patriotic measure.
Disappointingly, he’s another garden-variety conservative. His campaign site has the usual good and bad: he’s for cutting taxes, spending, repealing healthcare law, but he’s big on military, defense, border protection, anti-abortion, marriage defining, and other typical crap. Ugh. It’s like he copy & pasted this stuff from some Republican party provided literature.
Better than Vic Snyder? Well, probably, but not by much.
He’s more or less the same as Boozeman and (with a few more differences) Drown, but he lacks the underdog quality of Drown. Drown has a few better points than Griffin, but I was already iffy on Drown as is, so… yeah, even less likely to give this elephant a vote. Maybe I’ll toss it Levi’s way. A sympathy vote, if you will.
Lewis Kennedy – Green
I have no idea what this guy is about. He has no campaign site I can find, other than a useless bio on the official GP site and a content-less Facebook page. There have been a few TV appearances by him and I might be able to find them online if I looked.
But I won’t bother looking, because he’s in the damn Green Party. I don’t need to look. That tells me all I really need to know. Nope, not voting for him.
Joyce Elliot – Democrat
Her official campaign site appears to be down at the time of this writing, so all I had was her Facebook campaign page (complete with crazy bald pic!) and the ravings of the wall.
From what I can gather, she’s been running a heavy smear campaign on Griffin. That usually indicates that the smearer hasn’t got anything better to show for themselves. Since she’s a Demy, I take that to mean she realizes she’s fucked, she’s voted for shit too many times, and so without anything to crow about she resorts to attacking her major opponent.
But I could be wrong.
I dunno, I can’t get to her official list of positions, so I’m short on things to say about her. Still, employing often-enough-right stereotypes, she’s black and Democrat so it’s entirely likely that she’s a garden-variety liberal. Which means no, not voting for her.
But that’s it for contenders, so I probably won’t be voting at all for congressman this year. What a truly terrible lineup.
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