Satirist Alexandra Petri once again punctures a pompous ass's balloon, this time providing an annotated version of the retirement announcement of West Virginny's DINO man of the people Sen. Joe "Maserati" Manchin, who thinks the voice in his head is America clamoring for him to run for president:
Great News (for Republicans)!
I, Joe Manchin, am leaving the Senate (to Mitch McConnell) to go and unite the country (behind Donald Trump)! I have searched my soul (but found no shame), and this is what I must do (to uproot my legacy and leave Washington worse than I found it).
People from both sides of the aisle are crying out for Joe Manchin (to stop). I am the No. 1 candidate in many people’s minds (when those people are both men in suits on a stage In Conversation At A Washington, D.C., Think Tank) when they ask the question: Who can bring the country (club) together?
This is what the American people at large (if “large” is the name of an obscure coal-based lobbying group) have been clamoring for. I must give the people what they want (to avoid).
What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see whether there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together (to elect Donald Trump to a second nonconsecutive term). Because I believe it’s time for bipartisan, common-sense solutions and to gather around our shared values of family, freedom, democracy and dignity. (I am threatening to embark on a quixotic third-party campaign for president that will almost certainly toss our nation into the arms of a would-be despot whose plans for his second term are looking more autocratic by the minute!) Don’t everyone thank me at once...
As with all the potential grievance and/or ego- driven spoilers, we think any appeal to conscience or patriotism would fall on Manchin's deaf ears. These people have no more use for American democracy than do the Malignant Loser and his MAGAt cult. We saw what happened in 2000 and in 2016 when enough votes were siphoned away by vanity candidates in critical states; we got Dubya's Iraq War and the four- year near- apocalypse of the Malignant Loser. Have we learned anything? Maybe not.
BONUS: This.
(Photo: "Maserti" Manchin on his yacht)
