Yesterday my sister sent me this great story out of Oklahoma about a guy named Joe Exotic who has announced a 2024 Presidential bid. The guy’s real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage, and he got his nickname because he used to run a small, personally owned zoo in Wynnewood, OK whose animal population consisted primarily of some big cats.
Currently however, Joe has another gig, which is serving a 21-year federal sentence after being convicted on multiple charges involving the mis-treatment of wild animals and hiring someone to kill an animal-rights activist who was giving him a pain in the ass.
Joe says he’s confident he can ‘represent all the people’ although he hasn’t yet published a list of issues on which he plans to campaign from his jail cell. But his promise to represent everyone appears to be based on a self-description which says: “I am gay, I am in prison for now, I used drugs in the past, I had more then one boyfriend at once.” [His misspelling, not mine.]
Sounds like a current Member of Congress from Long Island who just filed papers to run again in 2024, doesn’t it? I can just see George Santos coming down to the federal penitentiary where Joe Exotic is an inmate and demanding that the guy be given early release so the two of them can form a new party to run for President next year.
Think I’m kidding? I’m really not. And the reason I’m tongue-in-cheek serious is because next year’s Presidential contest is beginning to resemble the 1996 campaign.
You may recall that Bill Clinton turned George Bush (the first George Bush) into a one-term President because Ross Perot spent $60 million bucks of his own money rolling up almost 20 million popular votes, 19% of all votes cast, most of those votes which otherwise would have gone for the GOP. Four years later, Perot ran again but only pulled 8% of the popular vote and Clinton ran away with the whole shebang.
Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign was considered a re-enactment of Alf Landon’s campaign in 1936, when he carried only 2 states against Roosevelt’s 46 states and 60% of the popular vote. Landon didn’t campaign at all because he refused to go along with the GOP’s attempt to get rid of the New Deal. He was Governor of Kansas and knew that without money from Washington, farmers in his state would have starved.
I just learned from my stepson that Joe Exotic is starring in a Netflix documentary, ‘Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,’ which only goes to show you that anyone can become a movie star. Where’s Joe the Plumber when Netflix needs him now?
But don’t worry, because when it comes to running a stupid and foolish campaign, Ron DeSantis has both Alf Landon and Joe Exotic beaten out, and beaten out by far.
What’s the latest attempt by DeSantis to separate himself from the rest of the post-MAGA pack? He’s putting together a whole, big deal on something called ESG, which he says will be the end of America if it is implemented by Joe and his Deep State gang.
ESG is an acronym for anything which promotes environment, social or corporate governance, which basically means getting rid of the Green Deal, eliminating gender equal rights, and forcing corporations to do something socially redeeming besides just trying to make a buck.
Yesterday I noticed that on one side of the parking lot in front of my local supermarket that some outfit was installing 12 hookups so that shoppers can stop off and charge their cars. General Motors and Ford have both announced they will be manufacturing all-electric fleets no later than 2030 and this schmuck DeSantis actually believes that he can convince a majority of voters that the Green New Deal is some kind of government plot?
Now we’ve got videos and pics flying around the internet showing DeSantis eating like a guy who never got to consume a square meal. And these images will no doubt find their way into anti-DeSantis political stories in the months to come.
So, right now the leading 2024 GOP Presidential candidate is about to do a perp walk following his indictment in New York, and his closest competitor will be starring in a video asking: ‘Do you want to sit next to this guy while he’s eating lunch on a plane?’
And you think I’m kidding when I say that 2024 is beginning to look like 1996?