Candidate Quality Doesn't Matter

... at all.

Several right-wing media outlets have taken to post-election lecturing the hoi polloi about the importance of “candidate quality.” Their main thrust: the reason the much ballyhooed Republican Red Wave drained to a mere Red Ripple for the midterms is that some of the Grand Ol’ Party’s candidates lacked the charisma and character, the policies and perspective, to emerge victorious over their Democratic adversaries.

If only Dr. Mehmet Oz could have mustered the raw animal magnetism of John Fetterman!

Would that Herschel Walker had the hagiological history of Reverend Raphael Warnock!

Why couldn’t Lee Zeldin have the towering gravitas of Kathy Hochul!?

This conclusion is one of the most insane—and incorrect—possible takeaways.

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Great choices abound.

Candidate quality does not matter in current American politics. At all. It should, I wish it did. I’m sure at some point it did. But not now.

You’d think Republicans would realize this; they voted for Donald John Trump, Grabber of Pussies, Carnival Barker Extraordinaire, a man who once boasted "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" And they are currently looking forward to voting for Herschel “Demon Baby” Walker (credit to Louder with Crowder for that joke) in an upcoming runoff with fellow dumpster inferno Reverend Raphael “Ran Over My Wife” Warnock.

Even tossing aside a fool’s hope for introspection, you would think Republicans would at least realize their Democratic counterparts do not care one iota about candidate quality. The Democrats voted for Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.—Sniffer of Kiddies, Demented Lich King. They voted for Creepy Joe because, ostensibly, they were on a righteous quest to defeat the Sith Lord Trump—whom they branded as an evil, old, rich, greedy, straight, white, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, corrupt, lying, bullying, fascistic, narcissistic, sociopathic, retarded-yet-brilliant, multiversal threat to “Our Sacred Democracy!™—and the only remedy was bravely casting their vote for Sith Lord Biden—who, in turn, may be an evil, old, rich, greedy, straight, white, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, corrupt, lying, bullying, fascistic, narcissistic, sociopathic, retarded-yet-brilliant, multiversal threat to “Our Sacred Democracy!™” Mission accomplished!

Their mission might seem a bit misguided, like embarking on an epic quest to keep the One Ring of Power from the clutches of the nefarious Sauron (R-Mordor) only to traipse past Mt. Doom and over to magical Great Britain so you could hand the Ring to Voldemort (D-Hogwarts), and then do a celebratory dance while a cackling Voldemort uses the Ring to rain down fiery doom across the countryside.

Their mission might seem a bit misguided until you note the all-important distinction between those two sordid sorcerers above: the “R” and the “D.” All the other modifiers are mere “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

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Candidate quality does not matter. All that matters is The Party. Party before self. Party before sanity. Party before country. Party before God.

A more eloquent politician from a more civilized age once made the following, prescient remarks concerning political parties:

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

Turns out ol’ George Washington was a pretty smart cookie. (Though I’ve been assured by the scholars in Antifa and BLM that he was an evil, old, rich, greedy, straight, white, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, corrupt, lying, bullying, fascistic, narcissistic, sociopathic, retarded-yet-brilliant, multiversal threat to “Our Sacred Democracy!™)

Now, as I hope is abundantly clear, this is a problem with all political parties, and is indeed one of those “systemic” problems we hear so much about. We all should be wary of drinking Cult Kool-Aid repackaged as Party Punch.

However, I want to focus on the unique Democratic strain of this mind virus here because that is the particular pathology being ignored by those obtuse Republicans quixotically claiming this is an issue of “candidate quality.”

The Democrat recipe for Party Punch is an especially heady brew for several reasons:

1. The Democrats’ ideology, built around collectivism and “pure democracy,” prioritizes uniformity and conformity.

2. The Democrats are particularly ignorant of other parties’ tenets.

3. The Democrats, accordingly, live in an echo-chamber telling them that political heretics and infidels are dangerous, evil, and pose an “existential threat.”

If our modern society has carved a God-shaped hole in the populace, the Democratic Party has poured itself into that space. Like molten steel filling a mold, it has annealed into religion. As many Republicans are religious in a more conventional mold, it may help them to view the elections through this lens.

For example, if a Christian had to vote in an election where they were told one candidate was allied with God and one was allied with Satan, for whom would they vote? Of course, they will have pulled the lever for the prior and be out of the voting booth before even hearing another word about the latter. Any additional information is completely irrelevant to them.

That is why it did not matter who the Republicans ran. The Religious Right, having long cornered the free market on bringing crusades to American politics, may just be slow in recognizing this trait in their once ostensibly “liberal” counterparts. The Libertarian Right may have a hard time conceptualizing this schema altogether. Regardless, to Democrats, this is a religious war. Light versus Dark. Good versus Evil. People are voting against the other Party, which they’ve been assured will literally kill them. As historian Michael Beschloss humbly suggested, if Republicans win “our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.” Meanwhile, patient zero for the brain-melting, Bubonic, Captain Trips, Andromeda Strain, Omega Variant of TDS, Sam Harris, boasted that “Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.”

But, yeah, if the Republican candidate was just a bit more eloquent or had a better tax policy, then I’m sure she could have flipped a few of those voters.

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“Hi, goodnight, everybody!”

The poster boy for this is phenomenon is, of course, John Fetterman. Hobo Fett (as he is known in the Star Wars universe) makes Sleepy Joe look like Pericles. I’d contend he is the worst candidate in history. He looks like the Umbrella Corporation spliced together the worst parts of Uncle Fester, Sling Blade, Quasimodo, Sloth, Mole Man, and Frankenstein’s Monster, injected the result with some G-Virus, slapped a Steelers hoodie on it, splashed some ROGAINE® on its chin, stuck a cheesesteak in its hand, spanked its ass and sent it out into the world.

But wait! There’s more! Though appearances have played an inflated role in politics, especially since the advent of the television, Fetterman’s trademark blend of hysterical-yet-terrifying ghoulishness is not just skin deep.

• WHILE HE WAS MAYOR, he grabbed a shotgun and chased down an unarmed, innocent black man, in an incident that has haunting and horrible similarities to the death of Ahmaud Arbery. It also prompted this astonishing quote from intergalactic bounty hunter Hobo Fett: “I believe I did the right thing, but I may have broken the law during the course of it.”
  
  Apparently, Fetterman fancied himself some fat farce of Mayor Mike Haggar taking to the streets of Metro City to fight the Mad Gear Gang (though Fetterman looks far more likely to go smashing trashcans in search of barbecue). Maybe he thinks he is a real-life super hero because his name ends in “-man.” Regardless, one can only imagine the constant, blood-curdling media reports and wailing from Democrats if any non-Democrat had done this. But, Hobo Fett has the magical (D) next to his name, so crickets from the media and the mob.
  

• WHILE ON A LIVE TELEVISION DEBATE, he blatantly lied about his stance on fracking. I know: a politician lying!? Inconceivable! But, seriously, this was next level. It really epitomized the Democrat party policy that, similar to The Secret and manifestation, if you just ignore reality and shout your truth, then you too can rewrite history and all of reality to bring whatever cockamamie idea you have into existence.
  
  Moderator: Do you support fracking?
  Fetterman: I… I… I support fracking. I do… I have always… supported… fracking!
  Moderator: Really? ‘Cause here is a newspaper quoting you as saying you always hated fracking and would never support it.
  —TV displays said quote on screen next to Fetterman’s face—
  Fetterman: <Stares blankly into the abyss for an eternity. Sparks and smoke start emanating from his quivering neck bulge.>
  Fetterman: I… I do… I stand… I… I have always supported fracking!
  
  I can’t stress enough how surreal this exchange was. It was the most blatant, bald-faced lie I can recall in this context. The quote where he said THE EXACT OPPOSITE was on-screen right next to him as he lied. Our politics may have jumped the shark a long time ago, but this was like jumping an F5 sharknado. And, it was all in service of defending fracking, which my Democrat friends and family have spent years telling me was the environmental equivalent to Galactus or Unicron devouring Earth. But, Hobo Fett has the magical (D) next to his name, so crickets from the media and the mob.
  

• There are so many more examples of Hobo Fett’s catastrophic lack of character that it is impossible to give them all equal equitable treatment here. He went to Harvard and lived off his parents’ dime while masquerading as a working-class hero. He is weak on crime while Philadelphia faces record homicides. He failed to pay taxes because they “just fell through the cracks.” The list goes on and on. But, Hobo Fett has the magical (D) next to his name, so crickets from the media and the mob.
  

• Oh, and he had a massive stroke that appears to have given him brain damage to the point where HE CAN’T COMMUNICATE IN BASIC ENGLISH, even with the express help of technical assistance, which he also proceeded to throw under the bus. But, Hobo Fett has the magical (D) next to his name, so… the media actually plays defense for him and props him up as A POTENTIAL PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE! This is padded cell-level delirium, but, hey, if you dare point out that walking word-salad Mad-libs like Biden or Fetterman clearly have the political competency of a malfunctioning Roomba®, then you are the problem, you hate-filled ableist!

If you can vote for John Fetterman, you can vote for anyone your party rubber stamps. Not even “anyone”—“anything!” You would vote for an old ham sammich, a doorknob, Flukeman from The X-Files, pocket lint, hoary fringe-moss, a Morlock, a broken George Foreman Grill™, fly-coated roadkill… you name it, you can vote for it. Heck, Pennsylvania voters proved this by washing down that shot of Fetterman with a chaser of Tony DeLuca, who is—and, no, I’m not joking here—literally dead.

The candidates are merely placeholders, empty vessels that serve only to carry the Ideology into the world. Again, no party is immune to this, but Republican brand has (for better or worse) at least more of a predilection for rugged individualism and representative democracy, both of which somewhat inure it from the more pernicious Democrat strain of the Party Virus (not as fun or festive as it sounds, I’m afraid.) Yes, this segues nicely into a discussion of the Cult of Personality’s impact on party politics, but that will have to wait for a future article.

In a sensible world of independent analysis, is Oz a great a candidate? Nope. Does he give off a sort of smarmy, TV snake oil salesman vibe? Yup. but, is he a functioning human being who can properly process external stimuli? A resounding yes! Is he a successful individual who can communicate with coworkers and who has presented actual practical policies? Yup. And, really, his policies are largely just milquetoast centrist appeasement platforms that usually wouldn’t scare off (or enchant) most voters. He has gobs more “candidate quality” than Fetterman. But, he has an (R) next to his name and was endorsed by Hitler, Satan, Reagan, Trump! The Republicans could have run Alexander the Great, or Augustus the Great, or even better, Obama! If they had slapped an (R) next to their names, no amount of “candidate quality” would have overcome the (D) next to Hobo Fett’s name.

This is not even to mention the losing or embattled candidates on the Republican side of the ballot that are clearly quality candidates by most any conventional metric: for example, Lee Zeldin and Kari Lake. In fact, Lake’s contest serves as a great corollary to my theory.

In the case of Fetterman versus Oz, the Democrats knew they were in for a clobbering if they put their boy in the ring. But nonetheless, they ran the hapless Hobo Fett out onto the stage only to have him politically pee his pants and create one of the most jaw-droppingly catastrophic performances in history. He won anyway.

In the case of Lake versus Hobbs, the Democrats knew they were in for a clobbering if they put their girl in the ring. But, this time the exact opposite tack was taken. The cowardly Katie Hobbs, employing an enhanced version of the now-famous “Biden Basement Strategy,” (not the one Sam Harris recommended) added in a flat-out refusal to even debate Lake, dodging the fight altogether. The jury is still out on this one as of my writing this (Maricopa gonna Maricopa!), but the fact that it is even close shows how little the actual “candidate quality” matters.

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“Uh oh.”

Two things to note in closing:

First, there are people legitimately questioning why it matters if Fetterman is a turnip in a sweatshirt. “It’s just politics!” they claim. “What’s a little aphasia among friends, after all?”

Though I get the joke that having a brain is no longer necessary to be a politician, the mental capability to process information and communicate quickly and effectively should be a bare minimum requirement. Someone unable to do a task should not be doing that task, especially when others' lives will be impacted, as is case with politics.

Whether he is so severely brain damaged that he cannot process a simple question—repeated several times, slowly, visually and aurally, by multiple people—or he is “merely” impaired and choose to lie directly, blatantly, and with impunity to the nation when repeatedly asked about fracking, he is unfit to even be running for office.

Second, both of you who read this far may have been champing at the bit to point out that this “candidate quality” issue is not about winning over opposition party voters, but about swaying those all-important independents, moderates, and undecideds. Again, in a sane world, yes, but these are not sane times, and the population of fabled Independent Voter Unicorns have been decimated by the Voldemort of Increasingly Divisive Tribal Politics. They don’t exist in numbers necessary to move the needle at the moment.

Until we can start to repopulate that “Murky Middle” and get people to stop washing down every media misery meal with a 2-liter of Party Punch, we may as well face up to the fact that “candidate quality” simply does not matter. At all.