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It’s just a couple days until the new president takes office, so apparently it’s time for the next campaigns to begin. And the campaign world gave us two videos today, one produced professionally, and the other, well, the other looks like a local car dealership with a bad attitude.

First, here we have the campaign announcement of former Colorado state senator Mike Johnston for governor of Colorado:

There it is: soaring music, inspirational story, gorgeous video production. Now, I give you an ad from Corey Stewart, who is running for Virginia governor in what looks to be a crowded Republican primary. It’s set to be aired during the inauguration programing Friday, and, well, brace yourself because it’s quite terrible:

Yeah, how about that awful typography, low-budget visuals, and that weird public domain music at an uncomfortably mixed volume? Living in the future as we do, with surpluses of excellent tools for both professional and amateur video production, it’s become jarring when an ad looks and sound as terrible as a 1990s local village pizza place ad. But I guess he does beat liberals again, again and again, so what do I know.


Act the First:

“Well, I’ll tell you the funniest is that before a show, I’ll go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it,” Trump said. “You know, I’m inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good.”

“You know, the dresses. ‘Is everyone okay?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I’ve been very good,” he added.

Act the Second:

In a 2006 interview, Stern asks Trump, “Do you think you could now be banging 24-year-olds?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Trump says.
“Would you do it?,” asks Stern.
“I’d have no problem,” Trump said.
Stern then asked Trump if he has an age limit.
“No, I have no age — I mean, I have age limit. I don’t want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.”

Act the Third (Finale):

Four women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant said Donald Trump walked into the dressing room while contestants — some as young as 15 — were changing.

Three other women, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting engulfed in a media firestorm, also remembered Trump entering the dressing room while girls were changing. Two of them said the girls rushed to cover their bodies, with one calling it “shocking” and “creepy.” The third said she was clothed and introduced herself to Trump. Or, more eloquently: 

Mix however you feel like it, because You Built It.


Drink it. Have another.

Mix however you feel like, because fuck it. 

— Nate Goldman (@NateGoldman) February 3, 2016

Just went off on a Twitter ramble, so thought perhaps this should be kept for the record.

Governors tend to do better in presidential elections than holders of other offices. Prior to President Obama, four of our past five presidents have been former governors (and the other was a former vice president).

Yet, for all the riches this race has in (or previously in) the governor’s mansion, they’ve all done terribly. On the Republican side, you have Christie, Kasich, Walker, Bush, Perry, Gilmore, Huckabee, Jindal and Pataki. They basically have combined for a fifth place at best, depending on which debate happened most recently. On the Democratic side, you have O’Malley (the other real story is how he never caught fire) and Chafee, and while I can’t tell why Block O’Granite decided to run, they have combined for a total of nothing.

Yet, four of the five realistic potential major party nominees are senators or former senators. In 2008, we noticed a race in which no matter who won, he would be the first senator elected president since John F. Kennedy. That was weird!

And yet, nobody is noticing it happening again. Have we reached a weird change in our politics where the office most likely to get you elected president changed? In the early days of our republic, that office was secretary of state; that hasn’t happened basically since then. But the 20th century was punctuated by the gospel that governors make great presidents, even if you can’t see Russia from your house. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush: it seemed like a streak that wouldn’t end and a tradition that would settle for another century.

It could be that governors are no longer cromulent candidates. That’s a huge story. Nobody except us has said it yet.

I usually find Snowden to be too douche-y and self-righteous to actually want to pay attention to him, so I can’t believe I’m actually recommending watching an interview with him. But John Oliver actually makes it worth watching, mostly because he actually pushes hard questions on Snowden instead of just bowing down. That there’s a length discussion of dick pics also probably helps.







Verities and Vagaries