Every now and then we avert our eyes from the desultory Republican primaries and check in on what the Democrats are up to, just as we’ll occasionally glance at the National League standings now that major league baseball is at least underway, but what we find over on the senior circuit of politics is no more heartening.
The putative front-runner in the two-person race, former First Lady and Senator and Secretary of State and long-presumed First Woman President Hillary Clinton, is on a six-game losing streak that includes some embarrassing blow-outs, and all the kids seem to dig her pesky rival, the self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders from the hippie retirement village of Vermont. That’s before the Federal Bureau of Investigation concludes its criminal investigation of Clinton’s well-worthy-of-investigating e-mailing and charity fund-raising activities, which cannot end well not matter what, but it looks as if the fix is in just like one of those phony-baloney professional wrestling matches that the putative Republican front-runner used to perform. None of this is at all heartening when you suddenly recall that this isn’t mere sports, or “sports entertainment,” as the lawyers of professional wrestling like to call their “sport,” and that one of these awful people will likely enter the general election with a realistic chance of becoming president.
The game is played differently over on the Democratic side, too, and in ways that are even more egregious than forcing pitchers to be humiliated at the plate instead of letting a more competent designated hitter take the plate. There’s an unsettling preoccupation with racial and other political identity grievances, for one thing, and it’s lately been the big story. Both campaigns have been hectored by the “Black Lives Matter” movement that is the latest rage among the outsized portion of the Democratic primary electorate that is black, but Clinton’s husband, who was once the first First Black President, and has thus far endowed his frequently betrayed wife with all the political good will of that achievement. The self-described socialists’ promises of perfect economic justice and lots of free stuff is starting to resonate in the “Black Lives Matter” movement, though, and the first First Black President’s welfare reform and tough-on-crime measures are no longer fashionable, and it does make for an interesting situation. Clinton’s husband, who still somehow looms larger than his frequently betrayed yet putatively front-running wife, decided to make a full-troated defense of his past policies, albeit with less throat than his former McDonald’s-fueled from once had, and he threw in some factual stuff about how black folks generally had fared better during his administration than during the first seven-and-a-half years of the First Black President’s administration.
Oddly enough, we found ourselves rooting for the fellow, even if the sorry old son-of-a-bitch is still everything we loathe about the senior circuit. That welfare reform bill he signed really did reduce poverty by forcing people into gainful employment, the tough-on-crime stuff really did save a lot of black lives, which truly do matter, and even though he was forced on both policies by his equally sleazy advisor Dick Morris and the almost as sleazy Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and a whole of Republican voters we hope aren’t so sleazy, we see no reason he should apologize for any of these less famous matters. Then again, we’re not rooting for his awful wife, who until recently had been running against her frequently betraying husband to keep those “Black Lives Matter” people on her side.
Still, we can believe that the fix is in and none of this matters, and that it will come down to whether our league can put up a worthy challenger.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 
And here’s where Bud and I differ. I think that this election matters more than any in my lifetime. For the first time in living memory we have a president who really doesn’t like the country he’s presiding over. And we’re raising a generation that agrees and importing millions who also agree. This election will determine if we hand the reins over to a woman obsessed by greed (cattle futures, secret $250,000 speeches, Clinton Foundation contributions-cough-bribes-cough) who’s political compass’ True North is wealth and power and the hell with everything else. Or do we take a chance that we can change course, patch the hole in the hull of the Titanic, stop before we hit the wall – pick the metaphor of your choice.
That will take more than a “worthy challenger.” Those words invoke the image of a sparring partner, someone who will give the champ a workout without hurting him, and certainly not going for a knock out punch. “Worthy” describes President Romney, President Dole, perhaps even President McCain. We’re fairly certain that, unlike the present incumbent, they loved their country the way it was founded and the people in it; even the old, white men of whom we are one.
That will take someone who has the courage expressed by Byron: “I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flatter’d its rank breath, nor bow’d to its idolatries a patient knee.” Because political correctness is as old as man and has the power to subdue men who care for the approbation of the ruling class even as their policies lead inexorably to destruction of those values we hold dear.
I want to win, not just go a few rounds with the champ. And if that means being called “unworthy,” it’s something I’ll just have to live with. In the end, we’ll sink or swim together.