Blue Meat for the Base

BY CHRIS SZABLA

At least week’s RNC, VP nominee Sarah Palin and former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered speeches that embraced Republican stereotypes in an effort to rally the party base . What if their opponents had tried to do the same? Record editor Chris Szabla imagines the nomination speech you didn’t hear at the Democratic National Convention.

“Namaste and bonjour, my fellow Democrats. It is with great pleasure that I accept your nomination for vice president of these United States of Greater Boston, northern California, assorted Midwestern university campuses, at least three boroughs of New York, and half the Hawaiian Islands. I would be greatly honored and humbled to serve as the next vice president.

At this point I would normally introduce you to my beautiful family. But of my last three attempts at holy matrimony, one was destroyed by gay marriage, one broke up for a gay marriage, and one was a gay marriage. And I am proud of every last one of them.

[cheers] 

My fellow Democrats, our opponents want to keep us focused on petty issues like Russia‘s continuing threat to the former Eastern Bloc. But we say: how can we even think about having preliminary planning meetings for multilateral discussions with Russia with our identity at stake at home? Will women want to volunteer themselves for cautiously prepared diplomatic initiatives when they can’t even volunteer to terminate their unwanted pregnancies?

[Crowd: No!] 

Will our troops want to retreat from Iraq as quickly as possible without socialized medicine to lure them back from the single-payer health care systems enjoyed by literally the entire rest of the world?

[Crowd, chanting: Hell no, they must go, nationalize the HMOs!] 

Democrats, this year we are the party of change. It’s time we take back our civilized bike trails, NPR affiliates, Volvo dealerships, light rail systems, wind power farms and those mini Starbucks they have in most Barnes & Nobles back from the hordes of barbarian hillbillies who have hijacked our cosmopolitan coastal enclaves for too long!

[wild cheers] 

We’re going to win this year because our values reflect those of the average American. Like a growing number of American neighborhoods, we’re diverse. Like a growing number of American highways, we sport a lot of alternative fuel-powered cars. Like all Americans, we enjoy the treat of a fancy coffee from time to time. Heaven forbid, we even like to read.

[polite laughter, golf claps] 

We analyze an awesome Darwin here in the Blue States, and when someone’s God tries to undermine our unity, we shut Him up tight in Al Gore’s lockbox. But shutting that lockbox isn’t easy, which is why we need to open the floodgates to Mexican laborers and French Canadian atheists from chain link fence to shining chain link border fence. 

[ambivalent murmurs]

But while these fertile foreigners and inevitable future Democrats will be welcome to do all the shitty jobs there are to do here, they will most certainly not be welcome to abscond with your obsolescent mining and manufacturing jobs abroad.

[cheers]

…as much as we so admire their beautiful cultures, and weep for their poverty, of course. 

[respectful, appreciative applause]

Delegates, this is an important year. It’s not that our opponents don’t care, it’s that they don’t get it. It’s not really about taxes or the judiciary. These trying times call for a leader who, like many Americans, wore Birkenstocks around his reefer-scented liberal arts college. A leader who drinks fair trade green tea. A leader who can complete the New York Times crossword puzzle and that even harder puzzle thing that they have in the Atlantic Monthly. 

Thank you, my fellow Democrats. We face a difficult struggle ahead of us. May Darwin enlighten America! Because that place needs as much enlightenment as he can give.”