People from both sides of the aisle are crying out for Joe Manchin (to stop). I am the No. 1 candidate in many people’s minds (when those people are both men in suits on a stage In Conversation At A Washington, D.C., Think Tank) when they ask the question: Who can bring the country (club) together?
This is what the American people at large (if “large” is the name of an obscure coal-based lobbying group) have been clamoring for. I must give the people what they want (to avoid).
What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see whether there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together (to elect Donald Trump to a second nonconsecutive term). Because I believe it’s time for bipartisan, common-sense solutions and to gather around our shared values of family, freedom, democracy and dignity. (I am threatening to embark on a quixotic third-party campaign for president that will almost certainly toss our nation into the arms of a would-be despot whose plans for his second term are looking more autocratic by the minute!) Don’t everyone thank me at once.
I would love to stay in the Senate (where my vote matters), but instead I must go (on a fool’s errand that will benefit no one). Specifically, I must go around and listen very, very closely to see whether I can hear an overwhelming groundswell of popular support getting ready to surge for me. I will hear it any minute now, I think. That is what I must urgently do, and I have to leave the Senate to do it. I can’t hear anyone clamoring for me from the Senate, but maybe if I got out somewhere quieter, I might hear something. Currently, the clamor is drowned out by the voices of people saying, “Joe Manchin, don’t do this! Joe Manchin, think of the cost! What do you want your legacy to be?” and Mitch McConnell cackling and things of that nature.
I know what you will say: I am needed in the Senate. But I have been in the Senate since 2010 (apparently not paying attention to what has been going on there!).
Please don’t annotate these remarks!
My candidacy would make sense. Everyone who has worked hard to support me says, “The next president should certainly be Joe!” Then they say another word after, that but I am not listening. I assume it’s my last name! “Please don’t do anything to mess that up! Democracy is in a precarious place right now!” they add, and I give them a big thumbs-up. I would never dream of it.
They also say, “Without your vote in the Senate, how will we hope to confirm, say, an ambassador or a justice?” Fear not: There won’t be any obstacles to a justice in my place. Indeed, Justice is the name of my probable successor. He’s a Republican, not that that’s important.
I know this might hit some of you hard. You might say, “What a time to hand the Senate to Mitch McConnell!” But, to you, I say, “I have achieved everything I sought to achieve” (for coal! Yay, coal!). I have also achieved some things I didn’t think I would get to achieve, like getting Ted Cruz and Tom Harkin to attend a gathering on my boat, Almost Heaven!
Some may say, “Joe Manchin, what about your legacy?” To them, I say, the world will soon be boiling and no trace of human habitation will remain on its surface; what benefits me a legacy then?
This is what America deserves! (Probably.)
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