My sample ballot arrived…
Monday, June 6th, 2016[If you’re looking for “Monday Words of Wisdom,” you’ll find them at the end of this article.]
…and it tells me a lot about the NJ primary election. First, the top line corresponds to NJ’s Dem establishment—the slate of officially sanctioned NJ Dem committee blah-blah-blah’s candidates. I’ll ignore that whole line and not just because Mrs. Bill Clinton leads that linear parade. I have no use for the Dem establishment anymore. It’s shown it’s true colors. Arrogant, entitled, presumptuous, anti-progressive—those are the best adjectives I have to describe it. The worst ones aren’t appropriate for a PG-13 blog post.
Second, Mrs. Bill Clinton gets top billing over Sanders. The town fathers can argue for that as simple alphabetical order. Or maybe it was decided by a coin toss—like those “fair” coin tosses Hillary won in many of those silly caucuses. I know a lot of people see Democrat and vote the top line. NJ is a blue state, the Dem establishment always wins here, so nobody bothers to look at the issues anymore. The leading local Dem group is called the Blue Wave—read “DNC Annex.”
Besides, Clinton is a well-known face, it’s time for a woman to be in the White House, that Sanders is just a spoiler, yadda-yadda-yadda. This is assuming Dem voters even bother to show up. NJ’s is among the last primaries, people have better things to do (the NBA championship games are in full swing and the irises are in bloom in the local Iris Gardens), and summer has already started so the South Shore beckons.
I hear that “spoiler” criticism about Mr. Sanders a lot. The electorate has no memory. Mrs. Bill Clinton won the 2008 CA primary over Mr. Obama in 2008—she was a “spoiler” by Sanders’s naysayers’ definition! How dare Feinstein and all her old Hillary cronies call for Sanders to drop out. Sexism can go both ways, old Dem has-beens! How ‘bout asking yourselves which candidate is more likely to beat Satan aka Mr. Trump? Mrs. Bill Clinton is going to struggle—you can bet on that. But Mr. Trump chickened out on debating Mr. Sanders. So did Mrs. Bill Clinton.