It's gonna be busy here on Tuesday. So I'm going to say goodbye to Mitt Romney now.

[Plaid Adder]

Dear Mitt Romney,

Well, it's November 5, and that can only mean that your lifelong quest to become President of the United States will die its death tomorrow night. No, for real. Take my advice and don't try to talk to anyone about starting the war chest for 2016. It's not going to work out any better. You are not going to be President of the United States. Not now, not ever. I know, you really really really wanted it. The thing is, though, really really really wanting something is not enough. You can want shit like crazy, but that doesn't mean you have the power to make it happen. Most of us have already learned this. You've been protected by privilege so long, though, that I suppose you might not have learned it yet. Ah well. You'll have that lesson down by Wednesday.

You were a terrible candidate. You were chosen more or less by default from a field crowded with people whose overt radical-right insanity made them nonviable in a general election. The people who chose you didn't really know why you should be POTUS, and you didn't really know either (except see above, re: really really really wanting it). You spent the entire campaign lurching from one position to another, driven by a purely mercenary and cynical hunger for financial and popular support. All politicians are chameleons to some extent; but you really took it to a brand new place. Most lying politicians at least have an ideologically coherent persona that they are trying to use these lies to maintain. You were so eager to tell the magic lie that would put you over the top that you actually destroyed your own ability to make a meaningful statement. About anything. By the end, your language was so completely evacuated of any verifiable content that you might as well just have stopped talking. During the third presidential debate--especially in the last ten minutes--you could have been reciting Vogon poetry and it would have made just about as much sense.

At the end of the campaign, here are the only things that the American electorate can say for sure are true about you: 1) You are white. 2) You are rich. 3) You lie. 4) You think 47% of the people in the US should fuck off and die.

That's not a winning platform in twenty-first century America, Mitt.

As far as political theater goes, your campaign had its moments. Clint Eastwood vs. Empty Chair. The "charity" photo-ops staged for you and Ryan. Firing Big Bird. Can You Say That A Little Louder, Candy. Horses and bayonets. Binders full of women. I used to really relish this stuff; it provided so much great fodder for political satire and cultural analysis. But I have a five year old daughter, and I no longer find this bullshit amusing.

Because, Mitt, you are also on tape mocking Obama for wanting to "slow the rise of the oceans," and being uproariously applauded for it. I grew up in New York, across the sound from Long Island. Everyone in my immediate family has lived in Manhattan at some point in their adult lives. And to you and all those laughing people, Mitt, I have this to say: Fuck you. Seriously. If you don't think climate change is a real problem, you have no business being near any elected office in this country. We heard so little about climate change in this election, and there's just no political will in Congress or, really, outside of it to push us toward the massive, foundational, infrastructure-altering changes we'd have to make in our daily lives to slow the rise of the oceans. And you want to make stupid fucking jokes about it. I love this planet the way it is. I do not think I will love the planet PJ's going to be coping with when she's my age. It seems even too muhc to hope for, some days, that in 38 years most people in this country will still be able to buy food, and there will be a few beautiful things left.

So no, I do not think it's hilarious that Obama promised to "slow the rise of the oceans." I only fucking hope we can still do it.

And what keeps the oceans rising? A lot of things; but certainly you are one of them, Mitt, with your whole-souled commitment to the worst kind of chew-it-up-and-shit-it-out capitalism, to a rapacity that strives to convert the whole planet into money, to the cynical gaming of an already corrupt system. Certainly you, Mitt, consumer of companies, hoarder of resources, high priest of unequal distribution. So don't let the superstorm hit you in the ass on your way out.

I could talk about what a disaster you are on women's issues; but what's the point? You're done. Get out of the spotlight. Go find George W., wherever the hell the party goons are keeping HIM, and you can lick your wounds together.

I'm sorry. I'm being so negative. I should think of something good to say about you. Well, Mitt, there is one thing I will miss about you:

link:

Without you, Mitt, I probably wouldn't ever have found out about "Gangam Style." And I certainly wouldn't have enjoyed it as much or as often as I have.

Goodbye, Mitt. I would like to say it's been nice knowing you. But that would be a lie so big even you wouldn't tell it.

The Plaid Adder