Hope For The Best, Expect The Worst

By the Comics Curmudgeon

Have you been enjoying your negative campaigning so far, citizens? Probably not! Some might say that the mud-slinging we’ve been subjected to is corroding our democracy from the inside out, but you and I both know that the real problem is that the candidates haven’t been negative enough. Oh, sure, Obama will raise your taxes and hangs out with ex-terrorists, McCain is an angry, violent old man who’s out of touch with the middle class, blah blah blah BORING. In order to really spice up the final days of this campaign, we are offering some truly negative campaign messages, which, being mostly ideology free, are open to whichever side can throw together an ad with ominous-sounding music first.

If elected, my opponent will: Make you live in a some kind of cave, out by the woods, with only your old bicycle and vintage truck to help you forage for nuts and berries. And when those food sources run out, you’ll be forced to eat your own clothes and walk around shamefully naked, in front of your children.

Potential upside: Thanks to their bedrock American values, these poor folks may be naked, but they haven’t yet chosen to eat their dog, or their children. They may, however, be contemplating eating Ben Bernanke.

If elected, my opponent will: Force you to give up your patriotic American SUV or truck, the kind that you could go off-roading in, or haul lots of lumber, or even pull an entire house … not that you actually do any of that stuff, you mostly use it to drive to your stultifying white-collar job, buy groceries at Wal-Mart, and go through the drive-through at Wendy’s … man, I could go for a Frosty right about now … where was I? Oh yeah, you’d be required to drive a horrifying bio-mechanical hybrid chicken-car that shits everywhere.

Potential upside: Actually, this cartoon comes from China, so maybe the plan is really to make the Chinese drive these defecating bird-vehicles. Take that, sinister Red Chinamen! The streets of your cities will soon be covered with car turds!

If elected, my opponent will: Require you to keep cramming yourself into that same pair of jeans that you’ve owned since your senior year of college, despite the toll that a sedentary lifestyle has taken on your increasingly fat ass, instead of driving your chicken-car down to Old Navy and purchasing new, roomier pants, thus stimulating the economy.

Potential upside: If the comic strip Cathy is any indication, people actually like owning clothes that are too small for them, so that they can try them on and whine endlessly about how they don’t fit. Ack! Ack! Ha ha ha!

If elected, my opponent will: Hurl people off cliffs, to their deaths.

Potential upside: Oh, wait, it appears that only old people will be hurled off cliffs. Most Americans claim to be anti-arbitrary-cliff-based-execution, but if pressed, will say that if some group has to be pushed over ledges and killed, it would probably be old people.

If elected, my opponent will: Transform America into a terrifying nightmare out of Dante or Bosch, with the landscape covered with a writhing, undulating mass of humanity, person stacked on top of person, everyone desperately clawing and kicking at their damned fellows to get to the top of the pile and gasp in a few breaths of precious oxygen, only to be dragged back into the pit and beaten senseless by others determined to do the same thing.

Potential upside: Selected Americans will be briefly “rescued” and get a free helicopter ride. Wheee, helicopter! Then they’ll dropped back into the hell-mound.

If elected, my opponent will: Require that everyone be stripped down, ritually humiliated, and forced to give wheelbarrows full of money to vast, pyramidal feline monsters.

Potential upside: Hey, this doesn’t sound that out of the ordinary for some of us, OK? Now if you excuse me, I have go dig cat shit out of a box that I keep in my house.