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Autumn in New Jersey

by ALEX CARNEVALE

The Obama campaign still runs focus groups on change, but they keep their numbers closer to the vest than ever before. Change is a spectacular meme (and it tests so well!) until you get into midterm elections, and all the people of New Jersey had to remember about now-former governor Jon Corzine was he used to manage a lot of money and he looked like he'd been in office over a hundred years. His sobbing concession should sustain Kathryn Lopez until she must feed again on Democratic grief in 2010.

A presidential meme by rights supercedes all other memes. Obama's three visits to New Jersey when he should have rightly been extending his record-breaking amount of presidential golf saddened the electorate and they chose the Republican candidate Chris Christie. The interns of the campaign are already shooting their New York Post photosets in preparation for this great embodier of change's needs. Even Don Draper needs an outlet, preferably one named Suzanne.

Cynics counted that New York megalomaniac Mike Bloomberg spent about $116 per vote to avoid the presidential meme. In the final days, Bloomberg blanketed the airwaves with his usual fabricated invective about challenger Bill Thompson. He couldn't, after all, say that Thompson was a power hungry midget whose love for his reign will end sometime in the year 2042. One Bloomberg supporter, representing the cops on NY1, explained that change was costly and inconvenient because his lobby had already expressed their needs to Bloomberg and did not wish to do the same for a new candidate.

He imparted a singular lesson: change is expensive and dangerous. Although this is a meme the Republican Party had permanently inscribed on Newt Gingrich's ass since the government shutdown in the mid-1990s, it should be no surprise that they'll willing to overlook it if it suits their aims.

the unknowing republican army of changeThis puts the common, everyday voter in a bit of a bind. Little separated Comptroller Thompson and his dwarf Jew adversary except the latter's desire to label all his opponents as anti-semites and general disregard for human decency of any kind. All the voter really wants, unless he has his own office in City Hall, is to pay less to this fatuous organ of government. But that is what government is all about - what is a legislator to do all day but legislate? He has no other choice, really, but to make government bigger.

The millions that Bloomberg used to enforce his personal dictate on the five boroughs is gone now. We should have simply acceded to his wishes and accepted a fat check instead of forcing him to flood the zone with ad buys on radio and television. In the future, a simple deposit to the government might be enough to secure "elected" office. The mayor has his own channel on local cable - who could defeat such omniscience?

kissing Iman b/c he canThe fact that Thompson nearly did is of note. The change ticket did better in Virginia, and soon enough the Republicans will realize there's a huge financial savings in reusing old Obama placards and signs. If change didn't work the first time, it won't work the second is what Obama reps won't be permitted to say. They'll spend most of their time asserting and reasserting and putting out important press releases that state Fox News is horrible and insulting the voters who watch it.

a-rod's new family at Game 5All of this small-time drama takes place while an even smaller version has played out between New York and Philadelphia. How can you ask the citizens of New York to focus when all their consternation is rightfully directed at Joe Girardi?

Joe Girardi rode the change mandate to office - his predecessor had never had a season that didn't end in a playoff berth. He entered the postseason determined to change his fourth starter Joba Chamberlain into the successful reliever he'd been before. When the team required its fourth starter, Girardi eliminated a fourth starter from the rotation and started righty A.J. Burnett on three days of rest. The lanky goober walked the ballpark and relievers were brought into the sorry scene of Game 5. The Yankees lost, and games today and perhaps tomorrow remain.

If the Yankees don't win one of the next two games, another embodier of change will have a foot in his ass. Change is great when it leads to a 27th title; otherwise it just means overspending and unhappy onlookers. Mr. Girardi doesn't have to deal with the vicissitudes of term limits, a fact Bloomberg envied until he turned New York law into a mockery and a sham. We don't change leaders because it's good for us, we do it because it's right.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here and twitters here.

"Be the One" - Jack Peñate (mp3)

"Tonight is Today" - Jack Peñate (mp3)

"Everything Is New" - Jack Peñate (mp3)

Comments

[Will Stratton]

As always, your political commentary is impressively incoherent, Alex!