NOTE:  The following transcription has been heavily edited to reduce profanity.  Nevertheless, reader discretion is advised.

The cesspit that is modern politics has surpassed itself.

Scene:  It’s the middle of the night and I just now finished fixing my writeup on Sanders and Yang after a couple of hours of desperately needed sleep.  Some of that was not fit to read; glad I got to it.  Sleeplessness and politics should never mix; this is how we got Eagleton in ’72, after all.  I’m just about to go back to bed when I make the mistake of checking the most recent polling.

Bloomberg?!  What the– ?!

He’s single digits in New Hampshire, which makes sense.  There’s a percentage that would vote for anything.  This being America, there’s a big chunk of our voters that would vote for their own public disemboweling just to see what the word means.  Bloomberg isn’t even on the ballot in New Hampshire and he’s polling near Yang, which demonstrates the power of name recognition.

But what I saw first was California.  13%.

This is 13% of Democrats who support Michael Bloomberg.  Proponent of Stop & Frisk, as racist and horrific a program as I can imagine, right up there with shipping captured runaways back to their plantation.  Specifically instructs N.Y.P.D. to target and harass Muslims in the wake of 9/11.  Wants to escalate the War On Drugs with a national anti-marijuana campaign.  And 13% of California Democrats prefer him to everyone else because he’s willing to sneer at Donald Trump on live T.V.

We detest Donald Trump in large part because he foments a climate of hate, right?  And how does he do this?  I remember one Tweet where he praised Civil War re-enactors because they oppose tearing down hundred-year-old statues of the losing generals.  The KKK approves of him — but then, the KKK endorses every Republican.  We all know Trump’s a flaming racist, but where’s the evidence?  Oh, you can find some if you dig, but for the most part it comes down to “He fails to adequately condemn.”  Which he does.

And to defeat this undeniably detestable, odious man, the Democratic Party has turned to someone who doesn’t even bother to hide his despicable nature but instead embraces it.  I’ve joked before about the DNC aiming to split the billionaire vote, but this is ridiculous.  We just got clear of Occupy Wall Street and now we’re putting the 1% — not the social class but rather the person with 1% of the money — into the race personally.  Presumably he’s running because the Powers That Be are rightly terrified by the thought of losing those powers at the hands of Warren or Klobuchar or Sanders — which makes sense.

But why the hell are people even considering voting for this– this– ?!

I don’t have the words.

America, I hate you so much right now.  I want nuclear war to rain on your cities.  I want plagues — not those merciful ones that just choke you to death after a few short days of torment; I’m talking the nasty stuff that has you shitting yourself bloody over a period of weeks while you’re half out of your mind on fever and your jaundiced skin is erupting in pustulent boils filled with spider larva.  Horrible, nasty, unimaginable things should happen to you, America — because you deserve it so f!@#%ing much.  On the plus side, you’ll vote for it.

And that’s what democracy means:  We have the right to select the punishment for our own abysmal stupidity.

Well, choke on it, America.  You’re going to drown in shit and you richly deserve to.  If we’re phenomenally lucky, all this means is Four More Years of Trump; we can survive that.  We’ve lived through worse.

But my sincere expectation is that a Bloomberg candidacy will inch us ever closer to that dreaded outcome, a contested convention followed by the inevitable riots and blood in the streets.  Which, to be sure, I already expect; but with the DNC clearly considering accepting this disgusting adhesion — I speak of the candidacy here, not the man — it will lose what little faith people hold in it.  In the face of Donald Trump, that most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality, the best the Democrats can find to face him is the billionaire oligarch Trump only pretends to be.

Some have wondered why a growing segment of voters choke on calling this the “Democratic” Party.  This is the reason, complete and entire.  No further example is called for.

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“The only possible good that can come of this wretched campaign is the ever-increasing likelihood that it will cause the Democratic Party to self-destruct.

A lot of people are seriously worried about this, but I am not one of them. I have never been much of a Party Man myself… and the more I learn about the realities of national politics, the more I’m convinced that the Democratic Party is an atavistic endeavor — more an Obstacle than a Vehicle — and that there is really no hope of accomplishing anything genuinely new or different in American politics until the Democratic Party is done away with.”

Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72”