Mari Ness

All of the recent excitement over a certain major party primary race has overshadowed the real story of the 2008 campaign: Mike Gravel is still in the presidential race, this time running for the Libertarian party. And even if he should fail to win that nomination (which my practical Libertarian friends assure me is all too likely since the Libertarians apparently are going to insist on nominating an actual, you know, Libertarian, an understandable if short-sighted political approach*), we still have hope that he will continue a quirky independent run, perhaps under the newly formed Throwing Rocks party, illustrating his honest approach to government.

The endorsement below includes bikinis:



* Have you seen the Libertarians win a presidential election through this "we only nominate Libertarians" policy? I didn't think so. Time for a new approach: nominate Stephen Colbert.

As many of you know, I gained an odd fascination with the decidedly, um, odd campaign of Mike Gravel back when he started to throw random rocks at people and to set things on fire, since if I can admire any quality in a presidential candidate, it's open honesty about his or her ability and willingness to damage us all, hopefully with live weapons.

Now, having unexpectedly decided to leave the Democratic Party for the Libertarian Party while endorsing a Green Party candidate,* Gravel has, to his credit, refused to abandon his technique of campaigning with almost completely inexplicable videos, choosing to combat Barack Obama's musical triumphs, with, um, well, I think it's meant to be rap music, because it sure as hell isn't the Beatles or U2:

[Warning: contains some potentially disturbing violent imagery]



I can see I'll be counting the Gravel votes in the November election!

Thanks to wyldemusick for the link.

* For international readers, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party are pretty much polar opposites.

So as you might have heard (right here on this blog, actually) Florida had a small little primary yesterday. But again, none of you want to know about that. What you want to know is what happened to our man Mike Gravel. After all, the strangeness that is Florida would seem to be a natural fit for the strangeness that is the rock-throwing Mike Gravel. Has he been able to follow his growing popularity, his surge of momentum, the love he generates through throwing rocks?

I am pleased to say a definite yes to this. As of 7:32 pm, the Florida Department of Elections, admittedly not one of the most reliable entities on the planet, reports that based on 99% of precincts reporting in, Mike Gravel has won a grand total of 5,236 votes, or .3% of the vote. The momentum is there, people, it's there. But in reading over the media coverage, I was shocked, shocked, to find that CNN and MSNBC, to name but two organizations, were maliciously and deliberately leaving this completely out of their coverage. This is CNN. Note that they continue to list Kucinich, who a) has dropped out of the race and b) actually got fewer votes than either Joe Biden or Bill Richardson, who also jumped out of the race. But do they mention Mike Gravel, who is still actively campaigning? No.

To somewhat balance this out, CNN also ignored the candidacy/votes for Alan Keyes, who, I was shocked to see, was actually listed on the Florida Republican ballot, despite being -- how do we put this -- certifiably nuts. (He received 3,980 votes, only beating out Tom Tancredo, who has also left the race.)

Oh media. We have given up on any hope for accuracy from you or any hope that any of you may learn math (Quote from last night: "John McCain won a sizeable majority...." Numbers from the Florida Department of Elections: 36%, a strong plurality and a definite win, but not a majority, sizeable or not.) But can we hold out any hope that your coverage will at least be complete?

On a related note, I am extremely displeased to note that, once again, the media started reporting Florida votes while people were still voting.. Florida stretches into two time zones, so the Panhandle continues to vote an hour after the rest of the state, and state law says that voters in line at 7 pm have the right to vote, which left some people in Broward and Miami-Dade (it's always Broward and Miami-Dade) voting right up until 8:25 pm, even after the media were reporting the numbers, and even after this sort of idiocy helped cause the confusion of the 2000 election. Media. I'm ok with waiting until everybody has voted before I find the results. That's kinda the point.