I Write Letters

Dear Al Gore:

This is all your fault.

The sniping, the griping, the blaming, the shaming, the bickering, the snickering, the derision, the division, the fighting, the biting, the sneering, the jeering, the whining, the maligning, the name-calling, the caterwauling, the excuse-making, the deal-breaking, the constant complaining, the GOP framing, the misrepresentations and recriminations, the shucking and jiving and look at her crying, the she's periodically feeling down and he's lucky to be a black man-about-town, and every other imbecilic expression of stark illiberalism and intolerance which has turned this Democratic primary season into a frighteningly juvenile and ferociously nasty exercise in national ignorance, a complete clusterfucktastrophe of mythic proportions, with the compelling draw of a train wreck and nearly as much carnage—every last bit of it is all your fault.

If you had just run like I asked you, none of this would have happened.

You would have sailed through the primary season, beneficently slaying your opponents with the gentle lance of your undeniable superiority as a candidate, and winning voters' hearts by warming them with the golden glow from your Oscar, Emmy, and Nobel Prize. The American media, collectively once your mortal enemy, would have bowed to your wisdom: "My god!" they would have cried. "You've been right on everything from the climate crisis to the Iraq War—and we were wrong on it all! Forgive us, sir, and speak of what thou willst today, and we will not rip it from its context and call you a serial exaggerator!" Recalling how you were robbed of the presidency, despite having won the popular vote, the GOP would have celebrated your return to politics with a promise to run a clean and fair campaign: "This election will be about the issues!" John McCain would have insisted, then, upon realizing he couldn't actually beat you on the issues, would have promptly conceded. Congress would have made way for your quick ascension to your rightful position by impeaching President Bush and passing new law allowing for a special election, in which you would have received a good 70% of the votes from a grateful nation.

By now, you would be president. And by November 4, when we will be desperately watching returns to make sure that the Democrats haven't fucked it up yet again and accidentally allowed a McCain presidency to become a horrifying reality, you would have already engineered world peace, solved the climate crisis, ended global poverty, found cures for AIDS and cancer via well-funded stem cell research, legalized same-sex marriage, and been well on your way to a working model of the flying car we were supposed to get with the new millennium.

But no. You had to go and not run for president. Selfish jerk.

Love,
Liss

P.S. That was all irony. It's no fucking wonder you didn't want to run.

P.P.S. Even knowing that, I still desperately wish you were my president—and to this day can't think of the moment when I heard on the news that you'd lost Bush v Gore without blubbing.

P.P.P.S. Do you have a tissue?