The Election Cycle is Too Damn Long!
Michael Ian Black criticizes the excessively long U.S. presidential election process, arguing that it is exhausting and unnecessary. He proposes shortening the campaign to two months, called “2Pac”—one month for primaries and one for the general election. This would reduce financial strain on candidates, lessen public stress, and curb the influence of big donors. Black also advocates for public financing of campaigns to eliminate outside spending. He humorously points out how the prolonged campaign season contributes to political fatigue and even declining life expectancy in the U.S.
Michael Ian Black: Make America Sane Again—Cut Election Races to Two Months (thedailybeast.com)
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Donovan Adkisson
Host / Producer
email: podcast@goodtalkamerica.com
This show is produced by Tifton Media Works, LLC
Transcript
Over at the Daily Beast, Michael Ian Black wrote an article titled, "Make America Sane Again, Cut Election Races to Two Months."
Speaker:He's not the first one that I've seen make those remarks or heard make those remarks.
Speaker:And quite honestly, I think I do agree.
Speaker:He criticizes the excessively long U.S. presidential election process.
Speaker:And let's be honest, as soon as one presidential candidate wins and then they are inaugurated on the 20th of January of whatever year,
Speaker:their campaigning seems to start almost immediately, even though they've got four years in front of them.
Speaker:Now, this is if they're not if this is not their second term, of course.
Speaker:He argues that it's exhausting and it's unnecessary.
Speaker:And I agree. It is exhausting.
Speaker:It is unnecessary.
Speaker:So he proposes that we shorten the campaign to two months, one month for primaries and one for the general election.
Speaker:This would reduce financial strain on the candidates.
Speaker:It would lessen the public stress and it would curb the influence of big donors because we do have a big, big, big problem with money and politics.
Speaker:He also advocates for public financing of campaigns to eliminate outside spending.
Speaker:I'm in agreement with that, too.
Speaker:And he goes on to humorously point out the prolonged campaign season contributes to political fatigue and even declining life expectancy in the U.S.
Speaker:He mentions in the article a couple, I cannot recall their name, that moved to France.
Speaker:They're Americans and they moved to France.
Speaker:And one of the things one of the myriad of things that I liked about France was was the fact that and this came as a shock to them,
Speaker:if I remember what the article said correctly, was that the entire political process there was roughly two weeks, two weeks.
Speaker:Can you imagine a two week political process, two weeks of campaigning here in the United States?
Speaker:I can't. I mean, I'd love to, but I can't.
Speaker:We've essentially been inundated for the better part of almost two years when it comes to not even so much political ads to begin with,
Speaker:but people throw in their hat in the ring and then we have to divvy down.
Speaker:And of course, this last one was, is Trump going to run or isn't he going to run?
Speaker:And even when he said that he was going to run, you still had some Republican candidates that were like, well, we're we're going to see if we can beat him and get the
Speaker:nomination, knowing full well that they could not.
Speaker:I think this would be great for us.
Speaker:60 days.
Speaker:And for those that are out there that's going, oh, that's not long enough to know a candidate.
Speaker:Bullshit. If other countries can do it anywhere from two weeks to 90 days, we can definitely reduce hours down from damn near two years.
Speaker:Trust me, we can do this.
Speaker:And you will know these candidates.
Speaker:This this almost two year prolonged campaigning is is honestly kind of new to us.
Speaker:New-ish. I mean, when I say new in the last 50 to 75 years, probably.
Speaker:And you can know all you need to know about a candidate in 60 days.
Speaker:Let's look at Kamala Harris.
Speaker:We knew something about her from the her original attempt to become the nominee for president of the United States back in 2020.
Speaker:And then, of course, she became the vice presidential candidate on the ticket with Biden, Biden, Harris, and then they won.
Speaker:And she's been the vice president.
Speaker:And you can go and you can look vice presidents really don't have that much power.
Speaker:They're the tiebreaker in the Senate.
Speaker:They're basically handed some duties by the by the president.
Speaker:You know, do this for me.
Speaker:You go in my stead.
Speaker:Sometimes they're given like some type of policy agenda to work on.
Speaker:And of course, you know, that's come up with Harris about, well, she was the border czar.
Speaker:And I fucking hate that word czar.
Speaker:I think all of that started back during Obama's term.
Speaker:And if I had one thing to nitpick about that with him, that that's probably that they should should have never.
Speaker:Called anybody a quote czar.
Speaker:I mean, what is this pre 1918 Russia or some shit or whenever that was, whenever we had the I think it's the Bolshevik revolution.
Speaker:I'm I'm a little rusty on my Russian history.
Speaker:But after the swap out, after it was very, very clear that Biden was not who we needed to be going up against Trump this time around, after that quick swap out and the the escalation of popularity and.
Speaker:She's getting that message out.
Speaker:We know every damn thing that we need to know about her.
Speaker:Just like we've known every damn thing that we've needed to know about Trump for years, years and years.
Speaker:And yes, I'm going to be biased.
Speaker:The approach to this particular this podcast is to try to to try to give you an honest picture.
Speaker:I'm not going to say it's always going to be unbiased because I stick by my guns when I say that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.
Speaker:If you look up the actual dictionary definitions of the words terrorist, terrorism and domestic terrorist and domestic terrorism, Donald Trump, by the actual black on white print in the dictionary, several dictionaries is a domestic terrorist.
Speaker:And so, you know, by that line of thinking, the choice is clear here, folks.
Speaker:But to try to get back on track here, I do agree that we need to shorten this entire process.
Speaker:Now, one of the reasons why I think it's gotten to the point that it has is because of profit motive.
Speaker:And you're probably thinking, duh, Donovan, no shit.
Speaker:Think about it, though, if the news cycle, all the news agencies, whether it's on the left or on the right, would take a financial hit because these advertisers are in it for the long haul.
Speaker:They're they're there for this.
Speaker:You know, they they want to get your they want to get their ads in front of your face.
Speaker:And they know that you're going to be a large portion of the population is going to be tuned in to Fox News and MSNBC and CNN and all of those.
Speaker:And so the ad spin, I haven't looked at it, but it's probably fucking astronomical.
Speaker:If you were to look at a at a chart and a line graph, it probably just goes, whoop, when we start into this political season for, you know, running for president.
Speaker:And so they would take a hit.
Speaker:Boo fucking who?
Speaker:For the greater good of democracy and and America as a whole and those those of us who live here in America, it would be nice to only have to deal with this nonsense for about two months instead of sometimes it doesn't even take a reprieve during the holidays.
Speaker:I mean, granted, the election every four years is in November, right in the middle of the holiday season.
Speaker:So we can't get away from that.
Speaker:And one other thing that Michael doesn't actually mention in this in his article, but something I've actually heard from someone else, because other countries do this.
Speaker:Why do we have to wait to the 20th of January?
Speaker:Why do we have to wait from Election Day or the day after Election Day?
Speaker:Of course, this time around, it may be several weeks because, you know as well as I do, that if Trump does lose and he's going to lose, I'm I'm being optimistic he is going to lose.
Speaker:Hopefully he's going to lose so badly he gets his ass spanked so hard that he thinks he's in an S&M scenario.
Speaker:But why is it that we got to wait from basically the first week or second week, whenever it is, of November all the way to the middle of January before the president elect becomes president?
Speaker:We don't need to do that.
Speaker:Other countries don't do that.
Speaker:There are some of them that within two weeks, the new commander in chief, if you will, whatever that position happens to be called, whether it's president, prime minister, et cetera, they're they're in power.
Speaker:They've taken over.
Speaker:There's absolutely no reason why we need the spance of basically almost two months from the day that Americans decide who's going to run the country for the next four years to when that person actually assumes power.
Speaker:It gives too much time for things like what happened on January 6th to happen.
Speaker:It gives too much time for a butt hurt candidate like what happened last time with Trump to just start stirring the waters.
Speaker:Domestic terrorist.
Speaker:I told you.
Speaker:So anyway, I'll put a link to Michael's article in the show notes of this episode.
Speaker:I think it's a I think it's a good article.
Speaker:I think it's funny that he calls his two months one month primaries and one for general election.
Speaker:He calls it Tupac or Tupac.
Speaker:It's actually spelled to P.A.C.
Speaker:Kind of all one word.
Speaker:Kind of hilarious.
Speaker:But anyway, let me know what you think.
