Hooking Up at the Polls

You know, in the realm of Presidential politics, Mississippi is never the State that matters. We aren’t huge, so the numbers game doesn’t help us out. And, in addition to that, we’re hardly ever “up for grabs.” I mean, come general election time, is Mississippi gonna vote for the conservative candidate? Most likely, yep. So, we usually get stuffed in the “foregone conclusion” bucket pretty quickly.

But, that’s the general election; we’re in primary season. Of course, we never matter in primary season either, because our primary is so late compared to everyone else’s! Typically, the party nominations really are foregone conclusions by the time we go to the polls.

Yet, it would seem that this election is just a bit different.

With Bill Clinton in Tupelo, Barack Obama in Columbus, and Fox News setting up camp in Oxford (Shepard Smith will do anything to go to Oxford), it seems that Mississippi—and even good ol’ North Mississippi, which never ever gets much attention—is finding its way into the political spotlight.

And, here’s where you’ll have to indulge a bit of cynicism. Mississippi isn’t so much finding itself in the political spotlight as it is finding itself courted on a Spring Break trip. (Apt timing, don’t you think?) I mean, think about it. Here we are, in the political primary-equivalent of Cancun, and for the first time in a long while, we’re getting some attention. Barack Obama thinks we look sexy in our bathing suit, and Hillary Clinton’s offering to do body shots with us. All the while, FoxNews and CNN both want to get some good footage of us for their “Politics Gone Wild” compilation. Oh, and we’re kinda liking the attention. After all, we’ve never felt so hot before. Never before have we gotten so many drunk smiles our way. We’re so glad we went on this trip!

But, all the free alcohol is clouding our judgment a bit. What we’re not realizing is that, for so many of the Spring Breakers (Barack and Hillary included), Spring Break is just a revolving door of hook-ups. Sure, today and tomorrow they’ll tell us we’re special. As a matter of fact, we’re the most special State they’ve ever seen! But, they’re just flattering us so we’ll head back to their hotel room for some “delegate nookie,” if you will. On Wednesday morning, we’ll be left alone in the bed, with no trace of what happened the day before…except for the lingering thought that, once we get home, we’ll have to somehow get tested for STD’s without our parents finding out. Oh joy.

Of course, the plus about this analogy is that it’s our constitutional right to hook-up! So, cast those inhibitions aside, size up the candidates as best you can with cheap alcohol coursing through your veins, stagger your way to their low-rent hotel, and VOTE!!