Manchin/Romney '24? That's the Ticket!

On November 9, Joe Manchin was asked to remove himself from consideration for reelection to the Senate. That request came from his voters. Deep down, he knew they were right, but he also knew that someday he would return to political office. With nowhere else to go, he looked across the aisle at his friend, Mitt Romney. Several weeks earlier, Romney's voters had thrown HIM off the 2024 Senate ticket, requesting that HE never run again. Can two unloved politicians share a presidential ticket without driving the rest of us crazy?

The general election hasn't even begun yet, and the whole thing is already crazy.

In this, the start of the Fifth Year of Our Absurdities, anything is possible. We have an incumbent president elected by questionable means and on the fabulist premise that this hyperpartisan demagogue and increasingly senescent octogenarian would restore us to normalcy and provide our hurting nation with healing.

His opponent, driven from office by those same questionable means and currently hounded in various courts on various ridiculous or drummed-up charges, has been made such a pariah — admittedly, sometimes by his own devices — that his re-reelection campaign could prove to be a very close-run thing, indeed.

That's even taking into account recent polls showing that five out of six Americans think the current president is too old to serve another term, nearly two-thirds of his fellow Democrats don't want him to run again, and more than half grade his mental acuity at a D or an F.

The situation is so completely and unbelievably screwed up that an otherwise staid old Washington hand last week spun a highly improbable scenario about how the aging son of a presidential candidate assassinated more than 50 years ago could worm his way into the White House by miraculously forcing the election into the House where the hyperpartisan chamber would somehow fall in love with a man who isn't a member of either party.

If that seems too outlandish for you, try on this other outfit for size. It's Brady Bunch trousers, paired with a tuxedo jacket, plus scuba fins, and a lovely 19th-century lace parasol.

I'm only barely kidding:

Sen, Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., danced around his interest in launching a third-party presidential bid here Thursday, but he endorsed a potential running mate if he does.
“Hypothetically, if I was picking my running mate, really who I would ask right now is Mitt Romney,” Manchin said, identifying the Republican senator from Utah.

Romney isn't quite a lock for this Odd Couple scenario. Manchin says another Republican senator, Ohio's Rob Portman, is in his thoughts, too. “Rob’s a dear friend of mine,” Manchin said. “What a good man.”

When a sitting senator has been virtually kicked to the curb by the voters of his own state, the correct answer to "Will you run for President?" is a quiet chuckle and maybe a gentle admonishment for the reporter who must have lost a bet with the other reporters. Instead, Manchin said, "Third-party run, everything is on the table."

Because as we begin the Fifth Year of Our Absurdities, anything is possible — especially the things that aren't.

That's all I have for now. Until next time, please enjoy this very pleasant brain bleach treatment.