Humor

2020 Campaign Promises

A look at the strangest campaign promises of this election.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

As I’m sure all of you not living under a rock already know, the election has… ended? Took them long enough. Now, before we begin our next four-year-long quest to find a sufficiently large rock to hide under this time (the 46th time’s the charm, right?), let us take a moment to acknowledge the brilliance of some of our newest politicians in addressing the greatest problems of our time.

Newly elected Oklahoma state legislator T. Bois Vacar made a name for himself advocating for the worried cows of his state and their increasingly ruminant farmers. “If there’s one thing this pandemic has taught all of us,” he said in a statement to the press, “it’s the importance of cows. Every day, more and more cows and farmers bite their hooves over how they’re going to make ends meet with the price of meat plummeting. At the same time, a lot of city dwellers are worrying about their own issues, whatever those are. Who cares? Well, I have a solution! We have all these nice, gentle cows; why can’t we have a huge cow therapy program?” Vacar declined to state how he would fund the program, suggesting that city dwellers would be responsible for choosing and picking up cows to take home.

Such concerns about economic pitfalls accelerated by the pandemic were echoed by state senator Joe Steely, who narrowly won his seat in the 18th district in Gary, Indiana. As he said in an interview with Iron Nerves Magazine, “We here in Indiana have seen factory after factory leave for China, and we’re sick of it. What, do they not like Indianans? The next time one of those darn metal lords steals one of our dear factories, they are not leaving without us.” Steely’s plan to move the entire population of Indiana to China by stowing away inside of factories and waiting for an enormous crane to arrive was surprisingly popular. Many frustrated workers have already taken to living inside of factories, which local mental health experts applauded, citing crowded living conditions and waiting for the implausible as an effective method of relieving stress.

Steely also endorsed the COVID-19 recovery plan of Supra Sparadur, who was elected to the Texas state legislature as the first openly boneheaded representative ever. In her acceptance speech before an audience of 80 people in a space the size of an average New York apartment, she described her plan as revolutionary. “For the last nine months, we’ve been hearing all sorts of codswallop about quarantine this and quarantine that. And I say, why is it the sick who should stay home? If you ask me, that’s discriminatory—we should be celebrating those who get COVID-19!” As a way of dealing with the virus, Sparadur suggested parties exclusive to those with the virus, because, as she described, it would “mean bye-bye to COVID tests.” Though she did not answer any questions from reporters about how she would maintain the exclusivity of such events, she dodged the question by talking about her advocacy work for the mentally lazy, who she describes as some of the most oppressed Americans.

Representatives Vacar, Steely, and Sparadur all see themselves in the context of the changing electorate and view the decreasing popularity of common sense as an ideology. “New voters require new sets of policy,” Vacar mentioned. “Even if it sounds ludicrous and catastrophic to almost all other people.” To this end, the three representatives released a policy guidebook, which they called “Politikz 4 Dummys” (before being sued for trademark violation by the popular “For Dummies” book series), and are hoping to sell physical copies to other legislators to fund the election of like-minded candidates in 2022.

Though the political impact of the election of these representatives has yet to be determined, there is only one certainty. Regardless of what you think of these new policy ideas, as representative Steely explained, the growth of idiots is one of the largest—and perhaps one of the most constant—demographic changes our country is currently experiencing.