What better symbol for America than a pilot-less war machine?

This has been a depressing election year. No, not because my side is losing. I’m not on one. It’s too hard to tell which side of any line these clowns are standing on. Mr. Rope-a-Hope sold out to the insurance industry to force health care on all of us, and his presidency is ironically well-represented by one of the things he gets the most flak about from his own base. What better symbol for our country right now than a pilot-less machine of war? And in the end – if he wins – Moderate Mitt will probably be more like that moniker than you think. Clearly, they scraped cells off Reagan’s body back in the 80′s, and have grafted them onto Romney to create the next meat puppet president. The transmogrification was nearly complete by the first debate. If you closed your eyes whenever Mitt spoke during that debate, you would SWEAR it was Ronny up there on the podium. Romney has even perfected that weird, breathy, Reagan vocal mannerism; if he just adds that odd head bobble of Reagan’s, the effect will be complete.

But that will only endear him SLIGHTLY to a “real” Republican, and Obama has the same problem. Democrats have one of the worst collective cases of buyer remorse since Carter first donned a cardigan for a fireside chat while his redneck brother crawled from the woodwork to market Billy Beer. And that creates a problem for people like me; it’s hard to work up some decent antagonistic campaign parodies when both sides hate their OWN candidate. The most positive responses I’ve gotten when lambasting Obama have come from bleeding heart liberals, and any protest from my conservative friends when I poke fun at Romney have been like the final punches of a fighter that knows that even if there’s no way they’ll take the title, there’s NO WAY they’ll stop punching ’til they actually go down, even if their punches ARE more like the open-handed sissy slaps I got when fighting my sister in third grade. In this cannibalistic environment, where partisans are eating their own, the best we could come up with in the last couple of years were things like the Donner Party  and the Punk Party.

But you know what makes matters even worse? YOU. In case you haven’t noticed, your political posts on Facebook are the REAL joke. The level of nuance in your understanding of politics – which used to be perfectly summed up in a bumper sticker – now has an interactive publishing platform that can connect you with ONE BILLION people. In Ye Olden Days of personal political expression, the worst that was likely to happen was that you’d get flipped off in traffic for your “END OF AN ERROR” or “NOPE” bumper sticker. But now, you LOSE ACTUAL FRIENDS. But it’s okay, they were ignorant twits (i.e.: their simplistic worldview didn’t jibe with yours) anyway, right?

Early on, we thought this was going to be an easy year to cash in on parody imprinted novelty items like bumper stickers and buttons. We were excited about the idea of the Newt Swingrich campaign, and if Sarah Palin  or Wide-Eyes had run, wow. What fun we would have had. But alas, things have turned out differently, and we’re still regurgitating the Hope & Change jokes from four years ago. And Romney changes his stance so much based on marketing research that by the time you whip up a parody, no-one gets it, because he has completely reversed his position! So below, we sadly present this election cycle’s feeble stab at campaign humor. We still miss you, Sarah.

We’re actually kind of proud of this one, for being so muddled in its message. It evolved out of the “You gotta hand it to Romney. Obama sure did” joke.

The Hackneyed Hope & Change Obama “O” Theme

Romney/Ryan: Rich, White, and Dumb Themes

We’ve caught some flack for implying that Romney is racist. We’re not. It’s just that he’s so absurdly WHITE. And it’s almost the very definition of “average American” to hate rich people, right?

Here’s the basis of that theme, for those who always walk straight to the Colgate Classic or ignore graphic design entirely:

And if Romney wins, you can bet we’ll be back with some Eddie Munster and Dumbo jokes. Believe it or not, Ryan’s ears weren’t photoshopped for this: