THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Mark Clayton
“Jesus did not have a campaign staff. And he had the most successful campaign in human history,” Clayton said recently, when asked if all this adds up to a winning run against incumbent Sen. Bob Corker (R). Jesus “didn’t even have pictures or a Web site.”…. This may be America’s worst candidate. Clayton, 36, is a part-time flooring installer, an indulger in conspiracy theories — and for Democrats here, the living personification of rock bottom. In a state that produced Democratic icons including Andrew Jackson and both Al Gores, the party has fallen so far that it can’t even run a good loser.
If you’ve spent any amount of time at all ‘round these parts, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that one of my favorite things is skewering Right-wing zealots. Yes, I’m a Liberal, and I make no apologies for my partisanship- my sandbox, my ideology, capice?? That said, something I enjoy almost as much as lampooning Conservabots is having a few chuckles at the expense of the clueless, the intolerant, and/or the uber-Jesus-y and hyper-religious. The ideological bent of these folks is generally- but not exclusively- on he WAY Far Right. Today, though, I’m going to break from the norm a bit and pick on a Democrat. A Tennessee Democrat, which is a lot like being a Texas Democrat and not unlike being a Chicago Cubs fan. (See, I’m NOT just another hyper-partisan Liberal hack.)
Except in this case, Tennessee Democrats evidently couldn’t come up with a viable sacrificial lamb to run against Bob Corker, so they chose Mark Clayton. If Clayton isn’t America’s worst candidate, he’s certainly the Democratic Party’s worst candidate. By a country mile.
What makes Clayton America’s worst candidate? Funny you should ask….
In Tennessee, Clayton’s policy ideas set him apart from many other Democrats: He is unusual in opposing abortion rights and same-sex marriage, but he’s downright exceptional in saying that the Transportation Security Administration “mandates [transsexuals] and homosexuals grabbing children in their stranger-danger zones.”
He has been a volunteer for Public Advocate of the United States, a Falls Church-based organization that was branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its anti-gay rhetoric.
During Clayton’s failed Senate run in 2008, his Web site suggested that the U.S. government might be replaced with a “North American Union” and that Google was working against him at the behest of the Chinese government.
And it just keeps getting better. In addition to being a conspiracy theorist of the sort that rarely finds a home in the Democratic Party, Clayton has perhaps the worst, most poorly-designed campaign websites in modern political history. Go ahead; try to get through the home page. I dare you. It gave me a headache, because for reasons I can’t begin to explain, I tried to follow his logic. Memo to the faint of heart: there IS no logic, just plenty of unmedicated, hyper-religious lunacy of the sort that defies rational understanding.
I could try to describe Clayton’s politics, but I don’t even know where to begin. If you take the screed on his homepage as evidence of his political philosophy, you’d end up believing that he should be in restraints and heavily medicated. How he ended up as a “legitimate” candidate for a seat in the US Senate is something I’ll never fully understand.
How did the Tennessee Democratic Party end up with a nonentity like Clayton? Did they recognize that they were unlikely to unseat the incumbent, Republican Bob Corker? Did they simply decide to throw their hands up and walk away? It would be easy to believe that they aren’t even trying…because they aren’t.
Every election, of course, is crowded with losers: the sacrificial lambs, the one-issue zealots, the novelty name-changers (Thomas Jefferson, of Kansas, is running for Congress. Santa Claus, of Nevada, is running for president).
Perhaps someone in the Tennessee Democratic Party’s hierarchy is an aficionado of theater of the absurd…though I doubt Ionesco would appreciate what Mark Clayton is doing to his legacy.
Let’s face it, though; when you run for Senate, and the Tennessee Democratic Party hands you a copy of Deer Hunting With Jesus, as they did to the candidate that preceded Clayton…well, “hopeless” seems so inadequate….
