"Smack a midget for Norm."

Kara's just back from voting.

A registered Democrat she originally wanted to vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries but his campaign didn't reach New York so instead she opted for Clinton over Obama.

What was a political 0/2* now looks like 1/3 as, but for real life imitating art, it looks Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States.

No four hour queues, no problem with whether or not she'd be allowed to vote. In and out from the local school/polling station in the time it took me to play side 1 of Trout Mask Replica to Owen. (I've put him on a crash course of Pretentious Muso-Bollocks Disappreciation. I'm inoculating him against The White Stripes next week.)

She was that quick with the exercising of her democratic rights that she didn't even pause to see who else was on the ballot paper. Shame that 'cos I would have been intrigued to see if the Socialist Party Presidential candidate, Brian Moore, had made the ballot in New York.

If nothing else, you've got to admire the chutzpah of Moore for issuing a press release on the Sunday before election day whereby he announced his shadow cabinet in the event he gets elected the 44th President of the United States. He's pencilled in Howard Zinn as Secretary of Labor; the original maverick, Mike Gravel, as Secretary of Defense; and, my favourite curveball from his proposed political dream team, Barack Obama's former religious mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, would be appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in a Moore administration.

Before any reader scoffs too hard at Moore's press release, the bloke's no fool. He's a student of history. The history of political humour. He knows his Lenny Bruce, and because of that knowledge he's ensuring that he doesn't fall victim to the same lack of preparation that Norman Thomas did when he won the Presidential Election in a Lenny Bruce sketch all those years ago:

Norman Thomas/Filipinos/Midgets mp3

There's a lot of political truth in that Lenny Bruce skit. Dating back to the days of Werner Sombart, social scientists, radical activists and bar room philosophers have debated again and again the complex matter of American exceptionalism. In a nutshell - and to paraphrase the title of Sombart's own classic 1906 work - 'Why has there been no Socialism in the United States?'

Now we know. Second International Social Democracy never looked out for the little people.

*Compare and contrast Kara's 1/3 with my own political 0/1904.