How to Win an Election

Let's say you're a senator running for re-election in, oh. let's say Mississippi.

  

That's fun to say!

And let's say you're facing a primary challenger who, let's say, isn't the smoothest campaigner, maybe does things like associate with neo-Confederates and white supremacists, you know the sort of thing that would be a liability in most places, but might garner some support in rural Mississippi.

What do you do?

Well, take the example of veteran campaigner  Thad Cochran.





 One can't miss strategy would be to go to those rural areas and tell the folks there that you're just like them. Just ordinary plain folks. Salt of the Earth types who do ordinary wholesome good ol' fashioned activities like oh, I don';t know, picking pecans. Or fucking farm animals, or . . . wait. WHAT?

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported that Cochran was addressing a group of donors and supporters at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg.
The senator explained his connection to the area, saying that his grandparents lived their whole lives in the area.
“I grew up coming down here for Christmas,” he said. “My father’s family was here. My mother’s family was from rural Hinds County in Utica.”
“It was fun, it was an adventure to be out there in the country and to see what goes on,” he said of his boyhood visits to Hattiesburg. “Picking up pecans, from that to all kinds of indecent things with animals.”

Wait. surely you mean to accuse your opponent of doing indecent things with animals, right? You can't possibly be admitting to doing those things yourself, right?

Right?

You're accusing someone else, right?

“Picking up pecans, from that to all kinds of indecent things with animals.”
The audience chuckled.
“And I know some of you know what that is,” Cochran said.

Oh my GOD! Not only are you standing in front of a group of potential voters and saying "Hey, I'm a regular guy, you know, a horse-fucker!" but you're also adding on to that "And I know some of you are horse-fuckers, too. Vote for me!"





This is your plan to appeal to voters?
Like, you might lose the "people who only have sex with other people" vote, but you're gonna clean up with the horse-fucker demographic!

 

Sweet, sweet horse-fucking, am I right?

Don't leave me hangin' brah!

Now, I've never been to Mississippi, but I'm pretty sure that, despite whatever idiosyncracies that state has, whatever features make it unique, it probably shares at least this in common with the other 49 states in the Union: people there almost surely find the idea of horse-fucking repellant, abhorrent, and morally reprehensible. Not to mention just gross.

But, hey, what do I know? This is the Bible Belt after all, so maybe they're okay with horse-fucking as long as it's a female horse? I mean, I know in general these folks frown on anything-but-marital-reproductive sex between humans, but maybe there's an exception for inter-species boinking? Probably not.

But at any rate, it's definitely a bold strategy.
And the ads just write themselves.



  Hi, I'm Senator Thad Cochran, and you're goddamm right I've fucked a horse! And you probably have too. If you're one of those fancy-pants Washington elites that thinks he's too good to fuck a horse, maybe you should vote for my opponent. He's only ever had sex with women!
But if you're like me, and you've fucked a horse, and you're not ashamed of having fucked a horse, then vote for me, Thad Cochran, for Senate. Together we'll fuck all the horses! Who knows, maybe we'll even 69 a goat!

I'm not Thad Cochran and I do NOT approve this message.