Editor: Have you seen the "Draft de Blasio" thing, where the New York mayor is allegedly going to run for president?
Me: I don't think it's real! It can't be a real thing.
Me: You realize of course that the fact that there is a "big old article in the New York Post" does not, in and of itself, serve as an endorsement of its realness.
Editor: I'm not saying it does. I'm saying this is where you'll find this story, such as it is.
Me: All right, let me go look at it.
Despite repeated claims to the contrary, Mayor Bill de Blasio is positioning himself to be the leftist “progressive” alternative to Wall Street-friendly Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president, a national party operative told The Post.
De Blasio’s hope, the operative said, is a “Draft de Blasio’’ movement will develop among progressive activists over the next several months that will lead to the mayor being able to defeat Clinton in the primary elections next year in much the same way leftist Sen. George McGovern successfully challenged the initially front-running establishment Democratic candidate, Sen. Edmund Muskie, more than 40 years ago.
--The New York Post, "de Blasio in secret bid to be Dems’ 2016 pick," April 20, 2015
Me: As I suspected, this insistence that "Draft de Blasio" is a thing fails to convince me of its essential thingness. The New York Post has a single "operative" willing to compare de Blasio to George McGovern. This sort of reads like an April Fools' Day prank that got published on the wrong day. Maybe this is what 2016 is going to be like -- a series of tricks.
Editor: Yes.
Me: How are we going to stay sane? What are our strategies for coping with this?
Editor: These are the questions you could pose and answer.
Me: What if we all agreed to just not have a presidential election until, like, June of next year? Just everyone go home and wait until then?
Editor: Put this into writing!
Me: Wait, though! You do not actually believe that de Blasio is going to run for president though, right?
Editor: Right. I do not believe it.
Me: Why is this a story, though? What happened?
Editor: "@DraftDeblasio" is a twitter account someone made. So I suppose that's the reason? Everyone freaking out over a Twitter account, basically?
Me: OMG so this is why? There is a Twitter account?
Editor: Yeah, basically.
Me: You know in the movie "Inception" they had to spend, like, millions of dollars and invent crazy machines and then a team of people had to all almost get killed to make ONE person think ONE thing. They should have just used Twitter and then the whole movie would have been six minutes long.
Editor: Ha, ha, yes, I know it.
Me: Have you considered the possibility that NONE OF THIS IS HAPPENING, and it's actually still 2007 and I am alone at our old office and some chemical fumes from the construction down the hall have knocked me unconscious and I need someone to come help me!? Or maybe I am in the "Inception" world? Maybe you are just a figment of my imagination -- a literary device that I constructed with whom I'm now trapped in a conversation -- and what I think of as "the real world" is just a gossamer web of half forgotten memories.
Editor: Maybe! I'm sorry that if you are, in fact, in the "Inception" world, it's lacking some quality Joseph Gordon-Levitt for you.
Me: I'm more of a Tom Hardy man but I appreciate the sentiment, even if you are just a dollop of pixellated memory dust that's here to implant the notion that this crazy world, in which "Draft de Blasio" is a thing, is actually the real world and I'm not in a coma somewhere.
Editor: Oooh, I'm gonna put "dollop of pixellated memory dust" on my business cards now. So really this "Draft de Blasio" thing was not for nothing! I got a cool new biz card out of it.
Me: Well damn, I didn't get anything out of it!
Editor: :(
Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?
Before You Go
