Cartoon America Finally Starts Paying Attention To Midterms

 
   By the Comics Curmudgeon  
Did you know that the campaign for the 2010 midterm elections are finally underway? "Wait a minute, hold up," you're saying, if you're the sort of person who reads this site, "hasn't the midterm campaign been happening since roughly the middle of 2007?" Well, that just goes to show what sort of out-of-touch inside-the-beltway monster you are. Real America is just now starting to pay attention to this business, and is of course discovering that the Democrats are destined to lose in flames. But these Americans are just happy to participate in the process!

 Click the cartoons to make them larger, so you do not miss a single detail! 

 
 When you are a cartoonist, you must seek inspiration where you can find it. Say, for instance, that you are trying to come up with a cartoon that encapsulates the trouble the Democrats will have in the midterms with a fun visual metaphor. You're sitting around, watching the U.S. Open, and you think, "Look at these tennis players, with balls constantly flying at them that they must attempt to lob back to their opponents. Aren't the Democrats in a similar predicament, except the the ball they must deal with -- a ball we call 'November,' because that's when the elections will take place -- is enormous, perhaps too big for them to return?" There is no shame in going through this thought process! None at all! However, you need not explicitly cite your inspiration by labeling the Democratic donkey/tennis player "U.S. Open." In fact, doing so may simply confuse the matter!

 
 So anyway, the midterm elections: they will be happening! And of course as noted the harmless game of tennis is only a metaphor; the way this will really go down will be more like a vicious gang war, in the Old West. As you can see here, the Republicans will be carrying various kinds of deadly firearms into battle, the better to shoot and kill their opponents with. The Democrats, on the other hand, will be bearing only hammers and the occasional paintbrush, with which they will hope to bludgeon their enemies, if they can get to close range without being shot, although they almost certainly will not be able to do so. This sounds about right, actually!

 
 What will Barack Obama do to help the poor Democrats? A whole lot of nothing, apparently. Look at this poor Dem donkey, with only a box full of wood scraps to use as makeshift bludgeons in the coming gang brawl. His hammer is so skinny and feeble that, even if he somehow makes it through the hail of bullets to confront the Republican elephants, his assaults will have little effect. Why do you ignore this poor Democrat, Mr. President? Don't you have a more substantive hammer you can lend him? The world is watching and the bright lights are shining upon you, leaving meticulously detailed shadows that the artist drawing this cartoon seemed much more interested in than he was in depicting, say, the hammer.

 
 Still, everyone gets excited about the prospect of a new election! Why, America's rich are particularly getting into the swing of things, making their own special contributions to election strategizing. Remember, one sure way to make sure that poor people can't vote is to murder them. "Ah ha," you say, "But what if some sinister liberal takes that dead poor person to the polls and votes with their corpse, Weekend at Bernie's style?" Oh, you clever soul, the rich are one step ahead of you: they will simply eat the poor person after murdering him or her, making such a ploy impossible. This is more proof of Christine O'Donnell's failure to think strategically.

 
 But with elections come election fever! The sense that anyone, literally anyone, could achieve public office, especially in a year when there's an anti-incumbent mood in the electorate. For instance, you might think that you don't stand much of a chance of wooing voters because you're an eternal undead demon-thing who has guarded the gates to the underworld since the days of the Ancient Egyptians, and whose very bodily structure defies Euclidean space-time geometric logic and leaves ordinary mortals' minds a gibbering mess. But who knows, maybe you should give it a shot! Particularly in Chicago -- lord knows they've seen their share of terror-nightmares there.

In other news, people are still drawing cartoons about John Edwards, we guess.