Our walking-dead politics
Many Republicans and more than a few Democrats doubt that Joe Biden is up for another presidential run, owing to what they regard as his creeping senility.
But John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania’s bruising U.S. Senate race should reassure the President. Fetterman won despite suffering a debilitating stroke.
The stroke compromised his ability to speak, yet he won anyway over fast-talking Dr. Oz, a television creation of Oprah Winfrey.
Fetterman, ex-mayor of a boondocks hamlet, prevailed despite having his ability to communicate rudely interrupted by his serious cerebrovascular event. And the ability to talk is essential to politics, second only to the ability to raise campaign funds.
Even taking into account the president’s tendency to meander off topic, lose his train of thought and reach out to shake hands with folks who aren’t there, he can take inspiration and encouragement from Fetterman’s example.
And here’s further encouraging news for Biden: Forget health concerns, even deceased candidates have run successfully for office. You can look it up. Dead men may tell no tales, as it’s said, but they do occasionally win elections.
In fact, one of Fetterman’s fellow Pennsylvania Democrats further down the party ticket, Tony DeLuca, triumphed despite receiving his death certificate ahead of his election certificate.
The late solon, the Keystone State’s longest-serving state legislator (39 years), expired at the age of 85. But before his name could be removed from the ballot, he won in a zombie-like cakewalk.
Maybe it was a big nostalgia vote, as was once suggested of a Philly pol who, though literally buried himself, proceeded figuratively to bury his live opponent in a landslide.
Political archives chronicle numerous such cases.
The victorious deceased, alas, never get to serve.
Instead, their posthumous triumphs usually set in motion a chain of Byzantine, Machiavellian manipulations involving the fine-print esoterica of the election legal codes.
In any case, a heartbeat is not necessarily a prerequisite for election, as many cases have demonstrated.
— In 2018, Nevada voters pronounced Trumpsterite Republican Dennis Hoff, 72, Nevada brothel owner and author of “The Art of the Pimp,” elected to the state Assembly. This was one month after doctors had pronounced him dead.
— In 2005, the late and evidently much lamented Democrat Donald Tucker of Newark won easy reelection to his state Assembly seat despite having flatlined nearly three weeks before election day.
— In 2010, Jenny Oropeza lost a battle with cancer but then proceeded to win a battle for a California state senate seat against a living Republican opponent.
— In 2008, Pennsylvania Democrat James Rhoades died in a car crash but then, defying destiny, went on to win election to a state senate seat.
— In 2012, Texas state senator Mario Gallegos succumbed to liver disease but despite his morbidity status prevailed over his alive-and-breathing Republican opponent.
— In 2000, Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan ran for a U.S. Senate seat but perished in a plane crash before election. Yet, though pushing up daisies, when the votes were later tallied he prevailed over his still-aboveground GOP opponent.
— In 2002, Democrat Patsy Mink of Hawaii won reelection to Congress even though her death certificate predated her election certificate.
On and on goes the list of such examples.
As this incomplete enumeration indicates, posthumously triumphant candidates tend to be Democrats. Make of this what you will.
Does it reflect the quality of Republican offerings? The tenacity of Democratic loyalty? Maybe some combination of both?
Our elections are said to feature dead voters as well as the occasionally victorious dead candidate.
I’ll leave it to the professional political consultants to settle the question whether dead candidates enjoy a natural advantage among the deceased community’s supposed voting constituency.
Whatever the reality of voting from the graveyard — whether real, exaggerated or wholly imagined — New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne was telling an old political joke when he wisecracked that he wanted to be buried in Hudson County, in order to remain active in politics.
If there’s voting from the grave, law enforcement seldom catches up with it. An exceedingly rare case to the contrary involved a Delaware County, Pa., man who, using the name of a dead relative, cast an extra vote for his preferred candidate.
Confounding the narrative favored by Republicans, who insist that graveyard voting is a dark art practiced exclusively by Democrats, that Delaware County dead person’s vote was cast, it turned out, for Donald Trump.
Joe Biden surely has a deep appreciation of the long-whispered connection between the afterlife and here-and-now politics, given the impressive longevity of his career in politics. He was first elected to public office the year Frazier decisioned Ali in 15, same year iron workers topped off the south tower of the World Trade Center.
Biden surely has witnessed, or heard rumored, his share of colorful election stories, including races won by Runyanesque though deceased candidates,
In any event, the president seems attuned to the special if apocryphal relationship between the dearly departed and ongoing politics. He gave the late Congresswoman Jackie Walorski a shoutout weeks after her demise. (“Where’s Jackie? Jackie, are you here? “)
Whether the deceased actually constitute a significant electorate — that topic is hotly debated — there are indications that they do at least loom as a voting bloc of potential significance, due simply to their persistence and perseverance. Indications are that the dead, long after passing, continue to hang around the voting rolls in large numbers.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group prone to fret about the devil in election details, says its spot checks of voter registration rolls going into the 2020 elections easily and quickly identified 350,000 dead still on the rolls, long after they had wrapped up their earthly affairs.
A foundation lawsuit prompted a Pennsylvania court to remove 21,000 deceased from the voter rolls, proactively denying them the franchise, just in case they tried to exercise it.
Meanwhile, polling points to a continuing decline in churchgoing among the electorate and dwindling belief in life after death.
Our peculiar, maybe mythical election traditions, however, are now fortified by early voting, ballot harvesting, ballot drop boxes and whatnot.
Altogether, they hold forth the prospect, among suspicious-minded, cranky Republicans especially, that once the vote tally begins there will be ample evidence of life everlasting. Of sorts, anyway.