Political Prognostication

Here are 4 political prognostications you can take to the (failed) bank of your choice:

1) (Non)governor Luis "The Larva" Fortuño will lose the opposition party's primary. (By "opposition party," I mean the statehood party. That he won under in 2008.) The Larva is toast. Cooked like a skinny goose. Walking around with a fork jutting out of his bony ass and several knives lodged in and through (non)vital organs. Done. The product of being a political baby with no plans, no guts, no charisma, no leadership mojo, bad judgment in selecting advisors and Cabinet members and no ability to defend his party base as it was eroded on all sides like a sand castle in a raging flood. On the positive side? He dodged an egg.

2) The Popular Democratic Party (neither one nor the other nor the other) will not select a candidate so much as pick the slowest-moving idiot who doesn't step back fast enough. Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's in the Army and the sergeant asks for a volunteer and everybody but Bugs steps back? Bingo. That's where the populares are headed. They ain't totally stupid: they know Our economy is a wreck (they helped make it that way) and they know full well that government cuts in jobs are vitally needed (they helped create that mess, too.) With the "threat" of a statehood shadow play--er, referendum--out of the way, why fight hard for a win 2012 when the global economy will still suck? Better to aim for 2016 and hold the fort until then. And who do you hold the fort with, your best guy or your most expendable one? If you find that to be a circular argument I created, then how about this: would the populares rather have Thomas "Mad Führer" Rivera inherit this mess (knowing he's bound to make it worse what with his brain-dead attitude and Pedro Stupid Rosselló connection) or one of their own? 

3) The youth (under 35) vote will become the prominent bloc. Although voting in Puerto Rico has traditionally been in the low to mid-80s (percentage), the bulk of the vote has always been the above-35 crowd. Not so in 2012: for the first time ever, the youth vote will decidedly swing the election. Why? The economy. Jobs are gone and with the (non)administration and the latrinous legislature We have, they aren't coming back anytime soon. (Yes, I wrote "latrinous." It's a word. Now.) The university students were not protesting over "academia's right to exist" or any somesuch bull crap, they were protesting for fear of losing their incubator of prolonged adolescence...and the alternative to finding a job. Think of this: the under-35 demographic is facing the reality of less opportunity, less growth and less reward, the first generation in 70 years to do so. You think the last 2 years haven't shown them--beyond a shadow of a doubt--that their future is looking more and more like garbage every day, that the implied promises of the value of education and hard work are looking more and more like lies, lies that look and sound the same as those the vermin in government spout about their own interests?

4) The campaigns will be almost totally about personalities and almost nothing about issues. We've already walked in that swamp, but the 2012 election will make that swamp look like a rose-water fountain. The 2012 campaign is shaping up to be the "Yo Mama" (or to use the local vernacular, Tu madre) elections. Aside from paying lip service to the economy (jobs, health care, education), but doing so with no hard data aside from self-serving "studies," the campaign will morph from mud-slinging to turd-tossing...and the Internet will lead the way. Unlike the U.S. of part of A., where there's still (barely) a tradition of the media holding candidates and parties accountable to the issues, and the Internet has developed a grass-roots strength, We have media with a long tradition of fearful butt-kissing and collaboration in avoiding serious issues, and Our Internet has the grass-roots ADD of a frat party beer keg Happy Hour. Who will "benefit" from that? The under-35 crowd, for whom technology is a substitute for thinking. And that's where the election will be molded, modded and mutilated. The winners will be those who hit first, hit often and hit with the cleverest lies (marketing, anyone?). The losers will be, as ever, Us.

The Jenius Has Spoken.