Alice Cooper – "Elected" (1972)

We’re all gonna rock

To the rules that I make

I wanna be elected!

You think Halloween is the scariest day of the year?

No way, José!  The most frightening day of the year is ELECTION DAY!

The good news is that once we get past this Tuesday, it will be two whole years before the next election.

The bad news is that the campaigning for that election will begin on Wednesday.

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Mark Twain seemed to take special pleasure in satirizing the American political system.  The journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken – who was a great admirer of Twain – was even more cynical about the government.

“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time,” he once wrote.  “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

H. L. Mencken

Mencken said you could always count on politicians to have a simple solution for even the most complex problem.  You could also count on that simple solution to be wrong.

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Mencken once defined democracy as “the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

I don’t know what will happen in Tuesday’s election.  But however it turns out, I have no doubt that Mencken will be proven correct.  Sooner or later, we voters will get it good and hard.

Whatever the results of Tuesday’s election, many people will be unhappy with the outcome.  If you’re one of those people, there’s no use in complaining.  In the words of former big-league pitcher Joey Eischen, “You’ll suck on it and you’ll like it.”

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Alice Cooper’s “Elected” is a brilliant deconstruction of the psyche of the typical American politician.

The line that’s repeated over and over in the song is “I wanna be elected” – which is the only thing politicians really care about.

They will do anything to win – they will even help someone with the same name as that of their chief opponent to get on the ballot in the hope that confused voters will vote for the wrong one.  (That actually happened in Alaska this year, and there’s a good chance that the dirty trick will work.  Click here to read what the New York Times had to say about the sleazeball candidate whose campaign came up with that underhanded tactic.)

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The politician-singer in “Elected” has the b*lls to claim “I’ve never lied to you,” when everyone knows that politicians lie in the mornin’, lie in the evenin’, and lie at suppertime.  

There’s an old joke about politicians that goes like this: 

How can you tell when a politician is lying?  You can see his lips moving.

“I thought jokes were supposed to be funny,” you might be saying to yourself.  “What’s funny about that?”  

Good question.

*     *     *     *     *

Actually, the worst thing about politicians is not their inability to tell the truth.  It’s their belief that they are smarter than other people – which means they have the God-given right to tell the rest us what to do.

These lines from “Elected” say it all:

We’re all gonna rock

To the rules that I make

I wanna be elected!

If Mencken have lived long enough to hear “Elected,” I think he would have found those lyrics to be spot on.  After all, Mencken believed that a politician’s claim that he or she is running for office in order to serve the public “is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”  

Go back to the first record chosen for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK – Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” – and you’ll find the appropriate response to the typical elected official’s “urge to rule”:

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

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Click here to watch the brilliant official music video for “Elected’ – the 13th and final song selected for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL SONGBOOK.

Click here to buy “Elected” from Amazon.

Alice Cooper – "Elected" (1972)

I never lied to you

I’ve always been cool

I wanna be elected!

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again” is a proverb you’ve probably heard many times.

The Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock rejected that adage:

There is an old motto that runs, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”  This is nonsense. 

It ought to read “If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit at once.”

If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it.  Try something else while there is yet time.

It’s too bad that billionaire David Trone didn’t listen to Stephen Leacock.  If he had, he would have saved a lot of money.

*     *     *     *     *

Saying that Trone spends money on his political campaigns like a drunken sailor is probably not fair to drunken sailors.

If you were as rich as David Trone,
you’d be laughing, too!

Trone knows drunken sailors, by the way – he and his brother Robert own Total Wine & More, which operates 250-odd liquor superstores in 28 states.  The company’s 2023 revenues exceeded $6 billion.  

Trone set a record in 2016 when he spent $13.4 million of his own money in an unsuccessful attempt to win the Democratic primary election for Maryland’s 8th congressional district.  No one had ever spent more money to lose a race for Congress.  (He got 35,400 votes, so his cost-per-vote was about $378.)

His estimated net worth is $2.5 billion, so dropping a mere $13.4 million didn’t discourage Trone.  When 2018 rolled around, he ran for Congress once more – but in Maryland’s 6th district instead of its 8th.  (Trone didn’t have to change his address to run in the 6th district – members of Congress don’t have to reside in the district they represent.)  

Trone outspent his Republican opponent by a 10-to-1 margin and cruised to victory in November.  He then  easily won re-election in 2020 and 2022.

He probably could have held on to his congressional seat for as long as he wanted to.  But when one of Maryland’s incumbent U.S. Senators announced his intention to retire in 2024, Trone decided he was just the man for the job.

That turned out to be a very costly mistake.  Trone spent a whopping $62.5 million seeking the Democratic nomination for that Maryland Senate seat, only to lose to Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

And it wasn’t even close.  Alsobrooks beat Trone by a 53-to-43 margin.

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But even a second expensive defeat wasn’t enough to teach Trone a lesson.  This year, he decided to run for his old 6th district seat.

Perhaps he thought that April McClain Delaney, the woman who took his place when he tried to move from the House to the Senate, would politely step aside for him.  But she quickly disabused him of that notion.

Like Trone, Delaney is a very wealthy person.  (She obtained her wealth the old-fashioned way – she married a very rich guy.)

The two candidates go way back.  Delaney’s husband John represented the 6th district in Congress from 2012 until 2018, when he resigned to run for the Democratic nomination for President.  (You weren’t aware that Delaney was a candidate for President in 2020?  You’re not alone – his poll numbers were infinitesimal.)

Who took over Delaney’s seat in Congress?  None other than David Trone.  The Delaneys supported Trone’s candidacy, and Trone returned the favor by endorsing John Delaney for President.  But friendship went out the window when Trone tried to claw back April Delaney’s 6th district seat.  

Delaney speculated that Trone had  decided to run against her because he was “a bored billionaire.”    

But Trone said boredom had nothing to do with it.  “If I felt the congresswoman was doing a good job in representing the district and the Democratic Party, I would definitely have not run,” Trone told the Washington Post.

Because there no real policy differences between the two candidates, I can’t help but believe that the whole kerfuffle was about ego more than anything else.  (If there’s something I know a lot about, it’s egos.  I may not have a Trone-sized bank account, but I’ll match my ego to his any day of the week.)

 *     *     *     *     *

The fight for the 6th district Democratic nomination was the most expensive Congressional primary campaign in history.  Delaney spent $7.5 million of her husband’s money in hopes of holding on to her seat.  Trone topped that by shelling out a cool $25 million.

Nevertheless Delaney ended up prevailing by a 44-38 margin.  (Six other wannabes shared the remaining votes.) 

Just under 21,000 votes were cast for Trone, which means each vote cost over $1000.

Because Maryland allows a candidate to win with only a plurality of votes, we will be spared the spectacle of a runoff campaign this summer.  One can only imagine how much do-re-mi Mommy and Daddy Warbucks would go through in such a contest.

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When I wrote about Trone’s expensive defeat in the 2024 Maryland Senate primary, I noted that I was old enough to remember when it was the Republicans who had the advantage when it came to buying elections.  But now it’s the Democrats who have a big edge in campaign spending.

According to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan research group, Democratic candidates for federal office in 2020 heavily outspent their Republican opponents:

Biden’s campaign became the first to raise over $1 billion from donors.  Biden’s cash advantage over Trump helped him pepper swing states with far more campaign ads.  Biden also received more help from super PACs and “dark money” groups. 

Trump’s campaign raised $774 million.  Trump raised over half of his money from small donors giving $200 or less, a stunning figure no other presidential candidate has matched. . . .

In Senate races, Democratic general election candidates raised over $1.1 billion, easily dwarfing Republicans’ $752 million.  In House races, Democrats outraised Republicans $898 million to $763 million. 

That Democratic advantage held up in 2024, when the total spending for Democratic candidates in all federal elections was $3.1 billion compared to $2.1 billion in spending for Republican candidates – which is close to a 50% advantage.

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Times may have changed when it comes to which political party has the most money to spend.  But what hasn’t changed is that Alice Cooper’s 1972 masterpiece, “Elected,” is still the record ever about political candidates

Click here to view the fabulous “Elected” music video.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.   

Alice Cooper – "Elected" (1972)

I never lied to you

I’ve always been cool

I wanna be elected!

They say a leopard can’t change its spots.

They also say that a politician will shove his mother out of the way if she’s standing between him and a camera.

Here’s a recent photo of the head of my county’s government, Marc Elrich, attending the annual celebration of the Holi festival with local followers of the Hare Krishna movement:

When I first saw that photo, I thought that someone had pranked Elrich.  But it turns out that Holi – which people celebrate by throwing colored powder at each other – is actually a thing.  (Who knew?) 

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The obvious explanation for Elrich’s willingness to attend an event like the local Holi festival is that he’s a politician who is determined to leave no stone unturned in his efforts to put himself in front of potential voters.  (Is it possible that there are enough Hare Krishnas in Montgomery County to have any effect on local elections?  Better safe than sorry!) 

Elrich will be 77 years old when his second term as the County Executive of Montgomery County, Maryland – the home of 2 or 3 lines – ends next year.  You might think that would be enough to discourage him from running for re-election.  But there are plenty of recent examples of people that old or older holding high office to demonstrate that advanced age is no match for a politician’s ego.    

Unfortunately for Elrich, last year the voters approved a ballot measure prohibiting from running for a third term as County Executive.  And there’s really no other elective office that would make sense for him to seek.  (I can’t imagine he would run for a lesser office at this point, and the higher ones are all spoken for.)

Elrich to Montgomery County voters:
“We don’t need no stinkin’ term limits!”

So if Elrich isn’t running for re-election, why does he continue to attend events like the Holi festival and post photos of himself shaking hands and kissing babies on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere? 

Possibly for the same reason that the scorpion in the old fable stings the frog that is carrying it across a river.  

“Without me to carry you across the river, you will drown,” the frog asks after the scorpion delivers the fatal sting.  “So why did you sting me?”

“Because that’s my nature,” the scorpion answers.

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I’ll have a lot more to say about County Executive Elrich in the next 2 or 3 lines.

In the meantime, you’re invited to click here and enjoy the brilliant music video for Alice Cooper’s “Elected,” which was released in 1972 on the Billion Dollar Babies album.  (John Lennon once told Alice that “Elected” was a great record, but that Paul McCartney would have done it better.  One out of two ain’t bad.)

Click here to buy “Elected” from Amazon.

Alice Cooper – "Elected" (1973)

I never lied to you

I’ve always been cool

I wanna be elected!

Saying that billionaire David Trone spends money on his political campaigns like a drunken sailor is probably not fair to drunken sailors.

Trone knows drunken sailors, by the way – he and his brother Robert own Total Wine & More, which operates 250-odd liquor superstores in 28 states.  The company’s 2023 revenues exceeded $6 billion.  

Life is good when you’re a billionaire!

Trone set a record in 2016 when he spent $13 million of his own money in an unsuccessful attempt to win the Democratic primary election for Maryland’s 8th congressional district.  No one has ever spent more money to lose a race for Congress.

But Trone is no dummy.  When 2018 rolled around, he didn’t run in the 8th district again – he ran for the 6th district nomination instead.  (Trone didn’t have to change his address to run in the 6th district – members of Congress don’t have to reside in the district they represent.). Trone then outspent his Republican opponent by a 10-to-1 margin and cruised to victory in November.

Trone easily won re-election in 2020 and 2022, and probably could have held on to his congressional seat indefinitely.  But when one of Maryland’s incumbent U.S. Senators announced his intention to retire, Trone decided he was the man for the job.

That turned out to be a very expensive mistake!

*     *     *     *     *  

Despite being once bitten by his 2016 fiasco, David Trone was not twice shy.  He spent about $62 million seeking the Democratic nomination for Maryland’s open Senate seat, only to lose to Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

And it wasn’t even close.  Alsobrooks beat Trone by a 53-to-43 margin.

*     *     *     *     *

I’m old enough to remember when filthy-rich businessmen like David Trone were Republicans.  But if you’re filthy rich enough, you don’t really have to worry about how high taxes and inflation are – you can afford to be a Democrat.

I’m also old enough to remember when it was the Republicans who had the advantage when it came to buying elections.  But now it’s the Democrats who have a big advantage in campaign spending.

According to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan research group, Democratic candidates for federal office in 2020 heavily outspent their Republican opponents:

Biden’s campaign became the first to raise over $1 billion from donors.  Biden’s cash advantage over Trump helped him pepper swing states with far more campaign ads.  Biden also received more help from super PACs and “dark money” groups. 

Trump’s campaign raised $774 million.  Trump raised over half of his money from small donors giving $200 or less, a stunning figure no other presidential candidate has matched. . . .

In Senate races, Democratic general election candidates raised over $1.1 billion, easily dwarfing Republicans’ $752 million.  In House races, Democrats outraised Republicans $898 million to $763 million. 

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Pretty much every time I do a post about elections, I feature Alice Cooper’s 1973 hit, “Elected.”

Click here to view the fabulous “Elected” music video.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.