In a political science research facility located deep beneath Harry Reid’s ranch in the Nevada desert, Democratic Party strategists are working on plans to keep the party alive as a political force after last week’s electoral thrashing. And they are looking to the current hit movie “Interstellar” for inspiration.
Senior Democratic leaders have conceded that the party can no longer continue to exist in its current form on Earth. “The political atmosphere has become too toxic for liberal ideas to survive,” said one strategist. “We will have to leave behind our planet, and our solar system, if our ideology is to be kept alive.”
This extraterrestrial line of thinking is not entirely new. Even before last week’s GOP landslide, a small but vocal group of liberal thinkers led by Paul Krugman had been arguing that there must be parallel universes in which higher taxes stimulate the economy, hikes in the minimum wage lead to job creation, and tougher gun controls are directly correlated to falling crime rates. But most serious analysts have dismissed such claims as lying in the realms of science fiction.
A new trope
Consultants are divided as to the best way forward. Some believe that the best hope for the party is making contact with civilizations advanced far beyond current human understanding. “We’re optimistic that somewhere out there are forms of life so intelligent that they could make sense of the Affordable Healthcare Act,” said one strategist. “And what’s more, there may exist alternative dimensions that we can’t even begin to comprehend, where the laws and physics as we know them no longer apply, and where Obamacare might actually work.”
Others, including Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, argue that far from trying to make contact with intelligent beings, the party’s hopes lie in finding a planet with life forms so primitive that Democratic politicians will be able to convince them that liberal policies really are in their best interests. For example, single-cell organisms or amoebas would probably vote Democrat without knowing what they were doing, or even having any kind of consciousness.
Some political scientists have suggested that other star systems could be home to unipolar planets, where there is no South and the political climate is therefore more favorable to Democratic ideas. Others are counting on the billions-to-one chance of locating a planet populated entirely by single white women, college students and African-Americans.
The left stuff
While planning is still in the early stages, the first ships to leave Earth would probably carry highly-trained operatives who would be the pioneers of Democrat space exploration. Pollsters would be needed to test whether potential new worlds could support progressive policies, while if inhabited planets were discovered, community organizers would be dispatched to stir up grievances between competing life-forms and offer them government handouts.
One daunting obstacle to Democrats’ hopes of a new life is the length of time it would take to travel to other solar systems which could be home to habitable worlds. “We are looking at putting Democrat politicians and operatives into suspended animation for possibly decades … if they ever returned to Earth, their loved ones would have aged dramatically,” said one consultant. “But John Dingell would still be serving in Congress.”