The 69 Idiots of 2018: Elected Officials

2018 was a year filled with idiots—including the amoral, crooked wastes of space who occupy our most hallowed political offices. Here are some of the worst.

2020 Democrats

Who doesn’t love elections?! The close calls, the underdog victories, the interminable CNN coverage—this is a true American pastime. We are absolutely PSYCHED to spend the next two years speculating about electability, shitting on third-party voters, and talking obsessively about New Hampshire and Iowa. So far in the Dems’ prospective corner, it looks like an angry old shouty guy, a bad old shouty guy, an ex-prosecutor selling herself as woke, a former indie rock dude who lost to Ted Cruz, and a decrepit billionaire who tried to ban soda. Lol we are so fucked.

Amazon Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo spent months getting dragged kicking and screaming to the left—if only in rhetoric—by activist and Democratic primary challenger Cynthia Nixon after running one of the biggest Democratic states in the country like a Clintonite for eight years. Then, soon after winning re-election, he and longtime nemesis Bill de Blasio rolled out the red carpet for Amazon for a deal to make New York an even more obscenely expensive place to live. Fuck off, Cuomo!

Ben Sasse

Yet another grandstanding Republican who has made his name by rhetorically opposing Trump while almost entirely supporting his agenda. Sasse also wrote an intensely moronic book about how politics is bad because people are lonely and use their phones too much or some shit, not because the rich have invested decades and millions of dollars into turning one party into an algorithm that just does whatever is most profitable for them. What a moron.

Beto O’Rourke

Beto gets high marks for very nearly unseating walking bag of shit Ted Cruz in Texas this year, but still makes our list for a) somehow convincing the national press he’s the second coming of Mao when he’s actually just a pretty middle of the road Democrat and b) already doing this.

Brian Kemp

Listen, it is hard to be the most despicably racist public official in the South. But Georgia Gov.-elect Brian Kemp may just take the cake. In running his campaign against Stacey Abrams, Kemp, the former Georgia secretary of state, used his office’s power to deny thousands of black citizens the opportunity to vote in the weeks and months leading up to the November election. After his replacement called for elections officials to count the denied votes, Kemp walked away with a slim margin of victory, meaning this idiot will now run the state of Georgia for the next four years. The only spot of sunshine here was the moment when Kemp’s vote was ruled “invalid.” Otherwise, the fact that he remains in power is extremely depressing.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi

These days, Schumer is happily announcing how many billions of dollars he’s willing to spend on Trump’s border wall while Pelosi is praising George W. Bush and planning to kneecap progressive legislation before it can even hit the House floor. Your official opposition, folks!

Jim Justice

Some idiots serve their purpose. Case in point? Jim Justice. As governor of West Virginia, Justice, a coal baron and the richest man in the state, was so unbelievably shitty at his job that he enraged teachers to the point that they went on strike, demanding better pay and school conditions. They beat his ass, getting the salary bumps they needed to continue living in the state; not only that, they served as inspiration for teacher strikes in Oklahoma and Arizona, as well as a protest in North Carolina. Don’t be mistaken: Justice still sucks to the extreme, but at least his assholery helped spur a national movement.

Rand Paul

After a wayward youth allegedly spent worshiping an “aqua buddha,” Rand Paul has spent pretty much his entire career in public service trying to translate his father’s wingnut craziness into the GOP’s standard Serious Think Tank-speak. But trash Republicans are a dime a dozen these days. What really separated Rand from the normal pack of idiots this year wasn’t his politics, but the extreme shadiness he displayed after his next door neighbor whipped his ass in a fight—allegedly over lawn care.

Senate Judiciary Committee

These motherfuckers. Not only did the Judiciary Committee pass through prep school dickhead Brett Kavanaugh, but they followed it up by tapping to the beat played by Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump and shoving through Thomas Farr, a man that played a crucial role in advising Jesse Helms, maybe the most despicable senator of the late-20th century. (Luckily, Farr’s nomination appears doomed.) All year, the Judiciary Committee had opportunities to avoid headlines by making the obvious call and blocking shit-heeled white men from lifetime appointments. Instead, they rubber-stamped them through. Fuck ‘em all.

Seth Moulton

This third-term Copperhead from Massachusetts wouldn’t have been anywhere near this list before last month, if only because he was too obscure and irrelevant. But think about it: If Moulton’s goal was to shore up progressive support for Nancy Pelosi, would he really be doing anything differently right now?

Twitter Democrats Brian Schatz and Ted Lieu

These two men are elected officials, but they tweet like the thirstiest, worst #Resistance libs around.