Cao for Great Lakes Senate – Ain't No Mountain (We'll Be Back)

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

Great Lakes, Great Times! Congrats on winning your triumphant return to the Senate.

[Joseph Cao]

Bloomington–Normal, Illinois

Well, well, folks. Evening, y'all. Thanks for making it at this late hour.

You know, it has been one of the great pleasures of my time here to visit you all, talk with you about the issues that need tackling, and just generally take the nation's pulse – there are so many familiar faces here in the crowd that I've had the privilege of listening to. In or out of the capital I have tried to come back here as often as I can, and your advice on what's needed for this nation and its people have been invaluable. That is the credo of the Federalist Party: preservation of the people's power at a level where they can best contribute.

And I think you all know that by now. I tell all of you regularly to call if you need me: no matter where I am – White House, Congress, out traipsing through the country – and no matter how far. We funded plenty of cross-country transportation in my time.

There are great mountains to climb for this nation, still. The domestic and foreign policy headwinds haven't quietened down. The Senate is fast losing its institutional memory; it's fast losing any semblance of fiscal sense, respect for lower levels of government and the people, a sense of what the great bulk of the right used to stand for in fighting against centralism. This is the chamber where such voices must be heard, and they will continue to be heard as long as I am in it. Direct kicks in the pants like the one over the capital relocation can only happen so often.

My record stands as it has in the past – on preserving and improving life for all, particularly those at the edges of society who cannot speak up for themselves, on the protection of Atlasia's climate and natural resources, on presenting balanced and well-funded budgets, on ensuring the independence and interdependence of every part of this game rather than we eighteen madmen of the Senate going off on our own as their predilections have increasingly tended towards. That's the record I come to all of you with tonight, as I've done many times in the recent past on an individual basis.

I have been told there's a tough race in the making. I'm not worried, as you folks knew first before the rest of Atlasia got to see with my presidential runs. Because I always campaign like I'm twenty points down.

I have been told the partisan advantage may be too much this time. I'm not worried, as you folks also knew first, because we Federalists have been a minority here in the Great Lakes for as long as I've been active. We don't coast by on sheer numbers. We know the value of making friends.

I have been told I'm going the way of Yankee. That is a great compliment, because Yankee respected the people, he had principles he stuck to until the bitter end, he was never motivated by anything else, and so the people respected him in turn. If there is even a tenth of that in my career I will have done well by my lights.

I will stick to all this. In the words of two of our homegrown legends, no mountain, no valley, no river, not the Appalachians or the Ohio Valley or the wide rivers bounding this greatest of subregions that separate me in Nyman from all of you here in the Great Lakes, not sickness or RL matters, will keep me from getting back to you when you need me. That's a promise.

Let's do this.

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

I hope for an amicable and respectful campaign. Best of luck!

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

Thank you for a hard-fought but clean campaign. Hope to see you in elected office again soon.

[Joseph Cao]

Bloomington–Normal, Illinois

All right, folks.

Congratulations to WB on the win. Thank you to everyone who sent me their wishes for my recovery as well as for this race. My thanks also to the supporters who know who they are, to you Federalists and friends who turned out the vote, to everyone involved with these past several swings through a subregion I cherish as the only one I’ve ever known. Thank you, Great Lakes, for letting me represent you all these terms – an area where the left outnumbered the right even at its conception and only got more so as half the right decided that winning elections outside the South was for losers.

While it was purely a numbers game from the start, I think it is incumbent upon me at this point to lay out something WB already knows, that should be publicly known too. This result will do nothing to “repeal the reactionary bills” as he claims. The only bills the SNP passes are still going to be the non-reactionary ones that have gotten broad support, and the SNP will remain free to introduce anything they want. Until they actually defeat an incumbent SNP senator, everyone using this line is lying either to themselves or to you. But how else to run against someone who never lies?

Now, is it curious that WB has been running hard against the SNP all throughout a campaign against me, the chair of the Federalist Party? It is not. The SMASH THE TRUMPISTS playbook has never died. It is in the broader left’s interest if people like me are tarred as Trumpists, even indirectly, and made an example of. Likewise for this new centralist right the overriding interest is in making people like Yankee out as “libs” to be owned and made examples of. The vast majority of the game has decided centralism and doublespeak is the way to go, and so the actual people they find inconvenient and feel the need to squash are not the ones across the aisle – but those of us in the Federalist Party who have consistently opposed both things.

The left will count this a victory because WB, though he can and does think for himself as I hope he will do, is theoretically that much likelier than I am to vote for steel nationalization and writing abortion into the Constitution and accumulating whatever power the left can get into its own pockets. In that sense there is a real loss here I am sorry for, a loss that you folks will feel, because nobody who has watched my Senate career can say anything other than that I think for myself.

But this race itself is not a loss for me, or for the party; we have after all faced this double pummeling for several elections now and neither the centralist left nor the centralist right will stop until they have sent all of us in this party to join Yankee. To that, my fellow Feds, I say: we will not go quietly. We will not go! We will continue to champion causes that benefit all regions, more local educational and economic control, policies that actually touch base with the people and aren’t designed backwards from where a lawmaker wants the world to be, actually enforcing a measure of sanity and memory in this madhouse of a capital.

We will keep coming back and fighting for federalism. Nothing about this weekend has changed how high the mountains facing us are, how low the valleys, or how wide the rivers, and it has not changed our resolve to get to you and fight for you, as we have always done.

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

I made it a point of my campaign not to attack you in any way, and I find it unfortunate that you seem to have taken it that way. I in fact did not even actively campaign for myself as I have been focused on studying for finals, so anything that may have been said against you was done so without my consent. I did specifically state in my campaign announcement that I wished to work with the Federalists:

I am certain that we can work across party lines - Labor, Peace, DA, Federalist, and Independent - to uplift our working class and LGBT communities.

I believe all of us outside of the SNP, including the federalists, can work together against whatever the hell they're doing.

I was disappointed to see your likely loss at-large (although we both know that one of us would have to resign as GM if we both wished to serve in the senate). As I stated here publicly, I want to see you in office again soon, and as I stated to you privately, I believe you could do great things in my soon to be vacant LGC seat, in a body which will be sorely lacking representation for federalists and other sane right-of-center people such as yourself. Any sort of offense you may have taken during this campaign was either unintended or done by someone who did so without my knowledge or approval. I hope we can continue having a good friendship here.

[Joseph Cao]

I hope we can continue having a good friendship here.

Oh, believe you me, I don't let Atlasia get in the way of friendships.

Though now that you mention it, if you wanted this seat you could've asked – you know, like I asked the DA privately in August. I find it very strange to assume that I was just going to leave the Senate without announcing it beforehand, because certainly everyone knows how I am with campaigns.

As to the rest of what I've said, it is a fact that lots of people would find the departure of me and the Feds convenient for them irrespective of what you or I do, and I don't see why I shouldn't call a spade a spade.