A bewildered-looking Meg Whitman resigned from the gubernatorial race on Monday, citing her recent discovery that Latin-Americans constitute more than a third of the state’s eligible voters. Whitman had expected to handily carry the white vote, ignoring the presence of other voting demographics.
“Obviously, I know they exist, but I’ve never spoken to any of them. How was I supposed to know they had political rights?” Whitman explained. “I thought all those things I said were, you know, between us.”
Whitman was referring to her rhetoric about “American jobs”, her advocacy of cutting social services to illegal immigrants, and her praise for the cartoonishly dystopian policing rules of Arizona. Until the election, Whitman had lived for decades without taking the thoughts and feelings of any non-white American into account, including the illegal immigrant housekeeper she employed for nine years.
“It’s not unheard of for a politician to live in such a thick fog of privilege that she is unaware of the consequences of her own ideas,” said a sighing James Cartwright, professor of political science at UC Berkeley. “But you’d think they might have taught her the Fourteenth Amendment at Princeton.”
Reluctant to concede to opponent Jerry Brown, Whitman had scoured the lawbooks for ways to save her election prospects.
“I was thinking maybe a fee for voting, or some kind of biased literacy test at the polling station,” Whitman said. “But apparently they made all that illegal in 1964. I was like, you’re kidding.”
Whitman finally had to admit that maybe gubernatorial politics weren’t for her.
“All I wanted was to run this state the way I ran eBay,” said Whitman. “Who knew this whole ‘voting’ thing would cause so much trouble?”
