Blogger Joins Presidential Campaign, Challenges Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Kerry

Oliver Willis, a Boston-based blogger has challenged the leading Democratic nominees by entering the 2004 political campaign.

[for more detail visit http://www.oliverwillis.com/entries/0903/might_as_well_make_it_eleven.html]

In a move that stunned the ten existing Democratic campaigns, Oliver Willis announced his candidacy for the presidency today. "We've got several senators, a governor, and a four-star general. So I figured the party needs someone with the experience for the job. That man is me.", Willis said at his campaign kickoff, Oliverpalooza, held in the middle of the Boston Commons.

The crowd consisted mostly of bored college students, vagrants, and bewildered office workers on their lunch break but Willis' spokesperson Spencer Affleck (a distant cousin of Ben) said that "this shows the grassroots pull of our campaign, that The Dub could attract such a rabid crowd at the same time that Dunkin Donuts is giving out free donut holes". Upon hearing the rumor about the donuts, the college students rapidly disappeared, citing "the munchies" as a driving force in their dispersal.

Willis vowed to "take on President Bush, illustrating the stupidity of his policies through bar graphs, bad jokes, and frequent imagery utilizing half-naked women. It will be a campaign that screams: tacky American". Concerning reports that the whole "writer-does-mock campaign" thing has already been done, most noticeably by Dave Barry, Willis responded that "there's a world of difference between Dave Barry and I. Dave Barry is a thin white man who has won a Pulitzer prize. I'm a chunky black man who once half-read a book that won the Pulitzer. I think its quite clear who the imitator is here."

Democratic opinion makers were notably blase about the Willis announcement, with most complaining that the webcast was marred by technical difficulties and an awkward interlude in which the Undertaker vs. Kane match in Summerslam '99 was erroneously broadcast by the Willis web team. Skippy McGee, the team's leader (Farley's Trade School '87) atributed the snafus to "rebooting Windows three times before the sun came up".

As his crowd dwindled down to the homeless and a lost pitbull nicknamed "Diablo", Willis pounded the podium and said "I had a blog before Dean, before Edwards, and way before Wesley Clark! I have been one of the shut-ins who reads and writes those things, and I will represent you in Washington. Visit my website, and click away to donate your hard earned dollars to be squandered on porn, wings, and mixed drinks by my staffers and myself. I promise, you will not be disappointed. Well, you probably will be. But still, I'm at least more electable than Sharpton, Braun, and Kucinich. Hell, maybe even Lieberman".