Showing posts with label get over it. Show all posts
Showing posts with label get over it. Show all posts

Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Nonsensical Election of 2014

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Many people in the U.S. and around the world are still struggling to understand why a Midterm Election in which only 36% of voters bothered to show up at the polls is being taken as a "Mandate" by the nutty Republicans. If this is just a typical midterm election, then why does it feel as if we've really gone down the rabbit hole this time?

Maybe it's the obvious gloating of the Tea Partiers, who should realize how marginalized they are according to every demographic number, but who thought President Obama should just surrender and impeach himself the day after the election. I guess the fact that Cuckoo-For-Cocoa-Puffs candidates will soon pour into both houses of Congress is giving them the "audacity of hope" that their draconian views are the norm. Why shouldn't they gloat? They turned out the vote, and the Democrats failed miserably.



Maybe we are just outnumbered by the stupids in this country, and we need to accept that.

While cool heads are saying this election was a quirk of red-state geography, gerrymandering, and local elections that pushed hot-button issues, that's no solace to those who voted Blue in a Red State. For instance, in Tennessee it is a fact that a new constitutional amendment to make abortions harder to get failed in the four major cities, thanks to Blue voters. However, it was passed almost as a landslide statewide as if those cities and their Democratic voters didn't even exist. And therein lies a sad truth about why turn-out is so low among Dems in red states - our votes get canceled out, and that leads to voter malaise and low turnout.



We also suffered in Tennessee from a wealthy scandal-proof fence-rider of a Republican governor whose only Democratic opposition was some unknown doofus named, I kid you not, "Charlie Brown." Behold, our state Democratic Party in action. Red state Dems are like orphans in the wilderness these days, and we are outnumbered by crazies.





Same thing in Texas where candidates like Wendy Davis and Letitia Van de Putte couldn't overcome the basic sexism of aging white ranchers, oil men, and the loony misogynist Christians who turned out to vote. What's more astonishing is that women turned out to vote against women candidates too. Another mystery of this election. Where were the "majority" of Dem and Independent women, and why didn't they care?

And then there was Kansas, allegedly a state where the Tea Party had turned their economy upside down, so they were ready to clean house starting with Governor Sam Brownback. Also, Independent Greg Orman was supposed to handily beat the incumbent Senator Pat Roberts, then caucus with the Dems. Except that none of that happened. The polls were all wrong. The people voted for Brownback as if everything was just okey dokey with them. And their absentee Senator, who doesn't even live in Kansas anymore, was re-elected in a landslide. Go figure.

My husband said no one should be suprised that a red state stayed red, but what was all that reporting about? How could everyone be so wrong this time?









Maybe it was delusional on the Dems' part to think states like Georgia or Kentucky - or Texas, a longshot - could be blue in this election, that they would elect a Michelle Nunn or an Alison Lundergan Grimes. But it's just as mysterious that Kentucky re-elected an unpopular guy like Mitch McConnell, while keeping their blue Governor and State Legislature. The popularity of Governors like John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Scott in Florida, and Scott Walker in Wisconsin is a conundrum that cannot be explained easily. Those states had huge "get out the vote" movements, and actually have real Democratic Parties, unlike in Tennessee. Yet it all seemed to make no difference in the end, and I'm sure their Dem voters feel just as puzzled as ever.



Many say that Democratic candidates failed because they "ran away from the President" and from the victory that is Obamacare. But to those of us in Red States who understand swing voters, it seemed logical that the candidates wouldn't want to draw too much attention to Obama or to the unpopular idea of ACA. I think it was a lose-lose situation - damned if they did, damned if they didn't.

Maybe history will explain this election, if we live long enough. Or we can just blame the black President like most of the media. If it really is that simple, and that racist, I just don't want to know.

Maybe we Dems just had too much hope, and got ahead of ourselves, and now we are turning on ourselves and playing the blame game. The fall-out in the Democratic party is already happening. There are calls to throw out Harry Reid as Senate Minority Leader, and toss Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as head of the Democratic Party. The head of the DCCC, Steve Israel, resigned a few days after the election.

All this blaming and firing won't really help us understand the Midterm from Hell, but I guess it will seem like progress. Meanwhile, most Dems are taking time off from the internet, watching Netflix, listening to soothing music and wishing this was all a bad dream.
























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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Rachel Maddow's Right-Wing Reality Rant

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That happened (the re-election of Barack Obama). That really happened.

We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade.

There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.

We're not going to repeal health reform.

Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance.

We are not going to do that.

We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.

We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on.

We are not going to redefine rape.

We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo.

We are not eliminating the department of energy or the department of education or housing at the federal level.

We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.

We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from their parents.

We are not vetoing the Dream Act.

We are not self-deporting.

We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.

We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.

We are not going to have, as a President, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help, and there was no apology not ever.

We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolten.

We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.

We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War.

We are not going to do it.

We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and we said no last night, loudly.






Ohio really did go to President Obama last night.
And he really did win.

And he really was born in Hawaii.

And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again.

And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.

And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.

And the polls were not screwed to oversample Democrats.

And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.

And climate change is real.

And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.

And evolution is a thing.

And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us.

And nobody is taking away anyone's guns.

And taxes have not gone up.

And the deficit is dropping, actually.

And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

And the moon landing was real.

And FEMA is not building concentration camps.

And U.N. election observers are not taking over Texas.

And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.

Listen, last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats for very obvious reasons, but it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two- party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides, both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. and we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea.

That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff.

And the if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in realtime, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to is secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center.

You guys, we're counting on you. wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there.

If the Republican Party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. and in that spirit, congratulations.
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