All of the Post-Election Analysis You Will Ever Need (Part 1)
As naturally as night follows day, as hagfish swim, as vultures fly, the Election Night hypestravaganza gives way to weeks of post-election pontification and navel-gazing. Fortunately for you, I have already found all of the information that is necessary to know about what happened this past Tuesday, in no less than two (2) articles written by more talented and experienced people than myself.
Here's a taste of each. As I always say, click on the links and read them entire. Shrugging and saying "no shit" to yourself is optional.
First, a definitive yet succinct analysis from Athenae at First Draft. Actually, screw the usual- I'm quoting the whole thing:
So there's going to be a lot of ink expended over the next couple of weeks trying to figure out how this happened, as if it's a goddamn mystery. This economy blows goats, and instead of being out there every day yelling HEY WE TRIED TO FIX IT THOSE FUCKERS WOULDN'T LET US ALSO BUSH BAILED OUT THE BANKS NOT US, Democrats pretty much figured the midterms were gonna be a bloodbath and hunkered down and hoped it wouldn't hit them too hard. Because that works. That always works.
Here's the problem, you gutless fucks. You had majorities. And I KNOW, okay, but all America sees is that you had majorities and you wasted them. Because that's what the GOP told them, and you said, "buh buh buh" and couldn't point to anything you did right, not even with the unwashed hippies holding your arm up for you. You had majorities, and you had Harry Reid, refusing to be mean to Republicans by shoving stuff through. You had majorities, and you had Barack Obama acting like he was already an ex-president and could be gracious and social with these pricks. You had majorities, used them to do some stuff, and then sat back and acted like we should be grateful when we can fucking count.
We can fucking count, out here. We know what 51 means. We know what 257 means. We're not morons. And all the procedural whatsit you argue today, about ConservaDems and Blue Dogs, doesn't mean shit. You had it, and we worked hard to give it to you, and we see you calling things impossible which are just very hard, and we get fucking annoyed, because we don't get to get away with that shit. Not at our jobs and not in our lives.
Now, I'm not excusing the Party of I Hate You or these teabagging excuses for human beings who think education is vaguely homosexual in some sinister way, but I am saying that the lesson we're all going to take away from this is that America just isn't a Democratic nation and we should all tack to the right and us hippies should just die in a fire already, which is bullshit. The lesson we should take away from this is that America doesn't like pussies, doesn't like whiners and it sure as fuck doesn't like parties that pretend to be able to do less than they can do just because they don't want to work that hard or have Chris Matthews call them mean.
You had majorities. You had power and you told us you were powerless. Why would anyone reward that with more power? Why would anyone think that's a good idea?
Schmucks.
The other bit, a longer read but worth the effort, from David Sirota over at OpenLeft, wherein he takes some sage advice from none other than Dick Cheney and shares it with conservative Democrats:
The facts are painfully apparent. Though hundreds - if not thousands - of people in D.C. are professionally paid to pretend these facts require debate and analysis and parsing and speculation and press releases and pithy Tweets and Sunday Show roundtables and C-SPAN symposia and to-camera cable-TV rants and lengthy thousand-page books, they don't require any of that. The facts are simple. The facts are obvious. The facts are undeniable to anyone not paid fistfulls of sweaty money to lie or sensationalize:
1. The Democratic Party shit on its base with its policies, as noted above.
2. This demoralized the Democratic base, which responded by not turning out to vote. As CBS News notes, "Hispanics, African Americans, union members and young people were among the many core Democratic groups that turned out in large numbers in the 2008 elections (but) turnout among these groups dropped off substantially, even below their previous midterm levels."
3. In cause-and-effect style, the result of all this was, as the Washington Post reports, a freshman congressional class that is primarily made up of angry, white, lunatic-conservative assholes.
So yes, all of you who are wasting all of our time pretending this isn't the basic point-A-to-point-B story of the election - and there are a lot of you out there - please, if not for me, then for everyone else: Go fuck yourself.
Seriously, these two articles provide about 99% of the essential facts about what happened on November 2nd. So don't waste your time with filler provided by professionals who are paid big bucks to waste your time with filler, and check out "The Walking Dead" instead. I am enjoying it so far.
Here's a taste of each. As I always say, click on the links and read them entire. Shrugging and saying "no shit" to yourself is optional.
First, a definitive yet succinct analysis from Athenae at First Draft. Actually, screw the usual- I'm quoting the whole thing:
So there's going to be a lot of ink expended over the next couple of weeks trying to figure out how this happened, as if it's a goddamn mystery. This economy blows goats, and instead of being out there every day yelling HEY WE TRIED TO FIX IT THOSE FUCKERS WOULDN'T LET US ALSO BUSH BAILED OUT THE BANKS NOT US, Democrats pretty much figured the midterms were gonna be a bloodbath and hunkered down and hoped it wouldn't hit them too hard. Because that works. That always works.
Here's the problem, you gutless fucks. You had majorities. And I KNOW, okay, but all America sees is that you had majorities and you wasted them. Because that's what the GOP told them, and you said, "buh buh buh" and couldn't point to anything you did right, not even with the unwashed hippies holding your arm up for you. You had majorities, and you had Harry Reid, refusing to be mean to Republicans by shoving stuff through. You had majorities, and you had Barack Obama acting like he was already an ex-president and could be gracious and social with these pricks. You had majorities, used them to do some stuff, and then sat back and acted like we should be grateful when we can fucking count.
We can fucking count, out here. We know what 51 means. We know what 257 means. We're not morons. And all the procedural whatsit you argue today, about ConservaDems and Blue Dogs, doesn't mean shit. You had it, and we worked hard to give it to you, and we see you calling things impossible which are just very hard, and we get fucking annoyed, because we don't get to get away with that shit. Not at our jobs and not in our lives.
Now, I'm not excusing the Party of I Hate You or these teabagging excuses for human beings who think education is vaguely homosexual in some sinister way, but I am saying that the lesson we're all going to take away from this is that America just isn't a Democratic nation and we should all tack to the right and us hippies should just die in a fire already, which is bullshit. The lesson we should take away from this is that America doesn't like pussies, doesn't like whiners and it sure as fuck doesn't like parties that pretend to be able to do less than they can do just because they don't want to work that hard or have Chris Matthews call them mean.
You had majorities. You had power and you told us you were powerless. Why would anyone reward that with more power? Why would anyone think that's a good idea?
Schmucks.
The other bit, a longer read but worth the effort, from David Sirota over at OpenLeft, wherein he takes some sage advice from none other than Dick Cheney and shares it with conservative Democrats:
The facts are painfully apparent. Though hundreds - if not thousands - of people in D.C. are professionally paid to pretend these facts require debate and analysis and parsing and speculation and press releases and pithy Tweets and Sunday Show roundtables and C-SPAN symposia and to-camera cable-TV rants and lengthy thousand-page books, they don't require any of that. The facts are simple. The facts are obvious. The facts are undeniable to anyone not paid fistfulls of sweaty money to lie or sensationalize:
1. The Democratic Party shit on its base with its policies, as noted above.
2. This demoralized the Democratic base, which responded by not turning out to vote. As CBS News notes, "Hispanics, African Americans, union members and young people were among the many core Democratic groups that turned out in large numbers in the 2008 elections (but) turnout among these groups dropped off substantially, even below their previous midterm levels."
3. In cause-and-effect style, the result of all this was, as the Washington Post reports, a freshman congressional class that is primarily made up of angry, white, lunatic-conservative assholes.
So yes, all of you who are wasting all of our time pretending this isn't the basic point-A-to-point-B story of the election - and there are a lot of you out there - please, if not for me, then for everyone else: Go fuck yourself.
Seriously, these two articles provide about 99% of the essential facts about what happened on November 2nd. So don't waste your time with filler provided by professionals who are paid big bucks to waste your time with filler, and check out "The Walking Dead" instead. I am enjoying it so far.