There is nothing more boring and cringeworthy than reading every bobblehead’s post-mortem of an election. Last night, I was at my local bar, watching sportsball on one TV, the Country Music Awards on another [and by the way, I’d sell my left nut if Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and Earl Scruggs would rise from the dead and beat the clowns of today’s country to death with a banjo], and a bunch of wheezing gasbags, including Newt Gingrich for fuck’s sake, on CNN. Thankfully, the sound was turned down or I would have probably lit the fucking place on fire. I kept imagining Newt and that awful Candi Crowley woman stripping down, and mounting each other like a couple of rutting warthogs on live TV, while the other two hosts did Jazzercise routines while singing “Hey Macarena”. Now THAT would be entertaining.
As I watched these pustulating sores squirt their infection all over the TV, while imagining them hissing the worst, most vile things to each other, I realized we were getting to the wailing and gnashing of teeth part of the whole ugly drama. And reading the newspapers -as much as I could stomach- gave me the same feeling. And let me tell you, it is ALL OVER THE MAP.
Here’s Will Bunch, saying it’s the Democrats’ Goldwater Moment:
The GOP slowly gained an era of dominance by ignoring what most of the pundits told it to do, which was to move toward the center-left and be more like the dominant Democrats of the Kennedy-LBJ era. Instead, the party, especially in the slow rise of Reagan, made its message more conservative, but also simpler. They created a conservative brand that stood for something, with a simple creed. They spent years building a network of think tanks and right-wing media (the modern Democrats have mimicked this, of course, but funding them from Wall Street and rich folks has arguably diluted their brand, not strengthened it.)
Here’s Frank Luntz, of all people, declaring that this was NOT a revolution:
But that anti-Democrat wave was not the same as a pro-Republican endorsement. In many races that went from blue to red, Republican success was hardly because of what the G.O.P. has achieved on Capitol Hill. In fact, if Americans could speak with one collective voice — all 310 million of them — this is what they said Tuesday night: “Washington doesn’t listen, Washington doesn’t lead and Washington doesn’t deliver.” Purple states tossed out their Democratic senators for being too close to Washington and too far from the people who put them there.
The current narrative, that this election was a rejection of President Obama, misses the mark. So does the idea that it was a mandate for an extreme conservative agenda.
Here’s the Washington Post, saying Warner went after the wrong voters:
But what is also clear from that margin — and from the final weeks of the campaign — is that Warner’s operation didn’t really adapt to the partisan reality of the new mood. A self-described “radical centrist” who prided himself on his appeal among Republicans and independents, Warner steadfastly continued to court those voters despite strong evidence that their tolerance for Democrats had dramatically waned.
Warner also may have missed out on a new advantage for politicians with D’s after their names in Virginia’s changing demographic landscape.
By positioning himself as a moderate, he may have missed a chance to gin up more enthusiasm within the state’s expanding Democratic base, earning fewer votes in such deep-blue communities as Arlington County and Alexandria than left-of-Warner Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) did a year ago.
All of it has left some to wonder whether Warner would have won bigger if he had eschewed the middle and embraced the left, and whether the winning path for moderates that Warner forged during his own bid for governor 13 years ago is becoming extinct.
“I think if you look at the returns around the country . . . it raises questions about just how successful the bipartisanship brand really is,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) said Tuesday after easily winning a fourth term in Northern Virginia’s 11th Congressional District by talking about women’s rights, immigration reform and climate change — and less about working with Republicans.
So basically, everyone knows everything but nobody knows anything at the same time. I shudder to think what Newt and Candi were discussing, and shudder even worse when I think about what wrong lessons the Democrats will take away from this.
My bet is they won’t take BooMan’s suggestion to wage class warfare, and will instead double down on being more like Republicans, since that’s clearly what the country wants. Not.