Yikes! I guess they didn’t get the last horcrux. Sorry, Betty.
3.
RaflW
Piling on: Hickenlooper is losing in CO. NM looks R for governor as well.
Appears that the American electorate wants it good and hard. I’m pissed.
Oh, and that smug HBO jackass Bill Maher may have actually been a negative in MN-2 with his little pony show.
4.
LookingForACanadian
I think we’re gonna have a few more states to add to that suck list before all is said and done.
5.
Schlemazel
Its OK if he steals the government blind so long as he doesn’t raise my taxes! Its a real positive if he screws over the coloreds too.
But really Crist was no gem, would have been better.
I am going to repeat my joke that got no reaction earlier – So Scott is a Crist killer now, does that mean he has to be circumcised?
6.
PsiFighter37
Maybe the polls weren’t really all that skewed after all. Doesn’t seem like there are any races coming out of left field except for VA-Sen…and that’s not in our favor.
Next 2 years are going to be depressing. Think we got nothing done the past 4 years? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We wouldn’t even be able to get post offices named after St. Ronnie.
7.
Timurid
The Republicans just keep failing upward…
8.
Schlemazel
@RaflW:
Maher did nothing to flip MN2. He puffed himself up & pointed out the obvious about John Kline but actually flipping any district, particularly that one, requires real work & he would never want to do that hard work.
9.
Paula
Florida: global warming’s silver lining.
10.
Dave C
So…my roommate was watching the Fox News “coverage” of the election results just for kicks, and I watched for a few minutes also. I seriously don’t think I inhabit the same reality as the people on that show. Jesus fucking Christ.
11.
Chickamin Slam
I came across the NPR station briefly while cruising the dial. Some pundit was talking excitedly about how America really responded to the Republican message. How that carried them to victory. Message I thought? What fucking message?
Were I a drinking person too John I’d have downed my sorrows in a beer or something with a lot of alcohol content.
It’s going to be an interesting next two years …
12.
mdblanche
Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight.
13.
Elizabelle
unbelievable
14.
Rob
Darn.
15.
askew
So Dems spent untold millions on GOTV efforts. They made voting easier in IA and CO and we still lost the Senate in blue states – IA, CO and VA gone. NC likely gone. This is worse than 2010 and now we have to suffer through a media blaming Obama for the losses and the slimy Clintons who will be out with knives sharpened to attack Obama starting tomorrow. Excellent. I am going to need a new hobby because I am done with politics.
16.
OldDave
Oh, piss off, Cole. Not everybody down here Voted for Voldemort.
17.
PsiFighter37
And Joni Ernst won.
What’s arguably worse about this year, relative to 2014, is that more genuinely certifiable nutbags got elected this year. Gardner, Ernst, Cotton – they are all awful, awful people.
18.
Corner Stone
Maybe Crist disavowed Obama too much? Maybe the voters punished him for it?
19.
Just Some Fuckhead
Either way, a Republican was going to win. Yeah, Scott seems like a freakshow and Crist appears to be a little more normal in comparison but Republican voters like their weirdos.
20.
Corner Stone
@askew: Waaaaaa…
Your stupidly simplistic view of politics didn’t hold up. GFY.
I am beside myself in rage at the moment. This is insane. Our state has gone nowhere under Rick “No Ethics” Scott. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people suffering because we don’t have the Medicaid expansion. Scott has been manipulating the rules and ignoring the Sunshine laws. The entire Republican machinery in our state is corrupt from county to state level. And yet they’re still able to find millions of voters to buy into their lying bullshit.
We’re still screwed because the state legislature has gerrymandered the state IN SPITE of the amendments requiring them not to, and the courts are acting too slow in making them play by the rules.
24.
tbone
Scott fucking walker wins big.
25.
Botsplainer
White people suck.
My mother is probably crowing. Sure, the GOPers will take my social security and give it to hedge fund guys, and my Medicare will consist of discount coupons in ValPacks for 10% off on colonoscopies with huge chunks of money to go to connected contractors, while my youngest daughter becomes uninsurable, but the niggers and spics will get what for and that’s all that matters.
My intention is to make the fucker ungovernable for the next conservative administration. Make them wish they just had the Weathermen to deal with as they hire food testers and morning car bomb sweepers.
26.
Valdivia
VA has been called for the rs?
27.
RaflW
@Schlemazel: I think he did real harm, even if not on a large scale. MN-2 actually shifted demographics some after redistricting, at least decreasing the +R tilt of the district.
It was always going to be a tough race. But Maher nationalized the race in a way that was useless to Dems, probably a net negative to candidate Obermueller, and I bet just bumped Klein’s fundraising base.
Total shitshow.
Maher can stay the fuck out on MN from now on. I’m perfectly glad I don’t pay for HBO.
28.
LookingForACanadian
and the bad guys are winning the hockey game, to boot.
29.
max
Warner just finally moved into the lead.
max
[‘Up by 3.5k with 99%.’]
30.
Mike in NC
Fuck this Neo-Confederate country.
31.
Davis X. Machina
I’m curious to see the number-crunchers tell us given the electorate of 2012, what are the results?
DAMMIT.
What the hell is wrong with people? Can’t they see the GOP lying to them on a regular basis? That the likes of Walker and Rick Scott are self-serving crooks?
I hope to God Walker gets jailed when that John Doe investigation uncovers his BS. I hope to God Rick Scott gets punished for violating Florida’s Sunshine laws with his illegal emails.
33.
goblue72
We live in a deeply racist country. Full stop. And I’m not just talking about racist whites voting for GOP because they hate Obama. I am talking about racist whites (which is the majority of white people), who perceive the Democratic Party as the party of racial minorities.
The majority of white people vote GOP – by very large margins. EVEN amongst Millenials, those who are white, favor the GOP over Democrat. Millenials are now only looking like Democratic voters because a greater percentage of Millenials are non-white compared to older voters.
And the rich, who run this country, are more than happy to ride that racial hatred all the way to control of government.
Yes, and the three aforementioned shitheads will be in the Senate for six years.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
35.
Valdivia
@max: thank you. I knew things were fucked up but not that fucked!
36.
Randy P
Tom Corbett lost in PA. So we got that going for us.
But Mitch McConnell won, dammit. Not that there was much chance of another outcome in friggin Kentucky, but that would have been so sweet…
But at least I can wake up every morning saying “Corbett is not my governor”, and I have to say that feels pretty nice. People I know in education have been looking like they’ve been through a war the last few years. I’ve seen people in literal tears over some of the cuts.
37.
Felonius Monk
Looks like the R’s will be majority in Senate. Nunn and Hagan both appear to be losing now.
38.
The Watcher
Ever get the strange feeling evil is rising again in the world, like the 30s? Putin, Republicans, ISIS, Ebola……
on and on.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. ”
The message has been, was, and will remain, “WE HATE THAT [insert racist epithet]!”
The Republicans have had no other message since January 2009. Americans responded to that message because about half the people who live here are bigoted assholes.
40.
FlipYrWhig
I cannot imagine human beings voting for Rick Scott, for anything, for any reason.
41.
MomSense
Trying not to freak out over the local results.
I feel like I don’t know my neighbors–at all.
This is terrible.
42.
Valdivia
wtf NC???
43.
seefleur
@Chickamin Slam: The Chinese have a curse/blessing: “May you live in interesting times” – I think we’ve been living in interesting times for far too long. I have kids who are young adults who are going to be paying the price for these “interesting times” and they deserve SO much better. I want pitchforks, tar and feathers. NOW!
44.
Lizzy L
I’m waiting to hear from Kansas. Sorry about Florida. You guys are seriously fked. And the news from Wisconsin: I just don’t get it.
The next two years are not going to be any fun at all, except of course for the ratfuckers.
Only 2? Well, aren’t we the optimist. Oh, right, Hillary’s going to beat Jeb, followed by ponies for everyone.
And eventually Obama’s going to get tired of vetoing Rethug insanity. And the filibuster id most likely dead for anything/everything the Rethugs want to pass.
What’s arguably worse about this year, relative to 2014, is that more genuinely certifiable nutbags got elected this year. Gardner, Ernst, Cotton – they are all awful, awful people.
They did a better job of keeping their mouths closed to avoid the bad gaffes. Now they’re free to shill their IMPEACH OBAMA agenda without punishment.
47.
Walker
I am not surprised by the Scott Walker. My experience with Wisconsin is that they are just as conservative (and often racist) as the South, but just paper over it with that midwestern nice crap.
@MomSense: oh, your neighbors are assholes, I guarantee it. Everyone’s are.
50.
Patricia Kayden
Big sigh. Time to get some sleep. Hope President Obama doesn’t let this get to him. He should sharpen his veto pencil and keep his head up high.
51.
Irony Abounds
This country is full of scared, ill-informed, hateful white males, and if anyone thinks what happened today will be remedied in 2016 is whistling past the graveyard. Republicans have found the formula: make sure nothing good happens, and then when it doesn’t blame the black guy in the White House. Republicans made gains in state legislatures, which will only add to further impediments in non-whites and liberals voting. You can say demographic change until you are blue in the face, but if the Republicans can keep the bad demographics from voting, those changes don’t matter. Hate to be pessimistic, but the trajectory of this country becoming the United Oligarchy of Rich Shitheads is moving upward at warp speed.
Arkansas elects a Republican Senator while voting in a minimum wage increase by a wide margin. Nebraska does the same. Colorado seems to be poised to reject an anti-choice “personhood” amendment but elected a Republican Senator. So it seems that liberal policies are popular, but Democratic candidates are struggling. Interesting.
I have a few reasons to be hopeful, even with the loss of the Senate. For one thing, they’re unlikely to hold the Senate for any longer than the next two years. In 2016, they’ll have an even worse map than the Democrats had this year. They’ll have 24 seats up, and the Democrats will only have 9. And some of those seats are in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Iowa. The other thing I look forward to is the Republicans scrapping the filibuster.
54.
goblue72
@Botsplainer: I suggested as much not too long ago during the Ferguson protests (I ain’t calling them riots cuz they weren’t). Was castigated for voicing that kind of thing.
There’s a reason why during the late 19th and early 20th century during the Robber Baron era, there was so much violence in connection with unionization and radical activists. The oligarchs can only push your back to the wall so far before the only thing you have left is your fists.
55.
PsiFighter37
We won absolutely none of the close races. Seriously – we’re going to get swept in everything. There’s no way Landrieu has a prayer of winning in December if she can’t claim to be the Energy chair anymore.
Absolute annihilation.
56.
Violet
Just saw NBC call Wisconsin for Scott Walker. I hate America.
57.
Valdivia
@J.D. Rhoades: because the media told them these guys were total moderates. I don’t get it either.
58.
sempronia
Thank goodness for my California and Jerry Brown, a bright spot in this whole painful fail-parade. The bad-faith mis-information campaign constantly waged by the R’s is so infuriating.
59.
Suzanne
Ughhhhhh. I just want to hurl. In addition to all the national results, the local results just are absolutely horrible. Just ridiculous.
I might stop volunteering for campaigns. I am so sick of spending time and effort just to get my ass kicked every fucking time.
60.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Felonius Monk: Meh, it was a wave year just like 2006. Obama can veto the crazy for two years and 2016 will swing things back the other way. It wasn’t like Congress has been functioning anyway.
Obama will veto everything. He won’t cave. There are no more midterms to worry about and he isn’t up for re-election. And he has no fucks to give about what the press says. He’s the anti-Bill in many ways. Maybe all those Senators who begged and begged Obama to delay the immigration executive order should have shut up because there is no way we would have done worse with that in play and we would have likely held CO-Sen with the order in place.
Hillary is going to lose in 2016 mark my words. The country has shifted too much for her to appeal to AR, KY, or WV and she won’t appeal to voters out west.
62.
Betty Cracker
Pretty fucking disappointing. I really thought we had a better than 50% shot at ousting that reptilian fuckstick. It’s one thing for a slimebag like Scott to slither in during a fluke election, but quite another to reelect the goddamn, motherfucking pile o’ shit. In short, right now I feel about Florida how I felt about America when George W. Bush beat Kerry. Fuckity fuck fuck.
63.
Brian R.
An incumbent’s president’s party lost Senate seats in his sixth year.
Next up: The sun rises in the east.
Sack the fuck up, people.
64.
skerry
@Felonius Monk: It was just called for Perdue over Nunn in GA
Arkansas elects a Republican Senator while voting in a minimum wage increase by a wide margin. Nebraska does the same.
On ballot measures, people vote policy.
On candidates, they vote race, tribe, region, religion — or lack of it. Then they vote narrative. Then, finally, they vote policy.
66.
jonas
Haters gonna vote. Ironic thing is, all the pissed-off white guys pulling the R lever today think they’re doing a favor for the “little guy” who’s been trampled under the jackboot of Obama’s Kenyanebolafascism. Unless your last name is “Koch”, you’re fucked. Welcome to Dick Cheney’s America, you goddamn idiots.
67.
KG
anyone know why they haven’t called Georgia yet? Purdue leading 58-41 with 86% reporting, can’t imagine that Atlanta has enough left to swing that.
68.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Pretty amazing Walker got the votes considering what a freak show he is physically. I sense presidential timber there soon and look forward to seeing him debate with Perry and Samaturium.
69.
Davis X. Machina
@askew: What states that Obama carried in 2012 does Hillary lose?
I seriously expect we’ll have a full-blown constitutional crisis at some point in the next two years.
71.
Bobby Thomson
I don’t understand how some states (PA, KS) are kicking Republican assholes to the curb, while others (WI, FL) are re-electing blatant criminals (and IA is set to elect Michele Bachmann’s less bright doppelganger). I don’t believe the average voter in the first set of states is any less stupid, and FSM knows Kansas is no less white. Have Scott and Walker been less blatant about gutting public education?
When the fuck are the people in the press going to learn that there aren’t any moderate Republicans any more? It’s true that people like Lamar Alexander and Mark Kirk and Rob Portman don’t talk like Ted Cruz, but as long as they vote the same way, why should anybody give a fuck?
73.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: yeah. I mean, look, Bush, I can see that that guy had some kind of charisma or at least geniality, and at least for the stupid. But Scott Walker and Rick Fucking Scott? They’re just repellent. Physically, mentally, all of it. Just unpleasant and only vaguely human. If people are actively choosing to vote for them, holy shit, that’s some bad juju, America.
74.
Suffern ACE
This will continue to happen every four years until I’m old so I’m used to it. Our voters have a high threshold for being likely. Pretty much everyone at the voting at the polls tonight after work was older than I was and I’m in my mid 40s. We vote Dem here mainly unless the corruption gets too much. But that’s who votes. I don’t think that changes.
75.
Irony Abounds
@KG: They have called it for Perdue. They needed to make sure he would get over 50% to avoid a runoff, which apparently they decided he will get. I don’t want to hear anyone whine about outsourcing since a self-proclaimed outsourcer easily wins.
exactly. they think hiding their positions and fooling the voters is savvy. the cult of the savvy is killing our republic.
I too expect some terrible constitutional crisis in the next 2 years. I hope Obama wakes up tomorrow and declares amnesty right away.
78.
KG
@Irony Abounds: ah, gotcha, didn’t realize Georgia had a run off system.
79.
Elizabelle
I am so disappointed in this country.
This is Citizens United money; negativity about everything. Colorado’s results are appalling.
I think I’m going to ignore politics for a while and read some good books.
Thank God we have President Obama in office, and I wish him strength and commitment in dealing with the rest of his term.
80.
Violet
So Chuck Todd said that Republicans are now going to hold the House until 2022. WTF?
81.
Irony Abounds
And now my great state of Arizona has elected someone who will Brownback Arizona. What stupid people live in this country. I live amidst an unsettling number of complete fucksticks.
82.
Suffern ACE
@Bobby Thomson: walker is all about punishing teachers and their lazy union. A lot of people didn’t have Edward James Olmos or Michelle Pfeiffer as teachers.
Yep. I don’t think race is the only factor in American politics, by any means, but you cannot underestimate its significance. Ever.
84.
Hal
Meh. If anything, watching the Turtle try and placate Cruz, who is no doubt going to be claiming responsibility for these victories should be interesting.
Like I said before, Republicans have no agenda and no ideas. Obama has the veto. The nutters elected tonight will join Cruz in their crazy and go full wingnut. I’ll start worrying in 2016 if it looks like R’s in the Presidency and Congress. Until them, none of this was that surprising.
And hey, Scott Brown! (not walker) lost. Oops. I meant Scott Brown. Sorry. They’re both so dreamy I got them confused.
An incumbent’s president’s party lost Senate seats in his sixth year.
With almost all the States with Senate seats in play being red states that Obama flipped in 2008 with his coattails; holding the Senate was a hopeless cause from the get go. I figured maybe 1 in 5 a month or so ago; I was hopelessly optimistic, apparently.
Well, at this point, I think an impeachment is fairly likely. I thought a year ago that they might be dumb enough to do it sometime this year, but I guess they were just barely smart enough to hold back. Now, though, I don’t see anything that’s likely to keep them from doing it.
What states that Obama carried in 2012 does Hillary lose?
If she sticks with the “hard working white Americans” crap, Florida, Virginia, possibly Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, possibly even Wisconsin and Ohio. I could easily see her trying to make a play for Appalachia and the Mississippi delta, failing miserably, and managing to alienate all the new Obama voters in the process.
88.
Rob
Hogan (R) 53% over Brown (D) 44% with 67% counted for the governor’s race in Maryland.
@Bobby Thomson: if anything, this election suggests that there’s no pander you can’t pander if you want cranky white people to vote for you.
94.
Davis X. Machina
@Violet: Given the power of incumbency, yes. Over 90% of incumbent House members win re-election each time. A 70-seat swing like 2010 is an anomaly…
95.
danielx
Countdown for introduction of motion to impeach Obama…..59, 58, 57, 56…..
Glad I don’t watch television to speak of, and I may have to swear off any sort of media contact. Republican triumphalism over the next few weeks is going to be sufficient to induce projectile vomiting.
Fuck them, and most of my fellow citizens as well. And most especially fuck those five swine on the Supreme Court, and particularly Anthony Kennedy of “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” fame. Clearly a man who wouldn’t recognize corruption if it showed up as a mass of pus on his dinner plate.
96.
Karmus
I hate me, too.
97.
KG
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: a few years ago, I’d say that there was no way Walker could win a nomination from a major party because he doesn’t have a college degree. but given everything we’ve seen in the last 20 years or so (impeachment, split popular/electoral vote election, winner as speaker of the house, black man as president, a mormon winning a major party nomination, a successful gubernatorial recall in California), I’m going to hold off on that now.
98.
Ruckus
Well maybe I need to dust off my move to Costa Rica file and see what’s happening.
Dems run from the President, Rethugs lie out their asses, besides being bat fucking shit crazy and an awful lot of the US seems to like getting fucked. Hard. Problem is if the rethugs continue to win then SS probably will be fucked and I’ll have no money to survive. Wonder what starving to death under a bridge feels like? I’m pretty sure I’ll be more pissed off than I’ve ever been before if I have to find out.
@James E. Powell:
about half the people who live here are bigoted assholes.
You speak truth.
I asked in a thread last night if the US is a laughing stock to the rest of the world. There is a better chance of that being true today than yesterday. And it was true then.
99.
srv
So what are my chances of emigrating to Canada?
Surely we have an emigration lawyer here.
100.
p.a.
@askew: Hillary will lose the nomination in 2016 because she is a poor campaigner, a DLC waffler, and a nonentity who carpetbagged her way to a Senate seat. Being female may help enhance turnout.
@Irony Abounds: THANK YOU. Anyone pulling the “oh but 2016 looks better for us” stuff is just fooling themselves. A loss is a loss. A loss means the other side gets 2 years to put their plan into motion, which includes implementing what strategy they have to win the NEXT election.
We can’t just sit around with our thumbs up our rear ends hoping for demographics and a better election map to save us. The GOP have effectively gerrymanders Dems from winning the House until 2020 – at the earliest – and then ONLY if we are able to take back a majority of state houses. A REALLY BIG IF. The GOP took back the House in 2012 and implemented their screw Obama strategy to a fault – and it worked. All the white people now blame the black guy in the White House for everything.
The best we can hope for is 2 out of 3. They actually can try for 3 out of 3. Starting today, they have 2 out of 3. We have 1 out of 3. And that’s not counting SCOTUS, which they control. So technically, its 3 out of 4 vs. 1 out of 4.
I don’t like those odds. And today, voters (well, white voters, who are still the majority of voters), just shouted from the rooftops how racist they are.
I’m not sure how we change the cultural dynamic around our Party and how its perceived by whites. But we need to do some hard thinking about how to do that – and what kind of policies to push that gets us there. Free healthcare to brown people clearly does not resonate.
It’s only neoconfederate in years when there’s not a presidential election. But that’s the problem. A country can’t have decent politics when it has a bipolar election cycle, lurching from “maybe we can actually get shit done” to “oh, no we can’t”.
104.
GregB
It will be funny watching the assholes in the Republican Party and the establishment media once Senator Cruz starts running the fucking show and getting his new lunatic caucus of Cotton, Ernst and Gardner on board with the lunacy.
Ron Paul lamented that this Republican sweep will make neo-con wars in Syria and Iran more likely.
Impeachment hearings galore and wars and fucking tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts as far as the eye can see.
Likely, he is talking about the structural issues of the 2010 redistricting. If the districts are drawn to protect incumbents, the D’s have a doubly steep hill to climb.
Or, he could just be wishful thinking outloud.
106.
Corner Stone
Nunn is conceding.
107.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Welcome to the Amerikan dream! Bend over and spread ’em, comrades. We’re gonna take it good and hard the next 10 years, without even the courtesy of a reach-around.
108.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Bobby Thomson: You’re talking about voters, the majority of whom don’t know the difference between the PPACA and Obamacare. They don’t follow politics and even the ones who can keep up with this or that political scandal haven’t developed political values they want to see reflected in legislation. They just know things suck or don’t suck and vote to punish the suck or keep the don’t suck. If you want to blame someone, blame the utes and minorities who still haven’t figured out elections happen every two years.
109.
FlipYrWhig
What happened to Nunn and Orman there late?
110.
Dave C
Damn, I know the results tonight suck ass, but some of y’all are acting like you’ve never lost an election before. This shit happens. 2016 will be a very different story – for lots of reasons.
111.
Archon
Obama, and through him black America got put on the ballot for the 4th and final time and were 2-2.
For the life of me I have no idea what Republicans will do when Obama is gone.
If she sticks with the “hard working white Americans” crap, Florida, Virginia, possibly Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, possibly even Wisconsin and Ohio. I could easily see her trying to make a play for Appalachia and the Mississippi delta, failing miserably, and managing to alienate all the new Obama voters in the process.
Yeah. This election cycle really proves out your theory there, boss.
I really don’t see the appeal of Clinton at all. How in the hell so many people could be so devoted to her is beyond me. I mean, aside from her name, what does she really have going for her? She’s going to be nearly 70 by 2016; she really isn’t all that likable; she surrounds herself with people like Mark Penn and Lanny Davis (though, to be fair, it was her husband who chose Davis as his chief of staff). What, really, does she have going for her? How is she so overwhelmingly the favorite for 2016?
116.
FlipYrWhig
By the way, I don’t think I care anymore about caring for the elderly. Fuck them. They’re the enemy. Choke ’em off and make ’em wail.
117.
mdblanche
@J.D. Rhoades: It’s race, not class. My family’s full of the type of people who produce election results like that. They’re why I don’t have any faith that Elizabeth Warren, great as she is, has any hope of being the Democratic Party’s savior. Her message is not going to reach the people it needs to. That says nothing about the message and everything about the audience. There could have been an opening to reach them in 2008-2009. But it closed before it even opened, because, you know, black president.
2016 will be a very different story – for lots of reasons.
Yep, but 2017 will be like 2009 and 2018 will be like 2014 unless the Dems actually come up with a strategy that a) punishes the refusal to govern; b) gets people to vote in midterms.
Perhaps they can give Howard Dean a call.
120.
Elizabelle
Michele Nunn is a class act. I would love to see her run again. She ran well. I am proud of her.
I hope Georgia gets what it wants from Perdue. Good and hard.
if anything, this election suggests that there’s no pander you Republicans can’t pander if you they want cranky white people to vote for you them.
Fixed. Cranky white people won’t vote for Hitlery, especially if they can vote for an out and proud racist who doesn’t just dogwhistle. To win, she has to keep the Democratic coalition together.
Yeah, I find the difficulty that dems have in turning out their base during midterm elections to be somewhat baffling. I’m a grad student (though on the older side of that demographic), and for many of my peers, this election simply wasn’t even on the radar. I don’t get it.
132.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: I think you need a Democrat touring Appalachia and building bridges between poor whites and poor persons of color.
@Davis X. Machina: CO, NV, VA and she’ll do worse in the midwest. Her nasty campaign style and inability to inspire the base will hurt her in IA and WI.
137.
Corner Stone
Wow. Maybe Pat Quinn didn’t hug Obama hard enough?
138.
Archon
And what’s up with commentators talking about deals Obama can cut with a Republican house and senate. If the “deal” involves anything other than Obama resigning and apologizing to the nation for getting elected twice Republicans won’t deal with him, it’s tantamount to collaboration with an occupying government to them.
139.
Elizabelle
I am beyond sick of Chris Matthews.
Have laid in a bunch of movies, and have all those wonderful silents from last night on TCM on DVR. Pandora’s Box, etc.
If you want to blame someone, blame the utes and minorities who still haven’t figured out elections happen every two years.
Or I could not be a racist fuckstick. You also missed my point entirely.
I’m a great believer in the truism that the average American voter is pretty damn stupid – I just don’t understand how Corbett and Brownback are headed for defeat (Corbett decisively) based on pissing off the teachers, when that didn’t seem to hurt Republicans in other states, none of which I would consider more conservative than Kansas.
Whomever the Democrats nominate will win; the Republicans will nominate some brachiating reactionary (current guess, Cruz) and will get spanked good and hard for it.
@Just Some Fuckhead: meh, my grandparents are already dead, and my wife’s grandparents are already dead, so I have little personal connection to that horrible generation between WWII and the ’60s.
I have no idea what the Dems will do when Obama is gone. His coattails got us huge majorities in 2008 and helped us hold the Senate in 2012. When he isn’t on the ballot we get our asses kicked. I don’t think the Obama coalition is going to turn out for Hillary in 2016 with her campaign style, rhetoric and policies from 1992.
150.
Davis X. Machina
@Dave C: Approximately 40 million voters labor under the misapprehension we have an elective monarchy….
151.
RaflW
Pat Roberts will continue to represent Kansas. Boy howdy.
152.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Elizabelle: You know what they call losing after a hard fight? They call it “losing”.
The only deal Republicans are interested in with Obama is if he a) resigns and b) commits suicide, with or without assistance, and in whichever order.
155.
KG
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): because nobody really sees Biden as a viable successor to Obama and the Clintons still know how to play the game. like 2008, she’s the default choice and there just aren’t any alternatives that make sense right now.
156.
Ruckus
@goblue72:
Not all whites are rethugs. Not even all the old white males. Too big a percentage, absofuckinglutely. But not all whites. I can see how you’d make that mistake though.
I think you need a Democrat touring Appalachia and building bridges between poor whites and poor persons of color.
I agree. And I don’t see anyone out there with the cred to do that.
158.
Suzanne
@askew: I am so sick of the notion of “inspiring the base”. Like, HOW MUCH FUCKING INSPIRATION DO THEY NEED?! Who are these fuckers who will only vote if they’re “inspired”?
I hate everybody. I need a drink and a mercy fuck.
159.
Steppan
Wasn’t really expecting a hold, but I wasn’t expecting the total rout this has seemed to turn into. Especially stuff like this:
“Wow. ABC’s political director says that turnout among women in Colorado was the lowest it’s been in over twenty years” (Vox live feed).
@Rob: Brown ran a terrible horrible repulsive campaign. I know several lifelong Democrats in Maryland who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him.
162.
mai naem
i give up. I was at a convenience store a couple of months ago and two cashier guys were discussing the minimum wage. The one idiot was telling the other one that he didn’t believe in a 10$ min wage because people should earn up to it. Now this idiot probably makes $8.50/9.50 and he doesn’t want a raise? These are how stupid Americans are. And then there’s the idiots who go to the megachurches and buy the Left Behind crap and the ooga booga gheys and the world’s coming to an end but make sure you give us your tithe. I give up.
163.
Irony Abounds
Perhaps instead of relying solely on the war on women Democrats could try to focus more on populist economic issues like the minimum wage. When that passes in Nebraska and Arkansas, that tells you there may be a bridge to the middle class whites. And I do not mean to minimize how harmful Republicans are to women’s rights, it’s just that however big the gender gap may be with women, it’s just a large with men, so Dems at best tread water.
I have kids who are young adults who are going to be paying the price for these “interesting times” and they deserve SO much better.
This. My 2 younger ones are in college; tonight makes me ill, thinking of what may happen to the Supreme Court especially. Christ knows they are bad enough now.
166.
FlipYrWhig
@Irony Abounds: Of course people seem to be quite happy to vote for the minimum wage and NOT for the Democratic candidates. So maybe not the magic bullet.
@srv: Don’t know. I’m in MD now, but I’ve heard it is nice in Vancouver. I’m so depressed. If the MD gov goes Republican, I don’t know what I’ll do.
170.
GregB
This is becoming an unmitigated rout.
171.
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle: I don’t think I have.
It’s kind of ridiculous, at this point.
Politics is situational but a lot of people don’t seem to be able to get past their feelings and get this.
We just get our dick stomped into the dirt. Don’t start gloating about how someone’s endorsement didn’t finish an election.
I read someplace recently that the Dem’s get to 250 easily; win 1 key swing state or a couple smaller ones and it’s over.
173.
KG
@Dave C: i knew the election was coming because i know these sorts of things, but this might be the first election in my life where i would kind of forget about it if it wasn’t for Stewart/Colbert and the couple of blogs I read. there was no big issue that could serve to galvanize the electorate, no referendum on the president as there was in 2006. in a lot of ways, it was easy to forget about it.
174.
FlipYrWhig
@Steppan: As a percentage? Because if other groups spike, that can mess with the percentages for the ones that don’t.
175.
p.a.
Someone on some thread said something that bears repeating: sack up! We sure as hell survived 2004. It’ll be ugly for a while, and America will get what it deserves, good and hard, and people will be hurt…er… I thought I was going to get to something positive. Oh yeah- these people are MORONS WHO CANNOT GOVERN. If the American people need a few more states to be Brownbacked, we better make sure OUR Democratic Party points out the results every day for the next two years.
176.
Suzanne
@mai naem: I seriously want to split the country into red and blue, and then let the red fuckers degenerate into cannibalism and anarchy. Tired of sharing a country.
You got that right. I am more furious with the Democrats who did not stand up for what they believed and got their asses kicked anyway! That ALWAYS happens — be proud — STAND FOR SOMETHING!
I woke up with a bad feeling today. They will definitely impeach Obama. Period.
He is the symbol of government. The only reason whites dominated was because the Democrats stayed home — the very people who needed government most, stayed home.
sigh
178.
skerry
@Beatrice: Brown’s campaign sucked. I didn’t vote for him in the primary. But Hogan will be worse.
179.
Irony Abounds
Perdue is going to fight for the Fair Tax. Good for him. Now go shove a h*t poker up your a$$ you flaming piece of excrement.
“turnout among women lowest in Senate exit polls going back to 1992”.
181.
Omnes Omnibus
No concession yet from Burke.
182.
beltane
@askew: Her stale platitudes in favor of a failed economic model will, I’m sure, be a winning message.
This place is a redneck cesspool. Some of us work to float above it all but our efforts always turn out to be futile.
183.
Violet
The Democrats need to do things and then scream loudly over and over and over again about how they gave people things. Bridges. Healthcare. Roads. Social Security. Whatever. “We gave you this nice thing.” over and over again.
People are dumb. They don’t know that the Kynect health insurance is because of Democrats. They don’t know that the reason their 24 year old kids can stay on their insurance is because of Obamacare. They’re stupid. They have to be told a million times. And then threatened. “If you don’t vote for Democrats, the Republicans will take away the nice thing.”
Man — its different now. They WILL impeach this President — try to drag him through the final depredation necessary to completely erase his Presidency. Watch. This is NOT just a loss of the senate….
I find the difficulty that dems have in turning out their base during midterm elections to be somewhat baffling.
I assume that they vote in presidential years expecting shit to get done, and then when shit does not get done, or less shit gets done than they were promised, they don’t vote. It doesn’t help that you have candidates who steadfastly refuse to say “look at these fuckers who’ve done nothing but stop shit from getting done for the past two years.”
Like I said, you have two election cycles now: one for the idealists, one for the reactionaries, and idealism has a one-year half-life.
187.
mdblanche
@FlipYrWhig: I’ve been feeling that way for a while now. I’ve hated myself for it, but I’ve been hating myself less and less.
188.
FlipYrWhig
@Elie: What’s worse: consider that they ran on exactly what they believed in.
189.
KG
@The Dangerman: could be anywhere from about 200 to 250 depending on what states you consider potentially in play. the low end if you put Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Illinois in play; the high end if they are not in play.
190.
sharl
@Rob: Yeah, the MD Governor’s race is surprisingly something of a barn-burner at this point. I don’t know if the media is getting their news earlier than the unofficial updates posted to the state’s BoE site for that race, but just perusing the counties/precincts reported information at that state site, it looks like a lot of precincts that normally go strongly Dem – especially the heavily populated areas around Baltimore and DC – still haven’t reported. Nearly all of the Republican-leaning rural counties have reported. [And I don’t know how Anne Arundel county – the location of the state capitol and county seat, Annapolis – normally goes, or why so many precincts there haven’t reported yet.]
And yes, Atrios is very much right about the “professional left”, the campaign-infrastructure left.
The people who worked on the tech and grassroots for Obama in 2012? They’re doing other shit now. Often it’s good shit — civic shit, access to government shit — but it’s not campaign shit, and midterms are in the hands of the complacent, small-c conservative fuckwads who tell candidates that they’re not allowed to be Democrats on the campaign trail, they’re not allowed to point out that Joni Ernst is a nutcase of Bachmann-like proportions, and so on. And get paid for doing it.
196.
Suzanne
@pseudonymous in nc: I don’t know if it matters if our candidates say X versus Y, or if they’re aggressive or not. I think there are just more fucking stupid idiots than there are smart people.
The problem is that stupid people are allowed to vote.
197.
FlipYrWhig
@Steppan: Right, but it’s never clear what “turnout” means. Sometimes it means the percentage of the populace and sometimes it means the percentage of the electorate.
@p.a.: My biggest concern is the we had the perfect laboratory experiment from 2001-2009. Republicans in control of the Presidency, Congress for 6 years and the Supreme Court. What happens? The country fights two disastrous wars, and the economy implodes. Obama wins and you’d think the country maybe learned it lesson, but no, it puts the House in Republican hands in 2010 and gives them both houses in 2014. Republicans proved their policies don’t work, and the American public shows it has short term memory problems. This proves the American public, in general, is stupid, and why should we expect things to improve when lessons learned in blood and treasure are so easily forgotten.
203.
Turgidson
A bunch of certifiable lunatics in the Senate, and a bunch of historically terrible GOP governors all cruise to wins.
This fucking country. This. fucking. country.
Once again, I’m glad to be in the People’s Republic of California.
Next up: The sun rises in the east. Sack the fuck up, people.
Kindly blow it out your ass. This was somewhat worse than the usual midterms. The Senate flipped in a somewhat bigger way than expected, the evil motherfuckers (Scott, Walker, and probably LePage) got re-elected, and the Treasonous Old Party owns both Houses of Congress. Rancid Preibus has been coming in his pants for the last hour or two, because he thought he’d get the Senate, but not this well/badly.About the only things that went OK were Shaheen beating “Where Do I Move to Now?” Brown, and a few other isolated races.
So, please forgive me if I entertain the concept that you might not have a clue.
He stood up and has taken so much — so much. I have a hard time thinking of yet another ordeal….For what? For what? The man tried to bring health care — HEALTH CARE to people who did not have it. He has tried to stand for doing the right thing — from Ebola to gay rights.
This jes aint right
214.
Elizabelle
OK. If the Republicans want to see everything in terms of taxes and spending, let’s see what living in a low-tax and low-wage and low-opportunity utopia does for your average American.
And Iowa has just elected what my Colorado friend called “Palin from the Plains.”
America, behold your pig-castrating Senator out of the heartland.
If the Republicans do, it would be a serious overreach. They don’t have the votes to remove the president, so it would just be a silly exercise.
Then again, that may not stop them.
216.
MomSense
Fuck. Ernst, also too.
She is a pig castrator who believes in bizarre conspiracy theories and is keeping a gun to defend herself from the government.
217.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
So it turned out even worse than the most pessimistic of us imagined?
Fuck all. It’s over. It really is basically just fucking over, isn’t it? GOP fucking owns the entire fucking country top to bottom for real now, and there doesn’t seem to be any fucking way to stop them. We’re a full on fucking full right-wing country forever at this fucking point, because apparently anything we can do just makes the entire goddamn country hate us more and turn them even more right wing.
What’s the fucking point anymore.
218.
Omnes Omnibus
@Archon: Which Democrats will vote to remove him from office? You’ll need to name around 15 for Obama to be in danger.
Sending you a hug, Elie, and hugs to President and Mrs. Obama too. Tomorrow morning, over coffee, they might be thinking “we have two more years of this?”
But he is up for it.
220.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: Or if liberals aren’t “the base,” which is also a distinct possibility.
221.
TCG
@Irony Abounds: When are you guys going to figure it out? It’ not about an economic message. Economics has nothing to do with it. This is about whiteness. Most people are voting their whiteness and will for the forseeable future because it is under threat from non-whiteness. You think these people are voting against their best interests and don’t know it, but as far as they are concerned their whiteness is what’s best for them. These folks just gave the middle finger to the ni**** in the WH, the ni****s and the ni**** lovers that voted him into the WH. The is no bridge or common connection to be made and nobody who can make it. Never has been and never will be. The GOP is the white people’s party and the Democrats are the everybody else’s party. Democrats fucked up by running from the guy that get’s everyone else to the polls. If the Dems want to win in 2016, 2018, 2020, etc keeping the Obama coalition together and voting is the way to do. They won’t be taking white votes from the GOP in the next election cycle. It will be a waste of time.
222.
mai naem
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I know Obama’s going to be blamed but, shit, the Clintons spent a lot of time in Ky and Ark and didn’t get any results.
Today feels worse than 2010. 2010 I just thought people were snookered on O-care – death panels etc. This time, ugh, people know people who are doing just fine on O-care. WTF?
And as far as Ky – I hope they get fucked hard without any K-Y.Ungrateful pigs.
223.
Sloegin
Depressing but not suprising. We’ve all been hostage to demographics for most of our lives. Boomers have been entering retirement for some time now, and the biggest population cohort turning into a bunch of reactionary conservative loons means that we’re all stuck with Amerika with a ‘K’ for a very long time.
224.
skerry
So voters want a higher minimum wage, legal pot, abortion access and GOP representation. Ok then.
Once Walker becomes President (it will happen) by the end of his first term, we’ll be a third world country (if we’re not already), by the end of his second term we’ll be living in a Philip K Dick/Marget Atwood/Hunger Games hellhole
this. for me its not the senate which was expected if painful
its the governors
that blows me away
234.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: He fucking loves that crazy ass hog castrating cougar.
235.
MissWimsey
Dems lose Illinois :(
236.
Andrea
Rent in Vancouver can’t be higher than where I live now (San Francisco).
Catching up on DVR’d episodes of Sherlock and avoiding TV news.
237.
Ruckus
@The Dangerman:
No.
They really are that stupid. It should be obvious that stupid people like to vote for people like themselves. The stupid people expect the people they elect to be stupid motherfuckers because they are stupid motherfuckers.
238.
mai naem
@MomSense: She’s not keeping a gun to protect herself from just any government – it’s Obama’s SoshulistMarxistOogaBoogaGheyLovingIRSabusing Government. AKA the Niclang! government.
239.
TCG
@Archon: What evidence do you have that Democrats will fight to defend President Obama? Please, if the GOP impeaches him we can kiss him good bye because he will not get the support that Bubba got. Nor will he get the boost in approval ratings. Gee, I wonder why?
240.
FlipYrWhig
@Adam: Who was the last president with as little personal charisma or appeal as Scott Walker? George H.W. Bush, I guess? And before that, Nixon. It would be a hell of a thing.
241.
Suffern ACE
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: pretty much. The vaunted demographic shift that’s supposed to allow the Dems to take control isn’t going to matter.
242.
Rob
@Beatrice — I wasn’t paying attention to the campaign, so I didn’t know.
@sharl — I’m hoping those precincts will turn the tide.
You’re dreaming. He may not cave in the first six months, but he will eventually.
Why?
244.
Helen
@Elie: You are correct. The only positive part of that is the Teabaggers are now going to learn that “impeach” does not mean “throw out of office.” It is going to be a shock to them and they will lose their shit. Again. And take it out on the Republicans.
At this point, I’m praying for the to impeach the president. If there’s anything that will wake lame-O, sorry-ass American midterm non-voters up and freak them out, it’ll be impeaching the president. It makes me sad that so many Americans seemingly can only do the right thing when the Republicans burn the country down, but, well, if there’s any kind of a good side to the Republicans burning the country down, it’s that it might–might–wake Americans the fuck up.
247.
Mike E
@skerry: Heh, beat me to it. Cognitive dissonance–it’s baked in!
248.
FlipYrWhig
@Helen: they don’t take things out on the Republicans. They hang together and hope everyone is concealing their true batshittery.
249.
Irony Abounds
@TCG: Perhaps you didn’t see my post way above, but I made the point that the Dems lost because this country is full of scared, angry white males. But what you miss is the fact that because of vote suppression the Obama coalition will find it harder and more difficult to vote while the whites become further alienated. You have to find someway to convince the middle and lower class whites that they are endless getting it in the ass by the plutocrats. I’m not saying it will be easy in any way shape or form, which is why I am decidedly pessimistic about the future of this country.
250.
Juju
@eemom: Republicans face a harder battle in two years than the Democrats faced this time. Dems only defending two iffy seats. Republicans defending, I think, 34. Ron Johnson, Mark Kirk, Rubio, and so on. Tonight is no fun, but its not the end of the world. I just hope Kay Hagan wins.
If the Democrats had listend to me to begin with, they would have won this election. The most electable Democrat in the party right now is Evan Bayh. As a Veep candidate, his moderation would have balanced the ticket, and he would have put you over the top in the rust belt. You probably would have won Ohio. You might have made in roads in Indiana. You might have carried Iowa.
Evan Bayh, Harold Ford, and Barack Obama are the future of the Democratic party.
252.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Steppan: well, yeah, if Democratic voters don’t bother showing up to vote, there’s a good chance Democrats will lose.
253.
JoyfulA
@Ruckus: My 93-year-old white father has been voting D for a long time.
254.
Beatrice
You can kinda tell which people here didn’t live through the 80s.
The problem is that stupid people are allowed to vote.
No, let’s not do that. That’s heading into GOP “well, wimmins shouldn’t vote” territory.
Stupid people vote all the time. They’re always going to vote. The question is how you cancel out their votes and then some. The answer is that you give them something to vote for. The current political climate in the US — pretty much since Bob Dole shat all over Bill Clinton in ’93 — is that when Democrats win elections, Republicans pull out the stops to prevent them from governing, and they get rewarded for it two years later because the electorate either didn’t get what was promised or goes into “vote out everyone” mode or
You win midterms by fighting that opposition in the year before. That requires Democrats in Congress with fucking spines, not ones who want to hide under their desks and then say “vote for me”.
I’m with you. This may be a shitty night, but the pendulum is gonna swing back again.
Probably, at least to some extent. But not all pendulum swings are created equal. Some are truly part of a realignment and others are a brief interregnum in a longer-term trend.
Given our disappointment in tonight’s results, we are going to need some time to get perspective. It’s easy to overstate the impact of any given election. But we can’t rest on “2016 will be different” either.
263.
KG
@TCG: you realize that they need 67 votes in the senate to remove Obama, right? you think there are 15-17 Democrats that will vote to convict? Hell, you think that all 51-52 Republicans will hold the line? They didn’t with Clinton and they won’t with Obama.
that said, don’t count me among those hoping for impeachment.
You haven’t been paying attention for the last five years, have you? The Rethugs have learned that they can do any shitty thing and not pay a political price for it.
Or maybe you can show me I’m wrong, by telling me EXACTLY WHAT POLITICAL PRICE those treasonous, seditious motherfuckers have paid since 2009. And, no, Obama getting re-elected is NOT a price they paid.
“The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”
… but only if we push it.
Thank you. I have been thinking that tonight. Thank you for saying it.
Maybe the GOP just won enough rope to hang itself. It is possible.
269.
grandpa john
@Archon: you know people here really ought to understand the working of things like impeachment before they put on the sack cloth and ashes and head for the wailing wall.
270.
Wutang
A demon like Gillespie reemerging after we had buried them in 2008, would be the sign of an ancient evil returning, and a harbinger of Jeb Bush in 2016.
271.
mai naem
@GregB: Mine was a much better suggestion. Get a bunch of darker skinned AA female voters, have them dressed in the distinctive West African clothing – the batikish cotton maxidress outfits with the matching headdress – and have them hang out at teabagger rich precincts. Fight fire with fire.
I always remember in 08 there was some ratfucking GOTV where an obviously black accented or Latino accented caller was calling ethnic eastern european Democrats for GOTV and it was a Republican outfit pulling this shit trying to suppress Dem GOTV. I was telling this tale to a friend who’s Eastern European who’s from NY and before I’d even finished the story he knew what was going on.
Joni Ernst laughs a whole fucking lot–huh huh huh huh huh!–at her own jokes. If the Republicans are dumb enough to mistake her for their next big star, and I think they are, then that can only help the Democrats.
273.
Juju
@Mike E: oh well. I did what I could. Who knew NC was so nuts?
274.
TCG
@SFAW: THIS. There is nothing to stop the. Nothing at all. They never pay a price for their actions because………….white people.They are the white people’s party and that is an advantage that they never lose. I honestly don’t know what to do about it. A Democratic president, even if he or she serves two terms will maybe have a year to do a couple of good things and that’s it. Practically nothing after that. Its depressing.
Amorphous enough that he will be able to win the money people and the baggers, SC allows even more racist ID laws, those making the south even more impossible to win, thus allowing him to get in, regardless if it’s close or not
We’re total fucked is my point, I’m going to read some Malcolm X or something .
276.
tam1Mi
@Mike E: Could you kindly elucidate who “Goldilocks” is for us not up on the latest slang?
277.
Helen
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah well. I have no more fucks to give. I’m gone.
And, no, Obama getting re-elected is NOT a price they paid.
It’s not?
Don’t get me wrong, the next 2 years are gonna suck; Obama will be the Lamest of Lame Ducks. Impeachment, however, is a bridge too far and the Right well knows it.
ETA: Along with shutdowns, get ready for Benghazi, 7×24, as we go towards 2016 (not to tear down Obama; to tear down Hillary). Also, lots and lots of Monica Lewinsky.
279.
Ruckus
@JoyfulA:
Haven’t quite made it to 93 but I am of medicare age and so have I. I take offense (but certainly do understand the reasoning) when I get lumped into such a despicable group as rethuglican voters based on my lack of skin color and age.
A demon like Gillespie reemerging after we had buried them in 2008, would be the sign of an ancient evil returning, and a harbinger of Jeb Bush in 2016.
Well, Barbara Comstock, GOP ratfucker extraordinaire, won the VA-10 House seat. Wingnut welfare means GOPpers have zombie careers.
And yes, of course they’re going to impeach next year. That is their nature.
I have no idea how he does it. I have no proof of it, but I don’t think Michele does as well and I don’t effing blame her. I would be keeping “the list” and have a long and very detailed memory.. (sorry, that is just ME)
Jimmy Carter’s put down really stands out and stings now, though I doubt it factored majorly — just that a former DEMOCRATIC President chose the time before the midterms to rain shit down on this President — like he wouldnt remember what it was like. I will never forgive him for it.
If the Republicans do [impeach], it would be a serious overreach.
Which is why I say “Do it. Do It! DO IT!!”
The GOP will overplay their hand after tonight anyway, but go whole hog, please. Trying to sort out the impeachment thing in the House will distract them for months. There will be infighting.
The Senate won’t ever reach 2/3rds on it, so it’s all just a shitshow that may, perhaps, show the Village Idiots as well as the voters that the GOP cannot be trusted.
288.
vhh
The good news in all this is that voters that re elect GOPer governors who have damaged their states finances may get a chance to ride those airplanes into bankruptcy. The next best thing to getting rid of guys like Brownback is for the states who elect them to go down the tubes as object lessons in getting what you vote for. Too bad the kids will suffer.
289.
Elizabelle
I am not going to watch cable or network news for as long as I can take a break.
Think I might cancel the WaPost for a while too. That would feel good.
GOP fucking owns the entire fucking country top to bottom for real now
The one single solitary state that voted Mondale in ’84 is staying blue, thank you.
291.
Juju
@Elizabelle: It will be interesting, to say the least.
292.
robotswillstealyourjobs
Don’t mourn, organize.
293.
mdblanche
@mdblanche: Just to be clear, when I said constitutional crisis, I would rank an impeachment as the least severe one that could happen.
For the first time in years I look at the political situation and I feel fear. Even if the good guys are favored in 2016, I think the next two years will be even rockier than any since, I don’t know. Expect the unexpected. Don’t be surprised if even if we win big in 2016, something bad happens along the way, something that produces damage that can’t be easily or quickly fixed.
294.
Ruckus
@RaflW: that may, perhaps, show the Village Idiots as well as the voters that the GOP cannot be trusted.
Hard to teach idiots anything. Especially when they are paid well to be smiling idiots. And how many of them are GOP anyway? I’d bet most of them.
295.
Mike E
@Juju: Not nuts, juju. Politics being what it is, you cannot sell something so bland and uninspiring. Hagan lost because she just didn’t really want to win…as a dem voter, I want champions for the cause and she didn’t care for our cause in the end. Truman was right seven fucking decades ago; it was never rocket science.
Impeachment will hurt them just like the shutdown and threatening to default hurt them right?
I swear even smart, high info progressives can’t quite accept how radical the GOP is, and how the country doesn’t give a fuck
I wouldn’t put the shutdown and default threats in the same category as impeachment. The first two are serious, but look somewhat abstract to a lot of voters – they’ll pin it down to politicians doing what they do and figure that everybody’s wrong, so it’s a wash.
Impeachment, however, is much more tangible. There’s no abstraction here – you’re trying to remove the highest elected official in the country. I don’t see how that’s a win for the GOP, even considering how far right they’ve gone. That may be a bridge too far.
Of course, I’ve been wrong before.
297.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
I haven’t watched TV or news programs for 10 yrs now. I still live in the same country and am still affected by the same stupid assholes who get elected by the same stupid asshole voters regardless. That said, I’ve had occasion to catch snippets of the “news” over the years and I’m 100% sure that my blood pressure is much better not seeing any more than that.
298.
Mike E
@Elizabelle: Heh, he’s your problem now! Ok, I just made myself cry a little.
My little tractor junction just ousted an entire power bloc of obstructionist commissioners who kept progress at bay with a 4-3 margin. Now we can have public transportation upgrades and worthwhile public amenities, and with Tillis gone, a real answer to the Kochs/Pope assholes in the General Assembly. More than a silver lining, it’s a real break. Thank god.
299.
Davis X. Machina
38% turnout overall, according to David Frum.
A small number, in absolute terms, of crawl-over-broken-glass voters is sufficient to deliver mid-term elections.
We saw that in 2010.
300.
Elizabelle
@Mike E: I am happy for you. That’s wonderful, and a bright spot.
301.
Juju
@robotswillstealyourjobs: @robotswillstealyourjobs: We need to catch our breath, take a rest and then get back to work and continue the fight. I think I’d like Joe Stestak to give it another try. I’m just sad NC will have two nut jobs in the senate for four years. Burr goes down in four years if I’m still here in NC.
302.
Wutang
We’ve lost Maryland, I repeat, we’ve lost Maryland.
I can’t wait until Obama is out of office. I imagine he can’t either. This country can go fuck itself, which it seems to be doing quite nicely.
Did anyone of you receive a nice campaign contribution request from HILLARY? As usual, nice timing, stupid one. The house is on fire and you want to sell me your donuts rather than working to save this Congress?
Yeah, I will remember you real well….
305.
Violet
@vhh: Those of us who live in red states know exactly what it’s like for the kids to suffer. And poor people. And all of us really, with our crap ass roads and nonexistent safety laws and so forth. So maybe it’s a good thing that Brownback gets to reap what he sowed with the economic disaster he unleashed upon the people of his state. Better than leaving a Democrat holding the bag, which is how it usually goes.
What probably hurts the worse about this election was the thought up till this afternoon when results started coming in, that things might not be that bad, that surly not all the fucking nut jobs will win. And then most of them have. Those of you calling for us to sack up and all, why? Is this election a wash as far as what will happen to the country? No. What would make you think that if people voted this way now (and yes I understand mid term elections) they won’t vote this way in 2 yrs? Yes it may still be about race(and it is) but how many nut jobs will think we can’t let dems win, look who the elected last time? I thought it was possible that the country was tilting a bit back to the left after the disaster that was the shrubster, but now it looks like it really wasn’t. How much bad news does it take to be actual bad news?
308.
sharl
@Wutang: It’s looking that way. I posted the following in the wrong thread:
MD Governor race still too close to call, but local radio reporter (WAMU 88.5) mingling among Democrat Anthony Brown’s crowd reports a lot of dismayed and glum faces. FWIW, rumors of a Brown concession speech have started. Some of that is probably the usual wingnut ratfuckery, but apparently similar murmurs taking place among the Brown supporters, according to the reporter. Fewer outstanding precinct results from heavily Dem areas are left.
Aaaaand, AP just called it for the Republican, Larry Hogan. Yikes!
And local reports are that a concession speech is expected from Brown; he’s just come to the microphone to speak to his supporters.
309.
Juju
@Mike E: You are probably right. At least Tillis can’t do any more damage at the state level, and at the federal level it’s going to be such a stinky mess on the R side, he will just be a bystander or poo thrower. There is also that one term curse NC has. I think Burr is the only recent NC senator to not get booted out after one term. So there’s that to look forward to in six years.
Some of them are. I’ll bet the ones that are will scream loud enough and get enough people riled up and clamoring for impeachment that the Rs that aren’t that stupid will have to go along.
I keep thinking about the Florida congressman in the 90s who said that even if the Senate convicts Clinton, it doesn’t mean Clinton has to be removed from office.
Don’t underestimate the power of the stupid.
311.
Morzer
Greed, ignorance and hate plus a timely dose of vote suppression facilitated by a corrupt white man’s SCOTUS win the day over well-intentioned decency with far too little to say for itself. I’d like to say I was surprised, but the last 40 years in the US made this outcome all too sadly predictable.
Well, onwards and upwards to 2016 and the glorious restoration of House Clinton.
312.
sharl
@sharl: Yep, Brown just conceded the Governor’s race, here in (usually) deep blue MD, to Republican Larry Hogan.
ETA: After Brown’s short concession speech, the crowd “is completely stunned”, according to the on-scene reporter. Both houses of the state legislature are still Democratic, so ’twill be interesting.
313.
Gravie
On a happy note, I have a dear friend in Panama City, Florida — one of the reddest parts of Florida — who really put her heart and soul into working to defeat Steve Southerland by supporting Gwen Graham. Graham won, so hooray for whatever victories there were to be had.
If we were going to lose this badly, we should’ve done it in a way that didn’t totally push the overton window further right. We should’ve at least fought for things we believed in – If for no other reason than to have us in a better position for the next fight.
I THINK I MIGHT vote for her. I am not seeing a difference between her and any Republican she runs against.
What she has done recently to back stab Obama, makes me wonder … I really cannot stand her but its hard to tell if I can override my disgust enough.
These are fearful times — this is analagous to the NAZIs — this is the white people of this country “re-litigating” the Civil War. The Union did not win — we are continuing to fight it and they want to make this into a third world slave plantation. Everything about the white people that have been elected makes me know that we have a long long hard road if we are to save this democratic “experiment”. And let me go back to screaming at the Democrats — I HATE THEM. I sent them tons of money and they ran shit campaigns that disavowed any principles. They can kiss my ass.
How much bad news does it take to be actual bad news?
If bad news occurs in a country and Fox News either denies it or blames it on the Democrats…..is it bad news?
319.
Mike E
@Juju: After Sanford and Helms, these seats aren’t legacy anymore… tho a couple of years of Tillis could make Burr look august enough, heh.
320.
Paula
If I’m being honest, re the Senate:
nothing is getting done either way. I’m not sure I need to wail about this the way you all seem to be. And if crazy shit gets passed, so what? The crazy shit will fail and make the Republicans vulnerable in the next election.
Wisconsin managed to elect a fucker twice that a whole lot of them protested not too long ago. If they don’t give a fuck , I don’t see why I should.
Florida is Florida.
At least a lot more people have health care, now. Not enough people, but more.
I am a Californian, so I guess I can afford to be sanguine about it.
How much bad news does it take to be actual bad news?
It is bad news. Horrible, even. The question becomes how does one respond to the news. Me, I continue to have hope for the future, but even if I lose that hope, my only option is to keep fighting. Other people’s mileage may vary.
@Juju: Too early to tell what will happen. According to the chatter I am listening to right now, one area of battle will be over transportation issues, where Hogan opposes some initiatives that the state Dem machine has been pushing.
Michael Steele was Lt. Governor under Bob Ehrlich (2003-2007), so comparison’s are difficult. I suspect Larry Hogan (who has already been inaugurated by Wikipedia) will be the darling of the national GOP – at least initially – while (IMO) Steele was only reluctantly selected to chair the party (2009-2011) after they got womped on by the Dems nationally. And Steele was dealt with rather contemptuously by many other GOP leaders and right-wing pundits during that time. Somehow I don’t think Hogan will receive that contempt, even after the post-election euphoria has worn off.
ETA: Someone fixed the Wikipedia entry to read “Governor-elect”; I logged into my account there for nuthin’…
324.
seefleur
@Elizabelle: HInt: Things DON’T go better with K-O-C-H…
325.
Juju
@Mike E: Burr will be Helms and we will have that seat that changes every six years, or some sort of nightmare like that.
326.
max
@Elie: And let me go back to screaming at the Democrats — I HATE THEM. I sent them tons of money and they ran shit campaigns that disavowed any principles. They can kiss my ass.
Lots of people were unhappy with Bill Clinton in 1999 and 2000. They wuz so unhappy they decided to vote for Ralph Nader in the next election and Al Gore decided to run away from Bill Clinton.
You can see how well that worked out.
max
[‘So no, unless you want nothing for ever, you should not do what you’re thinking of doing.’]
327.
Juju
@sharl: I had it in my mind that Steele was governor. Are enough Dems around to keep Hogan in Check?
You have the sense of comfort and “so what”that many middle class white people do. Nothing seems to really affect you and so the long view is usually pretty ok..
Us black folks are a little different. We have to watch things and prepare (though unfortunately not enough of us seem to get that voting is about self preservation — but that is another story)
I knew once we had ISIS wearing black and beheading white people, and EBOLA from AFRICA, that things were gonna be bad. I am grateful and proud that through all that the President did the right thing: did not committ ground troops beyond the minimal despite being kneecapped by everyone including his own Secy of Defense and the last Secy of Defense) and 2) Stood by science and morality to support appropriate public health policy and sent troops and care givers to Africa to help — stood against quarantine.
But that was going to be a bridge to far for white middle class white people — especially white women and there you have it. Sure, local factors played a role but the Democrats,instead of standing for something, all ran for the exits. The highest profile being Cuomo. OBTW, Quinn, the Illinois Governor who grovelled with Cuomo STILL lost — so again, cowardice never pays.
My lesson remains that I hate Democrats. If I didn’t have to live with the consequences of their incompetence, I would celebrate.
331.
sharl
@Juju: I think so, if what went on during the Ehrlich administration is any guide. But that’s a good question. I am going to pay more attention now to what happened in the State legislature contests; outside of my own representatives, I hadn’t even looked at those.
Statewide politics here is very much a Democratic Party machine operation, and as long as that Machine keeps other Dems in line, they’ll stop most of the things they don’t like.
Hell, I don’t even remember the rules for MD legislative overrides of Governor vetoes, so that’s also the sort of thing I’ll be reading up on in the coming days.
Exactly. I feel like we are in the Weimar states of America, and fascism is on the upswing and its supporters smell blood in the water.
And too many people don’t pay attention to important things — they follow sports and will absolutely vote for talent show programs.
And they don’t know history.
The one silver lining: overreach. The GOP always does.
However, in the new CItizens United world, can they get away with it? To be seen.
333.
Irony Abounds
You want proof America is a racist nation? Mia Love is a black Republican in Utah. She is losing by 7% in a district Romney won by 37%. Oh yeah, Bill O’Reilly, white privilege doesn’t exist. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what a F’d up country we live in.
What is wrong with them? Do I have to do a back bend to justify why I morally need to support their bullshit?
Indeed I feel like I am still getting a republican no matter what! Isnt that why we ended up with an insurance solution rather than single payer? Senator Nelson and some other dick who ultimately got unelected anyway, killed that possibility!
Yeah, I get it but this is just not going to work for me. I and the majority of working people in this country need a party to represent us that stands for something. If we can’t reshape what we have, lets trash it and start from scratch. This aint working.
Word up on Medicaid expansion. I’ve been hoping that even if th e Senate flipped, at least FL would be okay, maybe even enough that I’d be able to count on Medicaid if I couldn’t find a job immediately after leaving college next year.
As it is, nope. Time to start examining the possibility of moving to a state that did aaccept it.
Let me add that I didnt JUST send money. I am a precinct captain. I doorbelled, and phone banked for over two months. Just phone banked two days ago.
I will work, but I need something to work FOR. Everyone leading the Democrats needs to resign.
What happened to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? This disaster is on her head.
339.
Wutang
We have lost Massachusetts, I repeat, we have lost Massachusetts.
340.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: If you stay home, or leave the ballot space blank, or vote for the Republican, you know what will happen. We don’t always have the luxury of voting for a candidate we really want. Sometimes, we have to vote against a candidate we know can’t be allowed near the levers of power.
341.
Wutang
And hell, with Cuomo, we may as well call a spade a spade, we’ve lost New York too. Outside of the city, New York is basically red.
Given that MA has elected GOP governors more often than not recently, this strikes me as more of a return to the norm than not. Anyway, Fish Story Baker is going to learn that the Dems run the state and he’d better get used to thanking them kindly for being allowed to sign whatever they tell him to sign.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll be back to a more analytical and nuanced mood in a few weeks or even days, but for now, fuck the American people. Is it too many Democrats staying home, too many Republicans voting or too many milquetoast moderates switching? Who cares? All of it adds up to “way too many stupid fucks inflicting pain on their fellow citizens” and six years after Bush, I’m just fucking exhausted with it.
“The American people want to vote Republican and get Democratic governance.”
– me, three or four years ago.
348.
PhilbertDesanex
@Violet: If Those People take the Prez and keep the Congress in 2016, which may well happen, we demand they repeal Obamacare, every last bit of it. No keeping the free parts, repealing the paying for it, and blaming the deficit on us CommieCrats. Which is exactly the GOP playbook: bet on them doing exactly this, plus military Keynsianism.
I tell this to my closet GOP friends who have 40 year old kids still living at home. I am sooo good at getting people to change the subject.
349.
Wutang
Major systemic failure of all the power systems we had built up:
1) Our media organ failed us. It both failed to inform us of what was coming (seriously, their spin before this slaughter fefeas almost fox news like), and it failed to have an effect on the campaign, both in terms of winning, and in terms of making it more liberal.
2) Our logistical operaton failed us. We couldn’t get out the vote, and we got out-fundraised.
3) Our social base, our voters, women, minorities, etc. is demoralized and did not vote.
4) Our canidates STUNK. Where is our talent? these guys and gals were bad and I don’t see anyone in the farm system ready to step up for 2016.
As a result, our grip on the levers of state was just severely weakened. Systemic failure.
As a student with loans and with the politicking going on with rates, my assumption is that I will be pretty well affected by any short-term policies.
As someone who will likely be looking for a job and therefore not on employer health insurance, the fact that Obamacare could be endangered is also very real.
As someone who wants to work in public education after graduate school … you get my drift.
As for being a Black person affected by Obama’s policies, you’ll find as many people arguing that he’s done nothing as much as he’s done some things to help improve conditions specifically for Black Americans. I can’t comment on that debate, but it’s there.
It’s there specifically because Obama and/or the Dems can’t or won’t go after more progressive policy. They can’t/won’t go after progressive policy because the electorate loves to vote lose its shit over crap like ISIS and Ebola. Also, they’re racist and so crapping over BOTH Black people via Obama-bashing and Brown people via immigration hysteria simultaneously gave them a real happy. Also, when they’re scared, they like dropping bombs and invading countries. They don’t just love drones, man, they love BOMBING and INVADING.
Also, they apparently like the increased minimum wage but CANNOT TELL which party actually wants to give it to them.
So, yeah, crappy Dem candidates lost. A lot of those states were purple, not straight up blue, meaning they were vulnerable, which mean the people representing them were like to be Blue Dog skittish types. Who were never going to do anything about the above even if they kept/won those seats.
@Chris: It’s the country’s collective amnesia about how badly the Republicans F*d the country in the 2000s that is just mindblowing. Virtually all the problems plaguing the country today, the mess in the Middle East, the less than stellar economy, the enormous debt, can all be laid at the feet of Republicans, but hey there’s a black guy in the White House, so vote out the Dems.
You have schooled me and re-taught me a lesson about assumptions from too little information.
My apologies for any disrespect to your real reality
And applause for the sincerity and truth of your comment.My personal favorite:
It’s there specifically because Obama and/or the Dems can’t or won’t go after more progressive policy. They can’t/won’t go after progressive policy because the electorate loves to vote lose its shit over crap like ISIS and Ebola. Also, they’re racist and so crapping over BOTH Black people via Obama-bashing and Brown people via immigration hysteria simultaneously gave them a real happy. Also, when they’re scared, they like dropping bombs and invading countries. They don’t just love drones, man, they love BOMBING and INVADING.
354.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: That is all I am saying. If you don’t like Hillary or any other candidate, work like hell to defeat them in the primary. After that, the shittiest Democrat is better than the best Republican.
I think we also need to understand that Obama is/was a once in a lifetime guy. the next dem might not be as inspirational. I know that for AA voters, he is something I cannot conceive. The thing is, I identified with him because he is a guy of about my age – the first one and perhaps only one of my life – who was president. I have college friends who work for him. I get, at a lesser level, the attachment to him. He won’t be on the ballot ever again…. What do we do now?
Well, if the trend lines hold good, Martha Coakley is moving up the failed candidacy ladder from Senator to Governor to Presidential candidate….
356.
Irony Abounds
What planet does Chris Matthews live on? He keeps insisting that the Republicans will be reasonable and that Ted Cruz can’t possibly be the nominee in 2016. If I hear one more time how Reagan and Tip O’Neil worked together I think I’ll break my TV.
Man, I have NO idea what you mean about “our Media organ”. I don’t think that we have one or have had one. We won previously despite it.
I have to say that Obama has done a lousy job (as Clinton did also), in leaving the party in good shape. Its obvious Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was not effective and no one else was watching the chicken coop. Where’s Howard?
359.
ruemara
@Wutang: Democrats aren’t liberals. Some liberals are democrats. Democrats are not Republicans and that’s about all that’s clear.
Right. Got it. He is/was gifted, but not perfect. I don’t think he is “once in a lifetime except for the significance of his being the first black President. That is only once.
We had better get someone even better in the next ten years or this country is superfucked. I believe that is possible but we may need a revolution first — not a superficial one like electing a black man — but a REAL one — that does some real deep work on the political foundations here.
I think that is going to be pretty tough. The guardians of “how things are”here in the US has always been the middle and working class white person (up until they really ARE the minority of the voting public). We could have “nice things”like good social policy and benefits for everyone if they supported it. But they want to be superior to everyone else because of their skin color and are willing to eat shit forever and be poor and sick to wear that white skin flag. If their tribe can’t get past that, they will have to be smothered under the weight of demographics. That will be hard, long and very very ugly.
361.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: Since we aren’t a parliamentary system, this happens quite often.
It seems that we are facing a GOP fecal wave across the land. Clearly Dog is displeased – but the punishment feels somewhat excessive.
370.
Goblue72
@Elie: I fear it may come to that. I’m hoping my marriage to a woman of color protects me from the coming well-deserved comeuppance of white people. Although at this rate, I might be 100 before that happens. If anything is for certain, it’s white people’s ability to control the reins of power in spite of bring outnumbered.
But even if he could have, how in the hell would he have found the time between pouring buckets of water on his flaming head?
All the people who criticize what he has been able to accomplish just don’t seem to understand. From the day he stepped into that Presidency, he has been balls to the wall. Some have fretted that he hasn’t seemed to “enjoy” the Presidency. Seriously. How the fuck could or would he? I tell you, I have major anxiety just watching what is happening. I cannot imagine what it must be to BE him and hope he can keep it together over the next year and a half.
Shit — just shit. I think when the Ebola thing hit, I just knew ….There was no way to get “in front of it”without being the fearmonger that the politically savvy would know you had to do. He just couldn’t bring himself to do that. White folks wanted him to put up the barricades. He wouldn’t.
What’s the voter ID law like in Colorado, or the other states where turnout among women was notably low? Given the problems that a lot of married women have had proving that their married name is now their legal name, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was one of the most effective bits of voter suppression the Republicans managed to create.
373.
RaflW
Before tonight I was not on the Elizabeth Warren bandwagon. Didn’t even entertain the idea. I was not looking forward to Clinton mk.II but was willing to go along.
But to hell with the triangulating, neocon Democrat flukebucket and her grinning prop-husband.
If we take anything from this election, besides that it was always gonna be heavily tilted GOP on the fundamentals, it’s that soft-pedaling progressive ideals, being ultra-careful and trying to appease is a shit strategy.
(And to the question asked above: I’ll do what I’ve done most cycles. I’ll support a Dem presidential primary candidate that reflects my policy preferences and outlook on civic culture, and when s/he loses, I’ll agree to vote for Hillary. But my political donations will go to local, state and strategic federal races and not to Clinton. She can raise billions from her 1% and 1%-adjacent friends.)
I don’t think of comeuppance. I think of deliverance for all of us who want a WE the people — not WE the White People. My fear is that the WE the White People have way more energy — at least right now.
375.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: It was a bad night. We have had bad nights before. We will have good nights in the future. I cried around this time in 2008 and 2012, and I generally cry only at sappy movies. Tonight just pissed me off.
376.
Goblue72
Here’s the truth, Ruth. The great Democratic coalition that held onto Congress for 50 plus years that was built by FDR was composed of immigrants (mostly white), liberals, urban minorities, unions and racist Dixiecrats. It was a crazy patchwork of contradictions but it delivered solid electoral victories AND economically progressive legislation. And it held together as long as black people were kept in the back of the bus.
Then LBJ, aka FDR 2: The Final Chapter, in his own microcosm of contradictions, let black people ride the other seats in the bus – and even sometimes, maybe, sorta, drive it.
Goodbye Dixiecrats. And eventually when Nixon/Reagan got done, goodbye those formerly immigrant whites (aka white ethnics), who also often overlapped with union members.
That left us with liberals, urban minorities and unions. A solid core, but not enough even with the addition of brown & yellow immigrants. So we keep coming up short trying to pick up enough of those white ethnics we lost as those selfsame white ethnics are also kinda sorta racist deep down in their bellies. (Dixiecrats being lost permanently)
We are kinda stuck. We frankly need a white populist who can speak to working & middle class people – like Liz Warren. I’m afraid Hillz doesn’t know how to do without saying something awkwardly racist sounding.
@Chris: What a plurality want is to get Democratic governance for they and theirs and Republican governance for the other. They basically want George Wallace. I know people don’t want to hear this, but they will not regard Elizabeth Warren as an acceptable substitute.
379.
Mike E
@Elie: A president cannot do what you call for; he doesn’t ‘run’ the country, and I’m not talking about Congress either…multinational corps do. Only they would let ‘a’ president do anything, if it was something that fits their goals as profit making entities. It seems clear they have this whole election thing cornered, and ordinary citizens have ceded this by agreeing to stay the fuck out of it. Sadly.
One of my gotv calls was to a woman wondering why so few early voting sites were open this time and for only half the duration. It was a rhetorical question; she was 77, black, had had enough of this shit, wanted someone to let loose on, wasn’t voting, and declared the game was over for her. “It’s racist and anti-worker” she said, and alluded to having fought against segregation and for civil rights. Her voice still rings in my head, along with her phrase, “I’m going to god.” What do you say to someone who fought the good fight only to be ignored by her party when she expected to have gotten beyond that, finally, by now?
It ain’t disillusionment more than basic, utter disappointment. We ought to be better than that and it feels kind of like square one. A nice kick in the teeth. And somebody is riding it to the bank. Evil. Revolutions start because of this. How soon?
Gotta go to bed but I am just hoping there is time for the good “white populist”
My fear is that events will press us — or rather the white reactionaries to ever more extreme solutions and candidates.
We’ll see what is next. If Hillary is gonna do this, she better be strapping on tools no one has ever seen her use. I don’t think she has it in her, but we will see.
381.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: Sleep well; I am far too wired and angry to sleep right now. We’ll get up tomorrow and start to work on kicking the assholes asses – okay?
it ain’t disillusionment more than basic, utter disappointment. We ought to be better than that and it feels kind of like square one. A nice kick in the teeth. And somebody is riding it to the bank. Evil. Revolutions start because of this. How soon?
Amen
383.
RaflW
@mdblanche: Most voters want Democratic policies and Republican tax rates, and the see no reason why they can’t have both.
384.
Elizabelle
@Elie: Best to you, Elie. Comment a lot in the coming days.
This evening is so beyond anything I was expecting.
386.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I only wish drinking could make me sleep. I may have to call in sane to work tomorrow.
What kind of cocktail? Double brandy and ginger ale is my thing tonight (It is in the James Bond canon – He drinks it in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”)
387.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Having a tiny manhattan made with rye whiskey. Might have another.
Too disturbed to sleep and not in the mood to read.
388.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I don’t think I could work tomorrow. I am gahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
The appeal of the demographic changes is that a large enough faction of nonwhite people in America means you no longer have to appeal to those demographics of whites riddled with racial anxieties. Carter had to do it, Clinton had to do it (no accident that the only two Democrats to get elected after civil rights were white men with Southern drawls – and, for that matter, so was the guy who got it passed in the first place). And that was kind of the whole point of the Hillary Clinton campaign, even if it wasn’t said in so many words. Vote for Hillary! She can bring the bubba vote! She can bring in enough Nixon/Reagan Democrats who would be turned off by Obama because he’s black.
Then Obama won the primary. And the Democrats won the election anyway. And won it again four years later. Proving that we were now in a place where you could alienate the White People With Racial Anxieties vote and win, at any rate, a national campaign all the same. And that, frankly, is wonderful. The only question is what’ll win out between demographic changes and voter suppression laws. Republicans are aware of the phenomenon – it’s why they’re putting so much effort into the latter.
390.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: @Elizabelle: I rarely drink and won’t sleep if I do. But i’m wired and angry about the election results.
It’s been another trying day with my parents, followed by an urgent plumbing disaster–the plumber finished at 6:45, just in time for me to leave for an evening meeting, which I had to leave early to get home to make sure my sick family member was fed dinner. I’m wired and tired. Ugh.
Jimmy Carter’s put down really stands out and stings now, though I doubt it factored majorly — just that a former DEMOCRATIC President chose the time before the midterms to rain shit down on this President — like he wouldnt remember what it was like. I will never forgive him for it.
I don’t think it mattered a whole lot (Carter is up there with Herbert Hoover was “President Failure” in the public consciousness anyway). But I was still pissed that, given the results of his own foreign policy, he of all people would bitch about Obama on that of all things. (Yes, I know he mostly had a pileup of bad luck and paid the bills for 25 years of his predecessors’ fuckups, but that doesn’t change the fact that he hardly distinguished himself).
Yeah, although that’s something I mostly noticed and came to terms with in 2008-10 – the era that probably finalized my status as a professional cynic (as if growing up in the Bush years hadn’t done enough of that). I couldn’t believe the speed with which the “Obama’s failed presidency” meme took off or the speed with which the public hopped on board with it, after they’d given the previous brain-dead cretin at least five years of second chances and rally-around-the-flag.
It’s why I agreed wholeheartedly a few days ago when someone here mentioned that the last few years and the rise of the teabaggers had done more to kill their faith in the country than the Bush years.
Democrats aren’t liberals. Some liberals are democrats. Democrats are not Republicans and that’s about all that’s clear.
Agreed.
It’s become conventional wisdom to say that we haven’t been this polarized since before the Civil War, but what sometimes gets left out is that it’s not an equal polarization between liberals and conservatives – then or now. Pre-1860, it wasn’t Party Of Slavery (Democrats) versus Party Of Abolition (Republicans) – it was Party Of Slavery (Democrats) versus Party Of Everybody Who Doesn’t Think Southern Plantation Owners Should Unilaterally Rule The Country (Republicans), of which abolitionists were only a part, just like liberals are only a part of today’s Democratic Party. The crazy took over one party and basically forced every other brand of politics into the other party. So, keeping the other party together = herding cats.
393.
Neil
@OldDave: Amen to that, especially with such a relatively narrow margin of victory for Voldemort. If you think we all suck, John, imagine how we feel! The worst part is the local news had Crist ahead around 7:30ish. A cruel trick, getting my hopes up like that.
Still, as with most people I know, it’s not like we were thrilled with the possibility of another term with Crist in office. This truly was a case of the lesser of two evils. Sadly, the greatest evil won.
394.
Applejinx
The question becomes, given that we live in a banana republic with X resources and Y structural political awfulness, what do we do to survive and what do we do to overthrow? If you actually pay attention to governance and issues it’s clear the system is failed. We are trying to prop it up, but it’s no longer salvageable.
This is because the laws of statistics and abstraction, combined with the ability to control media on various levels, means that freemarket capitalistic predatory behaviors become impossible to counter. Essentially, past a certain point power consolidates until there is only one winner and it is the one who is prepared to trash things the worst. Over-reach and exploiting ‘libertarian’ weakness (claiming people are perfectly informed rational actors and then working to mislead and bullshit them) proves an impossible to beat strategy.
As the scale increases, and as information technology consolidates and gains effectiveness, it becomes possible to stretch this farther than it ever was before. You can keep people in a bubble of ‘this makes sense and will work’ for longer.
The country is still packed full of untermenschen, poisoned with hydraulic fracking fluid, and sold off to Swiss bank accounts, all the same. We’re damn likely to end up like the Weimar Republic (“Between 1930 and 1933 the Great Depression, even worsened by Brüning’s policy of deflation, led to a surge in unemployment. It led to the ascent of the nascent Nazi Party in 1933.”) except stripped of everything. I’m not sure what the world currency is going to be when the global economy collapses, but it won’t be dollars.
It’s all very well for poverty-level people to talk revolution but we’re going to need some intelligent rich people breaking ranks on the deathmarch, perhaps exploiting their resources and position and media-savviness. I saw a thing about an antienvironmentalist ratfucker guy saying win ugly or lose pretty and the key thing there is that a rich oil guy found his message so ghastly that he leaked it, essentially became a mole for our side. You can’t get 100% loyalty to a message like that. Simple self-preservation kicks in at some point.
Thank you. Hillary Clinton will be a disaster in 2016. Wake up, people…
396.
Applejinx
@Chris: I, a 46-year-old white guy, would like an opportunity to never vote for another white guy again. I’d really like to publically side with blacks and women and black women and every conceivable ‘unelectable’ demographic, though I am less and less persuaded that voting itself remains functional in our society.
I think the increasing fluidity and directedness of public attention in the cellphone/Facebook age is too prone to exploitation, and I’m unsure what’s next. It’s like you don’t have to hack voting machines if you can hack people’s brains, and we’re continually seeing the results. I’m not sure how far people can be harmed and poisoned before the brainwashing cracks, but the human mind is an alarmingly malleable thing.
My autistic mind tends to balk at things regular minds swallow, which sometimes means I can’t get away from looking at stuff. Maybe that’s okay, somebody’s gotta figure out where all this is going. The Weimar Republic didn’t have cellphone video.
I’m betting the next phase is making the cellphone video lie. Information itself becomes treacherous: the clever evil guys work out ways to make ‘information’ like footage of CGI Obama conspiring to infect Republican strongholds with Ebola, and it goes viral over and over.
If the tenuous hold to information itself breaks down, the only remaining thing is personal experience. If your water in your house literally stinks, makes you sick, and catches fire, you may have no way of communicating that information but it overrides whatever ‘internet information’ you think you believe.
That’s a pretty long way to go to get to ‘truth’, though.
What is more horrifying than the GOP taking control of the US Senate is that the GOP looks to be taking control of so many state legislatures. If they get to 38 states under their control… that ALEC SuperPAC will be able to force a constitutional convention and then OH GOD WE ARE SO FUCKED.
And, no, Obama getting re-elected is NOT a price they paid. … .It’s not?
No, it’s not.
If the electorate had looked around and said “Well, shit! The Rethugs have been hamstringing the darkie for four years. That ain’t right,” Obama would have won NC, and his margin would have been better than 51-47. And his coattails would have been longer. He would never have picked up the Deep South, of course.
So, as I said, the Rethugs have yet to pay any real political price for trying to destroy the country.
400.
Richard briggs
Was hoping that the Lizard King would just shed his skin and slither off the stage, but no joy.
401.
grascarp
One of the talking heads on NPR suggested today that Gov. Rick Scott contributed $15 Millions of his own cash to boost ad buys in Florida during the last week and one-half of the campaign . Given the Florida chief executive’s salary is $132,273 then Gov. Scott spent 113-times his salary in the last couple of weeks to save his job. This Citizens United is killing US .
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JPL
I kinda feel the same way.
David Hunt
Yikes! I guess they didn’t get the last horcrux. Sorry, Betty.
RaflW
Piling on: Hickenlooper is losing in CO. NM looks R for governor as well.
Appears that the American electorate wants it good and hard. I’m pissed.
Oh, and that smug HBO jackass Bill Maher may have actually been a negative in MN-2 with his little pony show.
LookingForACanadian
I think we’re gonna have a few more states to add to that suck list before all is said and done.
Schlemazel
Its OK if he steals the government blind so long as he doesn’t raise my taxes! Its a real positive if he screws over the coloreds too.
But really Crist was no gem, would have been better.
I am going to repeat my joke that got no reaction earlier – So Scott is a Crist killer now, does that mean he has to be circumcised?
PsiFighter37
Maybe the polls weren’t really all that skewed after all. Doesn’t seem like there are any races coming out of left field except for VA-Sen…and that’s not in our favor.
Next 2 years are going to be depressing. Think we got nothing done the past 4 years? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We wouldn’t even be able to get post offices named after St. Ronnie.
Timurid
The Republicans just keep failing upward…
Schlemazel
@RaflW:
Maher did nothing to flip MN2. He puffed himself up & pointed out the obvious about John Kline but actually flipping any district, particularly that one, requires real work & he would never want to do that hard work.
Paula
Florida: global warming’s silver lining.
Dave C
So…my roommate was watching the Fox News “coverage” of the election results just for kicks, and I watched for a few minutes also. I seriously don’t think I inhabit the same reality as the people on that show. Jesus fucking Christ.
Chickamin Slam
I came across the NPR station briefly while cruising the dial. Some pundit was talking excitedly about how America really responded to the Republican message. How that carried them to victory. Message I thought? What fucking message?
Were I a drinking person too John I’d have downed my sorrows in a beer or something with a lot of alcohol content.
It’s going to be an interesting next two years …
mdblanche
Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight.
Elizabelle
unbelievable
Rob
Darn.
askew
So Dems spent untold millions on GOTV efforts. They made voting easier in IA and CO and we still lost the Senate in blue states – IA, CO and VA gone. NC likely gone. This is worse than 2010 and now we have to suffer through a media blaming Obama for the losses and the slimy Clintons who will be out with knives sharpened to attack Obama starting tomorrow. Excellent. I am going to need a new hobby because I am done with politics.
OldDave
Oh, piss off, Cole. Not everybody down here Voted for Voldemort.
PsiFighter37
And Joni Ernst won.
What’s arguably worse about this year, relative to 2014, is that more genuinely certifiable nutbags got elected this year. Gardner, Ernst, Cotton – they are all awful, awful people.
Corner Stone
Maybe Crist disavowed Obama too much? Maybe the voters punished him for it?
Just Some Fuckhead
Either way, a Republican was going to win. Yeah, Scott seems like a freakshow and Crist appears to be a little more normal in comparison but Republican voters like their weirdos.
Corner Stone
@askew: Waaaaaa…
Your stupidly simplistic view of politics didn’t hold up. GFY.
Corner Stone
Burke got her absolute ass kicked.
Just Some Fuckhead
Scott Walker pulled it out too.
PaulW
HEY I VOTED FOR CRIST TOO.
I am beside myself in rage at the moment. This is insane. Our state has gone nowhere under Rick “No Ethics” Scott. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people suffering because we don’t have the Medicaid expansion. Scott has been manipulating the rules and ignoring the Sunshine laws. The entire Republican machinery in our state is corrupt from county to state level. And yet they’re still able to find millions of voters to buy into their lying bullshit.
We’re still screwed because the state legislature has gerrymandered the state IN SPITE of the amendments requiring them not to, and the courts are acting too slow in making them play by the rules.
tbone
Scott fucking walker wins big.
Botsplainer
White people suck.
My mother is probably crowing. Sure, the GOPers will take my social security and give it to hedge fund guys, and my Medicare will consist of discount coupons in ValPacks for 10% off on colonoscopies with huge chunks of money to go to connected contractors, while my youngest daughter becomes uninsurable, but the niggers and spics will get what for and that’s all that matters.
My intention is to make the fucker ungovernable for the next conservative administration. Make them wish they just had the Weathermen to deal with as they hire food testers and morning car bomb sweepers.
Valdivia
VA has been called for the rs?
RaflW
@Schlemazel: I think he did real harm, even if not on a large scale. MN-2 actually shifted demographics some after redistricting, at least decreasing the +R tilt of the district.
It was always going to be a tough race. But Maher nationalized the race in a way that was useless to Dems, probably a net negative to candidate Obermueller, and I bet just bumped Klein’s fundraising base.
Total shitshow.
Maher can stay the fuck out on MN from now on. I’m perfectly glad I don’t pay for HBO.
LookingForACanadian
and the bad guys are winning the hockey game, to boot.
max
Warner just finally moved into the lead.
max
[‘Up by 3.5k with 99%.’]
Mike in NC
Fuck this Neo-Confederate country.
Davis X. Machina
I’m curious to see the number-crunchers tell us given the electorate of 2012, what are the results?
PaulW
@Just Some Fuckhead:
DAMMIT.
What the hell is wrong with people? Can’t they see the GOP lying to them on a regular basis? That the likes of Walker and Rick Scott are self-serving crooks?
I hope to God Walker gets jailed when that John Doe investigation uncovers his BS. I hope to God Rick Scott gets punished for violating Florida’s Sunshine laws with his illegal emails.
goblue72
We live in a deeply racist country. Full stop. And I’m not just talking about racist whites voting for GOP because they hate Obama. I am talking about racist whites (which is the majority of white people), who perceive the Democratic Party as the party of racial minorities.
The majority of white people vote GOP – by very large margins. EVEN amongst Millenials, those who are white, favor the GOP over Democrat. Millenials are now only looking like Democratic voters because a greater percentage of Millenials are non-white compared to older voters.
And the rich, who run this country, are more than happy to ride that racial hatred all the way to control of government.
danielx
@PsiFighter37:
Yes, and the three aforementioned shitheads will be in the Senate for six years.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
Valdivia
@max: thank you. I knew things were fucked up but not that fucked!
Randy P
Tom Corbett lost in PA. So we got that going for us.
But Mitch McConnell won, dammit. Not that there was much chance of another outcome in friggin Kentucky, but that would have been so sweet…
But at least I can wake up every morning saying “Corbett is not my governor”, and I have to say that feels pretty nice. People I know in education have been looking like they’ve been through a war the last few years. I’ve seen people in literal tears over some of the cuts.
Felonius Monk
Looks like the R’s will be majority in Senate. Nunn and Hagan both appear to be losing now.
The Watcher
Ever get the strange feeling evil is rising again in the world, like the 30s? Putin, Republicans, ISIS, Ebola……
on and on.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. ”
-Yeats
James E. Powell
@Chickamin Slam:
Message I thought? What fucking message?
The message has been, was, and will remain, “WE HATE THAT [insert racist epithet]!”
The Republicans have had no other message since January 2009. Americans responded to that message because about half the people who live here are bigoted assholes.
FlipYrWhig
I cannot imagine human beings voting for Rick Scott, for anything, for any reason.
MomSense
Trying not to freak out over the local results.
I feel like I don’t know my neighbors–at all.
This is terrible.
Valdivia
wtf NC???
seefleur
@Chickamin Slam: The Chinese have a curse/blessing: “May you live in interesting times” – I think we’ve been living in interesting times for far too long. I have kids who are young adults who are going to be paying the price for these “interesting times” and they deserve SO much better. I want pitchforks, tar and feathers. NOW!
Lizzy L
I’m waiting to hear from Kansas. Sorry about Florida. You guys are seriously fked. And the news from Wisconsin: I just don’t get it.
The next two years are not going to be any fun at all, except of course for the ratfuckers.
SFAW
@PsiFighter37:
Only 2? Well, aren’t we the optimist. Oh, right, Hillary’s going to beat Jeb, followed by ponies for everyone.
And eventually Obama’s going to get tired of vetoing Rethug insanity. And the filibuster id most likely dead for anything/everything the Rethugs want to pass.
PaulW
@PsiFighter37:
They did a better job of keeping their mouths closed to avoid the bad gaffes. Now they’re free to shill their IMPEACH OBAMA agenda without punishment.
Walker
I am not surprised by the Scott Walker. My experience with Wisconsin is that they are just as conservative (and often racist) as the South, but just paper over it with that midwestern nice crap.
Paula
Yeah, thanks white people.
FlipYrWhig
@MomSense: oh, your neighbors are assholes, I guarantee it. Everyone’s are.
Patricia Kayden
Big sigh. Time to get some sleep. Hope President Obama doesn’t let this get to him. He should sharpen his veto pencil and keep his head up high.
Irony Abounds
This country is full of scared, ill-informed, hateful white males, and if anyone thinks what happened today will be remedied in 2016 is whistling past the graveyard. Republicans have found the formula: make sure nothing good happens, and then when it doesn’t blame the black guy in the White House. Republicans made gains in state legislatures, which will only add to further impediments in non-whites and liberals voting. You can say demographic change until you are blue in the face, but if the Republicans can keep the bad demographics from voting, those changes don’t matter. Hate to be pessimistic, but the trajectory of this country becoming the United Oligarchy of Rich Shitheads is moving upward at warp speed.
J.D. Rhoades
Arkansas elects a Republican Senator while voting in a minimum wage increase by a wide margin. Nebraska does the same. Colorado seems to be poised to reject an anti-choice “personhood” amendment but elected a Republican Senator. So it seems that liberal policies are popular, but Democratic candidates are struggling. Interesting.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I have a few reasons to be hopeful, even with the loss of the Senate. For one thing, they’re unlikely to hold the Senate for any longer than the next two years. In 2016, they’ll have an even worse map than the Democrats had this year. They’ll have 24 seats up, and the Democrats will only have 9. And some of those seats are in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Iowa. The other thing I look forward to is the Republicans scrapping the filibuster.
goblue72
@Botsplainer: I suggested as much not too long ago during the Ferguson protests (I ain’t calling them riots cuz they weren’t). Was castigated for voicing that kind of thing.
There’s a reason why during the late 19th and early 20th century during the Robber Baron era, there was so much violence in connection with unionization and radical activists. The oligarchs can only push your back to the wall so far before the only thing you have left is your fists.
PsiFighter37
We won absolutely none of the close races. Seriously – we’re going to get swept in everything. There’s no way Landrieu has a prayer of winning in December if she can’t claim to be the Energy chair anymore.
Absolute annihilation.
Violet
Just saw NBC call Wisconsin for Scott Walker. I hate America.
Valdivia
@J.D. Rhoades: because the media told them these guys were total moderates. I don’t get it either.
sempronia
Thank goodness for my California and Jerry Brown, a bright spot in this whole painful fail-parade. The bad-faith mis-information campaign constantly waged by the R’s is so infuriating.
Suzanne
Ughhhhhh. I just want to hurl. In addition to all the national results, the local results just are absolutely horrible. Just ridiculous.
I might stop volunteering for campaigns. I am so sick of spending time and effort just to get my ass kicked every fucking time.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Felonius Monk: Meh, it was a wave year just like 2006. Obama can veto the crazy for two years and 2016 will swing things back the other way. It wasn’t like Congress has been functioning anyway.
askew
@SFAW:
Obama will veto everything. He won’t cave. There are no more midterms to worry about and he isn’t up for re-election. And he has no fucks to give about what the press says. He’s the anti-Bill in many ways. Maybe all those Senators who begged and begged Obama to delay the immigration executive order should have shut up because there is no way we would have done worse with that in play and we would have likely held CO-Sen with the order in place.
Hillary is going to lose in 2016 mark my words. The country has shifted too much for her to appeal to AR, KY, or WV and she won’t appeal to voters out west.
Betty Cracker
Pretty fucking disappointing. I really thought we had a better than 50% shot at ousting that reptilian fuckstick. It’s one thing for a slimebag like Scott to slither in during a fluke election, but quite another to reelect the goddamn, motherfucking pile o’ shit. In short, right now I feel about Florida how I felt about America when George W. Bush beat Kerry. Fuckity fuck fuck.
Brian R.
An incumbent’s president’s party lost Senate seats in his sixth year.
Next up: The sun rises in the east.
Sack the fuck up, people.
skerry
@Felonius Monk: It was just called for Perdue over Nunn in GA
Davis X. Machina
@J.D. Rhoades:
On ballot measures, people vote policy.
On candidates, they vote race, tribe, region, religion — or lack of it. Then they vote narrative. Then, finally, they vote policy.
jonas
Haters gonna vote. Ironic thing is, all the pissed-off white guys pulling the R lever today think they’re doing a favor for the “little guy” who’s been trampled under the jackboot of Obama’s Kenyanebolafascism. Unless your last name is “Koch”, you’re fucked. Welcome to Dick Cheney’s America, you goddamn idiots.
KG
anyone know why they haven’t called Georgia yet? Purdue leading 58-41 with 86% reporting, can’t imagine that Atlanta has enough left to swing that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Pretty amazing Walker got the votes considering what a freak show he is physically. I sense presidential timber there soon and look forward to seeing him debate with Perry and Samaturium.
Davis X. Machina
@askew: What states that Obama carried in 2012 does Hillary lose?
mdblanche
@PsiFighter37:
@Chickamin Slam:
I seriously expect we’ll have a full-blown constitutional crisis at some point in the next two years.
Bobby Thomson
I don’t understand how some states (PA, KS) are kicking Republican assholes to the curb, while others (WI, FL) are re-electing blatant criminals (and IA is set to elect Michele Bachmann’s less bright doppelganger). I don’t believe the average voter in the first set of states is any less stupid, and FSM knows Kansas is no less white. Have Scott and Walker been less blatant about gutting public education?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Valdivia:
When the fuck are the people in the press going to learn that there aren’t any moderate Republicans any more? It’s true that people like Lamar Alexander and Mark Kirk and Rob Portman don’t talk like Ted Cruz, but as long as they vote the same way, why should anybody give a fuck?
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: yeah. I mean, look, Bush, I can see that that guy had some kind of charisma or at least geniality, and at least for the stupid. But Scott Walker and Rick Fucking Scott? They’re just repellent. Physically, mentally, all of it. Just unpleasant and only vaguely human. If people are actively choosing to vote for them, holy shit, that’s some bad juju, America.
Suffern ACE
This will continue to happen every four years until I’m old so I’m used to it. Our voters have a high threshold for being likely. Pretty much everyone at the voting at the polls tonight after work was older than I was and I’m in my mid 40s. We vote Dem here mainly unless the corruption gets too much. But that’s who votes. I don’t think that changes.
Irony Abounds
@KG: They have called it for Perdue. They needed to make sure he would get over 50% to avoid a runoff, which apparently they decided he will get. I don’t want to hear anyone whine about outsourcing since a self-proclaimed outsourcer easily wins.
LookingForACanadian
@Betty Cracker: love this.
Valdivia
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
exactly. they think hiding their positions and fooling the voters is savvy. the cult of the savvy is killing our republic.
I too expect some terrible constitutional crisis in the next 2 years. I hope Obama wakes up tomorrow and declares amnesty right away.
KG
@Irony Abounds: ah, gotcha, didn’t realize Georgia had a run off system.
Elizabelle
I am so disappointed in this country.
This is Citizens United money; negativity about everything. Colorado’s results are appalling.
I think I’m going to ignore politics for a while and read some good books.
Thank God we have President Obama in office, and I wish him strength and commitment in dealing with the rest of his term.
Violet
So Chuck Todd said that Republicans are now going to hold the House until 2022. WTF?
Irony Abounds
And now my great state of Arizona has elected someone who will Brownback Arizona. What stupid people live in this country. I live amidst an unsettling number of complete fucksticks.
Suffern ACE
@Bobby Thomson: walker is all about punishing teachers and their lazy union. A lot of people didn’t have Edward James Olmos or Michelle Pfeiffer as teachers.
Linnaeus
@goblue72:
Yep. I don’t think race is the only factor in American politics, by any means, but you cannot underestimate its significance. Ever.
Hal
Meh. If anything, watching the Turtle try and placate Cruz, who is no doubt going to be claiming responsibility for these victories should be interesting.
Like I said before, Republicans have no agenda and no ideas. Obama has the veto. The nutters elected tonight will join Cruz in their crazy and go full wingnut. I’ll start worrying in 2016 if it looks like R’s in the Presidency and Congress. Until them, none of this was that surprising.
And hey, Scott Brown! (not walker) lost. Oops. I meant Scott Brown. Sorry. They’re both so dreamy I got them confused.
The Dangerman
@Brian R.:
With almost all the States with Senate seats in play being red states that Obama flipped in 2008 with his coattails; holding the Senate was a hopeless cause from the get go. I figured maybe 1 in 5 a month or so ago; I was hopelessly optimistic, apparently.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Valdivia:
Well, at this point, I think an impeachment is fairly likely. I thought a year ago that they might be dumb enough to do it sometime this year, but I guess they were just barely smart enough to hold back. Now, though, I don’t see anything that’s likely to keep them from doing it.
Bobby Thomson
@Davis X. Machina:
If she sticks with the “hard working white Americans” crap, Florida, Virginia, possibly Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, possibly even Wisconsin and Ohio. I could easily see her trying to make a play for Appalachia and the Mississippi delta, failing miserably, and managing to alienate all the new Obama voters in the process.
Rob
Hogan (R) 53% over Brown (D) 44% with 67% counted for the governor’s race in Maryland.
AUUUUUGH.
FlipYrWhig
@Hal: uh, Walker didn’t lose.
gogol's wife
@Hal:
I thought everyone was saying he won?
Irony Abounds
@Hal: Walker lost? That will be news since he got the most votes.
Steppan
This is so fucking depressing. Hello, two years of actual shutdown.
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/126/314/3cd8a33a.png
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: if anything, this election suggests that there’s no pander you can’t pander if you want cranky white people to vote for you.
Davis X. Machina
@Violet: Given the power of incumbency, yes. Over 90% of incumbent House members win re-election each time. A 70-seat swing like 2010 is an anomaly…
danielx
Countdown for introduction of motion to impeach Obama…..59, 58, 57, 56…..
Glad I don’t watch television to speak of, and I may have to swear off any sort of media contact. Republican triumphalism over the next few weeks is going to be sufficient to induce projectile vomiting.
Fuck them, and most of my fellow citizens as well. And most especially fuck those five swine on the Supreme Court, and particularly Anthony Kennedy of “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” fame. Clearly a man who wouldn’t recognize corruption if it showed up as a mass of pus on his dinner plate.
Karmus
I hate me, too.
KG
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: a few years ago, I’d say that there was no way Walker could win a nomination from a major party because he doesn’t have a college degree. but given everything we’ve seen in the last 20 years or so (impeachment, split popular/electoral vote election, winner as speaker of the house, black man as president, a mormon winning a major party nomination, a successful gubernatorial recall in California), I’m going to hold off on that now.
Ruckus
Well maybe I need to dust off my move to Costa Rica file and see what’s happening.
Dems run from the President, Rethugs lie out their asses, besides being bat fucking shit crazy and an awful lot of the US seems to like getting fucked. Hard. Problem is if the rethugs continue to win then SS probably will be fucked and I’ll have no money to survive. Wonder what starving to death under a bridge feels like? I’m pretty sure I’ll be more pissed off than I’ve ever been before if I have to find out.
@James E. Powell:
about half the people who live here are bigoted assholes.
You speak truth.
I asked in a thread last night if the US is a laughing stock to the rest of the world. There is a better chance of that being true today than yesterday. And it was true then.
srv
So what are my chances of emigrating to Canada?
Surely we have an emigration lawyer here.
p.a.
@askew: Hillary will lose the nomination in 2016 because she is a poor campaigner, a DLC waffler, and a nonentity who carpetbagged her way to a Senate seat. Being female may help enhance turnout.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle: don’t forget: voter supression
goblue72
@Irony Abounds: THANK YOU. Anyone pulling the “oh but 2016 looks better for us” stuff is just fooling themselves. A loss is a loss. A loss means the other side gets 2 years to put their plan into motion, which includes implementing what strategy they have to win the NEXT election.
We can’t just sit around with our thumbs up our rear ends hoping for demographics and a better election map to save us. The GOP have effectively gerrymanders Dems from winning the House until 2020 – at the earliest – and then ONLY if we are able to take back a majority of state houses. A REALLY BIG IF. The GOP took back the House in 2012 and implemented their screw Obama strategy to a fault – and it worked. All the white people now blame the black guy in the White House for everything.
The best we can hope for is 2 out of 3. They actually can try for 3 out of 3. Starting today, they have 2 out of 3. We have 1 out of 3. And that’s not counting SCOTUS, which they control. So technically, its 3 out of 4 vs. 1 out of 4.
I don’t like those odds. And today, voters (well, white voters, who are still the majority of voters), just shouted from the rooftops how racist they are.
I’m not sure how we change the cultural dynamic around our Party and how its perceived by whites. But we need to do some hard thinking about how to do that – and what kind of policies to push that gets us there. Free healthcare to brown people clearly does not resonate.
pseudonymous in nc
@Mike in NC:
It’s only neoconfederate in years when there’s not a presidential election. But that’s the problem. A country can’t have decent politics when it has a bipolar election cycle, lurching from “maybe we can actually get shit done” to “oh, no we can’t”.
GregB
It will be funny watching the assholes in the Republican Party and the establishment media once Senator Cruz starts running the fucking show and getting his new lunatic caucus of Cotton, Ernst and Gardner on board with the lunacy.
Ron Paul lamented that this Republican sweep will make neo-con wars in Syria and Iran more likely.
Impeachment hearings galore and wars and fucking tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts as far as the eye can see.
notoriousJRT
@Violet:
Likely, he is talking about the structural issues of the 2010 redistricting. If the districts are drawn to protect incumbents, the D’s have a doubly steep hill to climb.
Or, he could just be wishful thinking outloud.
Corner Stone
Nunn is conceding.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Welcome to the Amerikan dream! Bend over and spread ’em, comrades. We’re gonna take it good and hard the next 10 years, without even the courtesy of a reach-around.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Bobby Thomson: You’re talking about voters, the majority of whom don’t know the difference between the PPACA and Obamacare. They don’t follow politics and even the ones who can keep up with this or that political scandal haven’t developed political values they want to see reflected in legislation. They just know things suck or don’t suck and vote to punish the suck or keep the don’t suck. If you want to blame someone, blame the utes and minorities who still haven’t figured out elections happen every two years.
FlipYrWhig
What happened to Nunn and Orman there late?
Dave C
Damn, I know the results tonight suck ass, but some of y’all are acting like you’ve never lost an election before. This shit happens. 2016 will be a very different story – for lots of reasons.
Archon
Obama, and through him black America got put on the ballot for the 4th and final time and were 2-2.
For the life of me I have no idea what Republicans will do when Obama is gone.
Mike J
http://www.gifbin.com/bin/florida.gif
PsiFighter37
@goblue72: Free healthcare to white people apparently doesn’t either.
Wait – it would have an impact, if it meant that NO ONE ELSE got free health care.
Ugh, so pissed right now.
Corner Stone
@Bobby Thomson:
Yeah. This election cycle really proves out your theory there, boss.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Bobby Thomson:
I really don’t see the appeal of Clinton at all. How in the hell so many people could be so devoted to her is beyond me. I mean, aside from her name, what does she really have going for her? She’s going to be nearly 70 by 2016; she really isn’t all that likable; she surrounds herself with people like Mark Penn and Lanny Davis (though, to be fair, it was her husband who chose Davis as his chief of staff). What, really, does she have going for her? How is she so overwhelmingly the favorite for 2016?
FlipYrWhig
By the way, I don’t think I care anymore about caring for the elderly. Fuck them. They’re the enemy. Choke ’em off and make ’em wail.
mdblanche
@J.D. Rhoades: It’s race, not class. My family’s full of the type of people who produce election results like that. They’re why I don’t have any faith that Elizabeth Warren, great as she is, has any hope of being the Democratic Party’s savior. Her message is not going to reach the people it needs to. That says nothing about the message and everything about the audience. There could have been an opening to reach them in 2008-2009. But it closed before it even opened, because, you know, black president.
skerry
@srv: Want a roommate?
pseudonymous in nc
@Dave C:
Yep, but 2017 will be like 2009 and 2018 will be like 2014 unless the Dems actually come up with a strategy that a) punishes the refusal to govern; b) gets people to vote in midterms.
Perhaps they can give Howard Dean a call.
Elizabelle
Michele Nunn is a class act. I would love to see her run again. She ran well. I am proud of her.
I hope Georgia gets what it wants from Perdue. Good and hard.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig:
Fixed. Cranky white people won’t vote for Hitlery, especially if they can vote for an out and proud racist who doesn’t just dogwhistle. To win, she has to keep the Democratic coalition together.
PaulW
I have got a shitload of rage to dump on people here in Florida, but I am saving it for later.
GODDAMN YOU. GOD HELP US.
http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2014/11/liveblogging-2014-god-help-us-all.html
MomSense
It is not looking good for Michaud. I’m looking at the precincts and I don’t think he won big enough in the precincts he needed.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
They didn’t announce loudly enough how happy they were to vote for Obama.
eemom
Not that it matters to y’all hysterics, but we haven’t lost the Senate yet.
Mr. Twister
@Hal: Maybe not, just saw its now 50 50.
srv
@skerry: What’s rent in Vancouver?
Elizabelle
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Yeah. I do not see Hillary Clinton winning. Gonna be a sadly interesting two years.
Sounds like Mark Warner will pull it out, but that was too close.
Please, please, please Kay Hagan pull it out.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig: I voted behind two men, one 97 and one 99. This was probably their last election so I don’t begrudge them the win.
Wutang
The worst slaughters in history come when the armies break ranks and run. This is what happened with the democrats.
Dave C
@pseudonymous in nc:
Yeah, I find the difficulty that dems have in turning out their base during midterm elections to be somewhat baffling. I’m a grad student (though on the older side of that demographic), and for many of my peers, this election simply wasn’t even on the radar. I don’t get it.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: I think you need a Democrat touring Appalachia and building bridges between poor whites and poor persons of color.
MomSense
@Dave C:
Turnout was really big in a lot of places.
Quinn lost in Illinois??
Elizabelle
I will take pleasure that Georgia was such a hard fight, and not the usual glide path for Republicans.
mdblanche
@Hal: Interesting times.
We all know what the Chinese said about those.
askew
@Davis X. Machina: CO, NV, VA and she’ll do worse in the midwest. Her nasty campaign style and inability to inspire the base will hurt her in IA and WI.
Corner Stone
Wow. Maybe Pat Quinn didn’t hug Obama hard enough?
Archon
And what’s up with commentators talking about deals Obama can cut with a Republican house and senate. If the “deal” involves anything other than Obama resigning and apologizing to the nation for getting elected twice Republicans won’t deal with him, it’s tantamount to collaboration with an occupying government to them.
Elizabelle
I am beyond sick of Chris Matthews.
Have laid in a bunch of movies, and have all those wonderful silents from last night on TCM on DVR. Pandora’s Box, etc.
Bobby Thomson
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Or I could not be a racist fuckstick. You also missed my point entirely.
I’m a great believer in the truism that the average American voter is pretty damn stupid – I just don’t understand how Corbett and Brownback are headed for defeat (Corbett decisively) based on pissing off the teachers, when that didn’t seem to hurt Republicans in other states, none of which I would consider more conservative than Kansas.
Elizabelle
@Corner Stone:
Please stop it. You’ve made your point. Seriously.
Irony Abounds
@eemom: I’m sorry, I guess I don’t get the Delusional Channel on my cable system.
The Dangerman
@Elizabelle:
Whomever the Democrats nominate will win; the Republicans will nominate some brachiating reactionary (current guess, Cruz) and will get spanked good and hard for it.
Davis X. Machina
@MomSense: Predicted it months ago.
The “The way to fix politics is to get all the politicians out of it. Oh, and no parties, either” voters did it again.
Approximately 8% of Maine voters are better than you, in fact, they’re just too good for this world.
Betty Cracker
@Brian R.: Someone needed to say that. Thank you.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: meh, my grandparents are already dead, and my wife’s grandparents are already dead, so I have little personal connection to that horrible generation between WWII and the ’60s.
Valdivia
wow all the close governors races went rep too?
FlipYrWhig
@askew: you misunderstand the “base.”
askew
@Archon:
I have no idea what the Dems will do when Obama is gone. His coattails got us huge majorities in 2008 and helped us hold the Senate in 2012. When he isn’t on the ballot we get our asses kicked. I don’t think the Obama coalition is going to turn out for Hillary in 2016 with her campaign style, rhetoric and policies from 1992.
Davis X. Machina
@Dave C: Approximately 40 million voters labor under the misapprehension we have an elective monarchy….
RaflW
Pat Roberts will continue to represent Kansas. Boy howdy.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Elizabelle: You know what they call losing after a hard fight? They call it “losing”.
Adam
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore
danielx
@Archon:
This.
The only deal Republicans are interested in with Obama is if he a) resigns and b) commits suicide, with or without assistance, and in whichever order.
KG
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): because nobody really sees Biden as a viable successor to Obama and the Clintons still know how to play the game. like 2008, she’s the default choice and there just aren’t any alternatives that make sense right now.
Ruckus
@goblue72:
Not all whites are rethugs. Not even all the old white males. Too big a percentage, absofuckinglutely. But not all whites. I can see how you’d make that mistake though.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree. And I don’t see anyone out there with the cred to do that.
Suzanne
@askew: I am so sick of the notion of “inspiring the base”. Like, HOW MUCH FUCKING INSPIRATION DO THEY NEED?! Who are these fuckers who will only vote if they’re “inspired”?
I hate everybody. I need a drink and a mercy fuck.
Steppan
Wasn’t really expecting a hold, but I wasn’t expecting the total rout this has seemed to turn into. Especially stuff like this:
“Wow. ABC’s political director says that turnout among women in Colorado was the lowest it’s been in over twenty years” (Vox live feed).
The mind, it boggles.
Violet
@The Dangerman:
Not necessarily.
Beatrice
@Rob: Brown ran a terrible horrible repulsive campaign. I know several lifelong Democrats in Maryland who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him.
mai naem
i give up. I was at a convenience store a couple of months ago and two cashier guys were discussing the minimum wage. The one idiot was telling the other one that he didn’t believe in a 10$ min wage because people should earn up to it. Now this idiot probably makes $8.50/9.50 and he doesn’t want a raise? These are how stupid Americans are. And then there’s the idiots who go to the megachurches and buy the Left Behind crap and the ooga booga gheys and the world’s coming to an end but make sure you give us your tithe. I give up.
Irony Abounds
Perhaps instead of relying solely on the war on women Democrats could try to focus more on populist economic issues like the minimum wage. When that passes in Nebraska and Arkansas, that tells you there may be a bridge to the middle class whites. And I do not mean to minimize how harmful Republicans are to women’s rights, it’s just that however big the gender gap may be with women, it’s just a large with men, so Dems at best tread water.
FlipYrWhig
Thank God, Melissa Harris Perry on the teevee.
cckids
@seefleur:
This. My 2 younger ones are in college; tonight makes me ill, thinking of what may happen to the Supreme Court especially. Christ knows they are bad enough now.
FlipYrWhig
@Irony Abounds: Of course people seem to be quite happy to vote for the minimum wage and NOT for the Democratic candidates. So maybe not the magic bullet.
MomSense
@Davis X. Machina:
This is depressing.
Wutang
@Steppan:
They didn’t hold the line. A rout was inevitable.
skerry
@srv: Don’t know. I’m in MD now, but I’ve heard it is nice in Vancouver. I’m so depressed. If the MD gov goes Republican, I don’t know what I’ll do.
GregB
This is becoming an unmitigated rout.
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle: I don’t think I have.
It’s kind of ridiculous, at this point.
Politics is situational but a lot of people don’t seem to be able to get past their feelings and get this.
We just get our dick stomped into the dirt. Don’t start gloating about how someone’s endorsement didn’t finish an election.
The Dangerman
@Violet:
I read someplace recently that the Dem’s get to 250 easily; win 1 key swing state or a couple smaller ones and it’s over.
KG
@Dave C: i knew the election was coming because i know these sorts of things, but this might be the first election in my life where i would kind of forget about it if it wasn’t for Stewart/Colbert and the couple of blogs I read. there was no big issue that could serve to galvanize the electorate, no referendum on the president as there was in 2006. in a lot of ways, it was easy to forget about it.
FlipYrWhig
@Steppan: As a percentage? Because if other groups spike, that can mess with the percentages for the ones that don’t.
p.a.
Someone on some thread said something that bears repeating: sack up! We sure as hell survived 2004. It’ll be ugly for a while, and America will get what it deserves, good and hard, and people will be hurt…er… I thought I was going to get to something positive. Oh yeah- these people are MORONS WHO CANNOT GOVERN. If the American people need a few more states to be Brownbacked, we better make sure OUR Democratic Party points out the results every day for the next two years.
Suzanne
@mai naem: I seriously want to split the country into red and blue, and then let the red fuckers degenerate into cannibalism and anarchy. Tired of sharing a country.
Elie
@Wutang:
You got that right. I am more furious with the Democrats who did not stand up for what they believed and got their asses kicked anyway! That ALWAYS happens — be proud — STAND FOR SOMETHING!
I woke up with a bad feeling today. They will definitely impeach Obama. Period.
He is the symbol of government. The only reason whites dominated was because the Democrats stayed home — the very people who needed government most, stayed home.
sigh
skerry
@Beatrice: Brown’s campaign sucked. I didn’t vote for him in the primary. But Hogan will be worse.
Irony Abounds
Perdue is going to fight for the Fair Tax. Good for him. Now go shove a h*t poker up your a$$ you flaming piece of excrement.
Steppan
@FlipYrWhig:
“turnout among women lowest in Senate exit polls going back to 1992”.
Omnes Omnibus
No concession yet from Burke.
beltane
@askew: Her stale platitudes in favor of a failed economic model will, I’m sure, be a winning message.
This place is a redneck cesspool. Some of us work to float above it all but our efforts always turn out to be futile.
Violet
The Democrats need to do things and then scream loudly over and over and over again about how they gave people things. Bridges. Healthcare. Roads. Social Security. Whatever. “We gave you this nice thing.” over and over again.
People are dumb. They don’t know that the Kynect health insurance is because of Democrats. They don’t know that the reason their 24 year old kids can stay on their insurance is because of Obamacare. They’re stupid. They have to be told a million times. And then threatened. “If you don’t vote for Democrats, the Republicans will take away the nice thing.”
Elie
@p.a.:
Man — its different now. They WILL impeach this President — try to drag him through the final depredation necessary to completely erase his Presidency. Watch. This is NOT just a loss of the senate….
Steppan
@p.a.:
With an incredible amount of damage.
Tonight feels very sobering for our chances in the upcoming cycles.
pseudonymous in nc
@Dave C:
I assume that they vote in presidential years expecting shit to get done, and then when shit does not get done, or less shit gets done than they were promised, they don’t vote. It doesn’t help that you have candidates who steadfastly refuse to say “look at these fuckers who’ve done nothing but stop shit from getting done for the past two years.”
Like I said, you have two election cycles now: one for the idealists, one for the reactionaries, and idealism has a one-year half-life.
mdblanche
@FlipYrWhig: I’ve been feeling that way for a while now. I’ve hated myself for it, but I’ve been hating myself less and less.
FlipYrWhig
@Elie: What’s worse: consider that they ran on exactly what they believed in.
KG
@The Dangerman: could be anywhere from about 200 to 250 depending on what states you consider potentially in play. the low end if you put Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Illinois in play; the high end if they are not in play.
sharl
@Rob: Yeah, the MD Governor’s race is surprisingly something of a barn-burner at this point. I don’t know if the media is getting their news earlier than the unofficial updates posted to the state’s BoE site for that race, but just perusing the counties/precincts reported information at that state site, it looks like a lot of precincts that normally go strongly Dem – especially the heavily populated areas around Baltimore and DC – still haven’t reported. Nearly all of the Republican-leaning rural counties have reported. [And I don’t know how Anne Arundel county – the location of the state capitol and county seat, Annapolis – normally goes, or why so many precincts there haven’t reported yet.]
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: T
I hope they do.
Corner Stone
Hey! We got at least one Udall!
p.a.
@Bobby Thomson: I believe this has been the hope since about 1880. Good luck.
Valdivia
@Steppan:
wtf is wrong with women that they didn’t vote?
pseudonymous in nc
And yes, Atrios is very much right about the “professional left”, the campaign-infrastructure left.
The people who worked on the tech and grassroots for Obama in 2012? They’re doing other shit now. Often it’s good shit — civic shit, access to government shit — but it’s not campaign shit, and midterms are in the hands of the complacent, small-c conservative fuckwads who tell candidates that they’re not allowed to be Democrats on the campaign trail, they’re not allowed to point out that Joni Ernst is a nutcase of Bachmann-like proportions, and so on. And get paid for doing it.
Suzanne
@pseudonymous in nc: I don’t know if it matters if our candidates say X versus Y, or if they’re aggressive or not. I think there are just more fucking stupid idiots than there are smart people.
The problem is that stupid people are allowed to vote.
FlipYrWhig
@Steppan: Right, but it’s never clear what “turnout” means. Sometimes it means the percentage of the populace and sometimes it means the percentage of the electorate.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’d also like to ask Democrats in Massachusetts to stop nominating Martha Coakley for things. Please?
F
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t an impeachment attempt be an unmitigated positive? For us I mean.
Archon
@Elie:
Agreed, anyone who thinks this doesn’t end in impeachment is living in candy land.
Democrats are gonna have to fight like hell just to keep Obama in office for his full term
Steppan
@Valdivia:
Fuck if I know!
Irony Abounds
@p.a.: My biggest concern is the we had the perfect laboratory experiment from 2001-2009. Republicans in control of the Presidency, Congress for 6 years and the Supreme Court. What happens? The country fights two disastrous wars, and the economy implodes. Obama wins and you’d think the country maybe learned it lesson, but no, it puts the House in Republican hands in 2010 and gives them both houses in 2014. Republicans proved their policies don’t work, and the American public shows it has short term memory problems. This proves the American public, in general, is stupid, and why should we expect things to improve when lessons learned in blood and treasure are so easily forgotten.
Turgidson
A bunch of certifiable lunatics in the Senate, and a bunch of historically terrible GOP governors all cruise to wins.
This fucking country. This. fucking. country.
Once again, I’m glad to be in the People’s Republic of California.
FlipYrWhig
Andrea Mitchell is horrible.
drews326
It’s a long war.
The Dangerman
@Omnes Omnibus:
They won’t impeach; they aren’t THAT stupid.
Of course, we will have at least one extended shutdown (because they ARE that stupid).
@Turgidson:
Indeed, maybe we should build a fence to keep out the hordes of stupid (we’d have to find a way to get Vegas inside the fence is all).
Steppan
@FlipYrWhig:
I assume it’s of the women electorate.
Either way though, it’s both abysmal and shocking.
SFAW
@askew:
You’re dreaming. He may not cave in the first six months, but he will eventually.
@Brian R.:
Kindly blow it out your ass. This was somewhat worse than the usual midterms. The Senate flipped in a somewhat bigger way than expected, the evil motherfuckers (Scott, Walker, and probably LePage) got re-elected, and the Treasonous Old Party owns both Houses of Congress. Rancid Preibus has been coming in his pants for the last hour or two, because he thought he’d get the Senate, but not this well/badly.About the only things that went OK were Shaheen beating “Where Do I Move to Now?” Brown, and a few other isolated races.
So, please forgive me if I entertain the concept that you might not have a clue.
@Dave C:
Well, shit like that happens when you act as if your “base” is one big pain in your ass.
GregB
I knew I should have started that internet meme about how Ebola could be caught by using a dirty voting machine.
Suffern ACE
@Archon: yep. They will shut down government until Obama resigns.
Turgidson
Good god, I hadn’t noticed that even that knuckledragging theocratic bastard Brownback is going to squeak through. Wow.
Valdivia
@Steppan: me too. wish I understood what this election was about that caused that drop-off
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I looked at that good man.. he is so skinny…
This jes aint right… jes aint right.
He stood up and has taken so much — so much. I have a hard time thinking of yet another ordeal….For what? For what? The man tried to bring health care — HEALTH CARE to people who did not have it. He has tried to stand for doing the right thing — from Ebola to gay rights.
This jes aint right
Elizabelle
OK. If the Republicans want to see everything in terms of taxes and spending, let’s see what living in a low-tax and low-wage and low-opportunity utopia does for your average American.
And Iowa has just elected what my Colorado friend called “Palin from the Plains.”
America, behold your pig-castrating Senator out of the heartland.
Linnaeus
@Elie:
If the Republicans do, it would be a serious overreach. They don’t have the votes to remove the president, so it would just be a silly exercise.
Then again, that may not stop them.
MomSense
Fuck. Ernst, also too.
She is a pig castrator who believes in bizarre conspiracy theories and is keeping a gun to defend herself from the government.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
So it turned out even worse than the most pessimistic of us imagined?
Fuck all. It’s over. It really is basically just fucking over, isn’t it? GOP fucking owns the entire fucking country top to bottom for real now, and there doesn’t seem to be any fucking way to stop them. We’re a full on fucking full right-wing country forever at this fucking point, because apparently anything we can do just makes the entire goddamn country hate us more and turn them even more right wing.
What’s the fucking point anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@Archon: Which Democrats will vote to remove him from office? You’ll need to name around 15 for Obama to be in danger.
Elizabelle
@Elie:
Sending you a hug, Elie, and hugs to President and Mrs. Obama too. Tomorrow morning, over coffee, they might be thinking “we have two more years of this?”
But he is up for it.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: Or if liberals aren’t “the base,” which is also a distinct possibility.
TCG
@Irony Abounds: When are you guys going to figure it out? It’ not about an economic message. Economics has nothing to do with it. This is about whiteness. Most people are voting their whiteness and will for the forseeable future because it is under threat from non-whiteness. You think these people are voting against their best interests and don’t know it, but as far as they are concerned their whiteness is what’s best for them. These folks just gave the middle finger to the ni**** in the WH, the ni****s and the ni**** lovers that voted him into the WH. The is no bridge or common connection to be made and nobody who can make it. Never has been and never will be. The GOP is the white people’s party and the Democrats are the everybody else’s party. Democrats fucked up by running from the guy that get’s everyone else to the polls. If the Dems want to win in 2016, 2018, 2020, etc keeping the Obama coalition together and voting is the way to do. They won’t be taking white votes from the GOP in the next election cycle. It will be a waste of time.
mai naem
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I know Obama’s going to be blamed but, shit, the Clintons spent a lot of time in Ky and Ark and didn’t get any results.
Today feels worse than 2010. 2010 I just thought people were snookered on O-care – death panels etc. This time, ugh, people know people who are doing just fine on O-care. WTF?
And as far as Ky – I hope they get fucked hard without any K-Y.Ungrateful pigs.
Sloegin
Depressing but not suprising. We’ve all been hostage to demographics for most of our lives. Boomers have been entering retirement for some time now, and the biggest population cohort turning into a bunch of reactionary conservative loons means that we’re all stuck with Amerika with a ‘K’ for a very long time.
skerry
Elizabelle
@Linnaeus:
Yeah. I agree. Impeachment is not their friend.
eemom
@p.a.:
I’m with you. This may be a shitty night, but the pendulum is gonna swing back again.
However, the geniuses around here don’t seem to have any better perspective on the long term than your average emmessemmbot dipshit, so whatever.
FlipYrWhig
Oh my God, Luke Russert is going to have an orgasm over Joni Ernst.
Elizabelle
Follow the money.
I want to know who bought this election. Taking names. And make them own these horrible politicians they bought.
Steppan
@skerry:
Beat me to it.
Corner Stone
So hilarious. Thanks, Iowa!
Omnes Omnibus
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: No offense, but get a fucking grip. It was a bad night. Just stop with the wails of despair.
Adam
Once Walker becomes President (it will happen) by the end of his first term, we’ll be a third world country (if we’re not already), by the end of his second term we’ll be living in a Philip K Dick/Marget Atwood/Hunger Games hellhole
Wake up and smell the ashes
Valdivia
@mai naem:
this. for me its not the senate which was expected if painful
its the governors
that blows me away
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: He fucking loves that crazy ass hog castrating cougar.
MissWimsey
Dems lose Illinois :(
Andrea
Rent in Vancouver can’t be higher than where I live now (San Francisco).
Catching up on DVR’d episodes of Sherlock and avoiding TV news.
Ruckus
@The Dangerman:
No.
They really are that stupid. It should be obvious that stupid people like to vote for people like themselves. The stupid people expect the people they elect to be stupid motherfuckers because they are stupid motherfuckers.
mai naem
@MomSense: She’s not keeping a gun to protect herself from just any government – it’s Obama’s SoshulistMarxistOogaBoogaGheyLovingIRSabusing Government. AKA the Niclang! government.
TCG
@Archon: What evidence do you have that Democrats will fight to defend President Obama? Please, if the GOP impeaches him we can kiss him good bye because he will not get the support that Bubba got. Nor will he get the boost in approval ratings. Gee, I wonder why?
FlipYrWhig
@Adam: Who was the last president with as little personal charisma or appeal as Scott Walker? George H.W. Bush, I guess? And before that, Nixon. It would be a hell of a thing.
Suffern ACE
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: pretty much. The vaunted demographic shift that’s supposed to allow the Dems to take control isn’t going to matter.
Rob
@Beatrice — I wasn’t paying attention to the campaign, so I didn’t know.
@sharl — I’m hoping those precincts will turn the tide.
A Humble Lurker
@SFAW:
Why?
Helen
@Elie: You are correct. The only positive part of that is the Teabaggers are now going to learn that “impeach” does not mean “throw out of office.” It is going to be a shock to them and they will lose their shit. Again. And take it out on the Republicans.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Starbursts.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@F:
At this point, I’m praying for the to impeach the president. If there’s anything that will wake lame-O, sorry-ass American midterm non-voters up and freak them out, it’ll be impeaching the president. It makes me sad that so many Americans seemingly can only do the right thing when the Republicans burn the country down, but, well, if there’s any kind of a good side to the Republicans burning the country down, it’s that it might–might–wake Americans the fuck up.
Mike E
@skerry: Heh, beat me to it. Cognitive dissonance–it’s baked in!
FlipYrWhig
@Helen: they don’t take things out on the Republicans. They hang together and hope everyone is concealing their true batshittery.
Irony Abounds
@TCG: Perhaps you didn’t see my post way above, but I made the point that the Dems lost because this country is full of scared, angry white males. But what you miss is the fact that because of vote suppression the Obama coalition will find it harder and more difficult to vote while the whites become further alienated. You have to find someway to convince the middle and lower class whites that they are endless getting it in the ass by the plutocrats. I’m not saying it will be easy in any way shape or form, which is why I am decidedly pessimistic about the future of this country.
Juju
@eemom: Republicans face a harder battle in two years than the Democrats faced this time. Dems only defending two iffy seats. Republicans defending, I think, 34. Ron Johnson, Mark Kirk, Rubio, and so on. Tonight is no fun, but its not the end of the world. I just hope Kay Hagan wins.
srv
John Cole, November 2004:
Just Some Fuckhead
@Steppan: well, yeah, if Democratic voters don’t bother showing up to vote, there’s a good chance Democrats will lose.
JoyfulA
@Ruckus: My 93-year-old white father has been voting D for a long time.
Beatrice
You can kinda tell which people here didn’t live through the 80s.
Davis X. Machina
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
F=MA. Numbers matter. So does intensity.
A small number, in absolute terms, of dedicated, crawl-over-broken-glass voters can win mid-term elections.
pseudonymous in nc
@Irony Abounds:
Louisiana Republicans blame Obama for Katrina. That’s American politics for you.
@Suzanne:
No, let’s not do that. That’s heading into GOP “well, wimmins shouldn’t vote” territory.
Stupid people vote all the time. They’re always going to vote. The question is how you cancel out their votes and then some. The answer is that you give them something to vote for. The current political climate in the US — pretty much since Bob Dole shat all over Bill Clinton in ’93 — is that when Democrats win elections, Republicans pull out the stops to prevent them from governing, and they get rewarded for it two years later because the electorate either didn’t get what was promised or goes into “vote out everyone” mode or
You win midterms by fighting that opposition in the year before. That requires Democrats in Congress with fucking spines, not ones who want to hide under their desks and then say “vote for me”.
Baud
@srv:
He got better.
@Juju: they’ve called it for Tillis.
LookingForACanadian
Welp, it appears that MN has largely decided to stay on the sane train.
(This is not always the case, alas.)
Very thankful for this place tonight, btw.
max
@srv:
{snork} Well, one out of three ain’t bad.
max
[‘Evan Bayh? Really Cole? What were you thinking?’]
Juju
@eemom: @eemom: Who knows? Maybe Grassley will go down in 2016. He’s got to be in his 80’s by then.
tam1Mi
“The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”
… but only if we push it.
Linnaeus
@eemom:
Probably, at least to some extent. But not all pendulum swings are created equal. Some are truly part of a realignment and others are a brief interregnum in a longer-term trend.
Given our disappointment in tonight’s results, we are going to need some time to get perspective. It’s easy to overstate the impact of any given election. But we can’t rest on “2016 will be different” either.
KG
@TCG: you realize that they need 67 votes in the senate to remove Obama, right? you think there are 15-17 Democrats that will vote to convict? Hell, you think that all 51-52 Republicans will hold the line? They didn’t with Clinton and they won’t with Obama.
that said, don’t count me among those hoping for impeachment.
SFAW
@The Dangerman:
You haven’t been paying attention for the last five years, have you? The Rethugs have learned that they can do any shitty thing and not pay a political price for it.
Or maybe you can show me I’m wrong, by telling me EXACTLY WHAT POLITICAL PRICE those treasonous, seditious motherfuckers have paid since 2009. And, no, Obama getting re-elected is NOT a price they paid.
Juju
@Baud: Crap.
Suzanne
The silver lining: The district in which Mr. Suzanne is an educator passed their bond override. So he can expect his first raise in six years.
I still want to barf.
Mike E
Welp, Goldilocks went down like the middling candidate she is. Not too left, not too right…roadkill.
Elizabelle
@tam1Mi:
Thank you. I have been thinking that tonight. Thank you for saying it.
Maybe the GOP just won enough rope to hang itself. It is possible.
grandpa john
@Archon: you know people here really ought to understand the working of things like impeachment before they put on the sack cloth and ashes and head for the wailing wall.
Wutang
A demon like Gillespie reemerging after we had buried them in 2008, would be the sign of an ancient evil returning, and a harbinger of Jeb Bush in 2016.
mai naem
@GregB: Mine was a much better suggestion. Get a bunch of darker skinned AA female voters, have them dressed in the distinctive West African clothing – the batikish cotton maxidress outfits with the matching headdress – and have them hang out at teabagger rich precincts. Fight fire with fire.
I always remember in 08 there was some ratfucking GOTV where an obviously black accented or Latino accented caller was calling ethnic eastern european Democrats for GOTV and it was a Republican outfit pulling this shit trying to suppress Dem GOTV. I was telling this tale to a friend who’s Eastern European who’s from NY and before I’d even finished the story he knew what was going on.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Joni Ernst laughs a whole fucking lot–huh huh huh huh huh!–at her own jokes. If the Republicans are dumb enough to mistake her for their next big star, and I think they are, then that can only help the Democrats.
Juju
@Mike E: oh well. I did what I could. Who knew NC was so nuts?
TCG
@SFAW: THIS. There is nothing to stop the. Nothing at all. They never pay a price for their actions because………….white people.They are the white people’s party and that is an advantage that they never lose. I honestly don’t know what to do about it. A Democratic president, even if he or she serves two terms will maybe have a year to do a couple of good things and that’s it. Practically nothing after that. Its depressing.
Adam
@FlipYrWhig:
Amorphous enough that he will be able to win the money people and the baggers, SC allows even more racist ID laws, those making the south even more impossible to win, thus allowing him to get in, regardless if it’s close or not
We’re total fucked is my point, I’m going to read some Malcolm X or something .
tam1Mi
@Mike E: Could you kindly elucidate who “Goldilocks” is for us not up on the latest slang?
Helen
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah well. I have no more fucks to give. I’m gone.
The Dangerman
@SFAW:
It’s not?
Don’t get me wrong, the next 2 years are gonna suck; Obama will be the Lamest of Lame Ducks. Impeachment, however, is a bridge too far and the Right well knows it.
ETA: Along with shutdowns, get ready for Benghazi, 7×24, as we go towards 2016 (not to tear down Obama; to tear down Hillary). Also, lots and lots of Monica Lewinsky.
Ruckus
@JoyfulA:
Haven’t quite made it to 93 but I am of medicare age and so have I. I take offense (but certainly do understand the reasoning) when I get lumped into such a despicable group as rethuglican voters based on my lack of skin color and age.
Elizabelle
@Juju:
Tillis elected surprises me. I thought NC had a serious case of buyer’s remorse.
And all the splendid work of Moral Mondays.
Sad. It’s a lovely state.
Juju
@tam1Mi: Kay Hagan.
Archon
Impeachment will hurt them just like the shutdown and threatening to default hurt them right?
I swear even smart, high info progressives can’t quite accept how radical the GOP is, and how the country doesn’t give a fuck
pseudonymous in nc
@Wutang:
Well, Barbara Comstock, GOP ratfucker extraordinaire, won the VA-10 House seat. Wingnut welfare means GOPpers have zombie careers.
And yes, of course they’re going to impeach next year. That is their nature.
Elie
@Elizabelle:
Thank you for the hug. ACCEPTED!
I have no idea how he does it. I have no proof of it, but I don’t think Michele does as well and I don’t effing blame her. I would be keeping “the list” and have a long and very detailed memory.. (sorry, that is just ME)
Jimmy Carter’s put down really stands out and stings now, though I doubt it factored majorly — just that a former DEMOCRATIC President chose the time before the midterms to rain shit down on this President — like he wouldnt remember what it was like. I will never forgive him for it.
grandpa john
@F:
yes actually it would
Juju
@The Dangerman: @Elizabelle: I agree. I think the state and other things have to hit rock bottom before they figure things out. Again…oh well.
RaflW
@Linnaeus:
Which is why I say “Do it. Do It! DO IT!!”
The GOP will overplay their hand after tonight anyway, but go whole hog, please. Trying to sort out the impeachment thing in the House will distract them for months. There will be infighting.
The Senate won’t ever reach 2/3rds on it, so it’s all just a shitshow that may, perhaps, show the Village Idiots as well as the voters that the GOP cannot be trusted.
vhh
The good news in all this is that voters that re elect GOPer governors who have damaged their states finances may get a chance to ride those airplanes into bankruptcy. The next best thing to getting rid of guys like Brownback is for the states who elect them to go down the tubes as object lessons in getting what you vote for. Too bad the kids will suffer.
Elizabelle
I am not going to watch cable or network news for as long as I can take a break.
Think I might cancel the WaPost for a while too. That would feel good.
RaflW
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
The one single solitary state that voted Mondale in ’84 is staying blue, thank you.
Juju
@Elizabelle: It will be interesting, to say the least.
robotswillstealyourjobs
Don’t mourn, organize.
mdblanche
@mdblanche: Just to be clear, when I said constitutional crisis, I would rank an impeachment as the least severe one that could happen.
For the first time in years I look at the political situation and I feel fear. Even if the good guys are favored in 2016, I think the next two years will be even rockier than any since, I don’t know. Expect the unexpected. Don’t be surprised if even if we win big in 2016, something bad happens along the way, something that produces damage that can’t be easily or quickly fixed.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
that may, perhaps, show the Village Idiots as well as the voters that the GOP cannot be trusted.
Hard to teach idiots anything. Especially when they are paid well to be smiling idiots. And how many of them are GOP anyway? I’d bet most of them.
Mike E
@Juju: Not nuts, juju. Politics being what it is, you cannot sell something so bland and uninspiring. Hagan lost because she just didn’t really want to win…as a dem voter, I want champions for the cause and she didn’t care for our cause in the end. Truman was right seven fucking decades ago; it was never rocket science.
Linnaeus
@Archon:
I wouldn’t put the shutdown and default threats in the same category as impeachment. The first two are serious, but look somewhat abstract to a lot of voters – they’ll pin it down to politicians doing what they do and figure that everybody’s wrong, so it’s a wash.
Impeachment, however, is much more tangible. There’s no abstraction here – you’re trying to remove the highest elected official in the country. I don’t see how that’s a win for the GOP, even considering how far right they’ve gone. That may be a bridge too far.
Of course, I’ve been wrong before.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
I haven’t watched TV or news programs for 10 yrs now. I still live in the same country and am still affected by the same stupid assholes who get elected by the same stupid asshole voters regardless. That said, I’ve had occasion to catch snippets of the “news” over the years and I’m 100% sure that my blood pressure is much better not seeing any more than that.
Mike E
@Elizabelle: Heh, he’s your problem now! Ok, I just made myself cry a little.
My little tractor junction just ousted an entire power bloc of obstructionist commissioners who kept progress at bay with a 4-3 margin. Now we can have public transportation upgrades and worthwhile public amenities, and with Tillis gone, a real answer to the Kochs/Pope assholes in the General Assembly. More than a silver lining, it’s a real break. Thank god.
Davis X. Machina
38% turnout overall, according to David Frum.
A small number, in absolute terms, of crawl-over-broken-glass voters is sufficient to deliver mid-term elections.
We saw that in 2010.
Elizabelle
@Mike E: I am happy for you. That’s wonderful, and a bright spot.
Juju
@robotswillstealyourjobs: @robotswillstealyourjobs: We need to catch our breath, take a rest and then get back to work and continue the fight. I think I’d like Joe Stestak to give it another try. I’m just sad NC will have two nut jobs in the senate for four years. Burr goes down in four years if I’m still here in NC.
Wutang
We’ve lost Maryland, I repeat, we’ve lost Maryland.
Lurking Canadian
@mdblanche: I see what you did there.
Elie
I can’t wait until Obama is out of office. I imagine he can’t either. This country can go fuck itself, which it seems to be doing quite nicely.
Did anyone of you receive a nice campaign contribution request from HILLARY? As usual, nice timing, stupid one. The house is on fire and you want to sell me your donuts rather than working to save this Congress?
Yeah, I will remember you real well….
Violet
@vhh: Those of us who live in red states know exactly what it’s like for the kids to suffer. And poor people. And all of us really, with our crap ass roads and nonexistent safety laws and so forth. So maybe it’s a good thing that Brownback gets to reap what he sowed with the economic disaster he unleashed upon the people of his state. Better than leaving a Democrat holding the bag, which is how it usually goes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: If she is the nominee, what will you do?
Ruckus
What probably hurts the worse about this election was the thought up till this afternoon when results started coming in, that things might not be that bad, that surly not all the fucking nut jobs will win. And then most of them have. Those of you calling for us to sack up and all, why? Is this election a wash as far as what will happen to the country? No. What would make you think that if people voted this way now (and yes I understand mid term elections) they won’t vote this way in 2 yrs? Yes it may still be about race(and it is) but how many nut jobs will think we can’t let dems win, look who the elected last time? I thought it was possible that the country was tilting a bit back to the left after the disaster that was the shrubster, but now it looks like it really wasn’t. How much bad news does it take to be actual bad news?
sharl
@Wutang: It’s looking that way. I posted the following in the wrong thread:
And local reports are that a concession speech is expected from Brown; he’s just come to the microphone to speak to his supporters.
Juju
@Mike E: You are probably right. At least Tillis can’t do any more damage at the state level, and at the federal level it’s going to be such a stinky mess on the R side, he will just be a bystander or poo thrower. There is also that one term curse NC has. I think Burr is the only recent NC senator to not get booted out after one term. So there’s that to look forward to in six years.
Karen in GA
@The Dangerman:
Some of them are. I’ll bet the ones that are will scream loud enough and get enough people riled up and clamoring for impeachment that the Rs that aren’t that stupid will have to go along.
I keep thinking about the Florida congressman in the 90s who said that even if the Senate convicts Clinton, it doesn’t mean Clinton has to be removed from office.
Don’t underestimate the power of the stupid.
Morzer
Greed, ignorance and hate plus a timely dose of vote suppression facilitated by a corrupt white man’s SCOTUS win the day over well-intentioned decency with far too little to say for itself. I’d like to say I was surprised, but the last 40 years in the US made this outcome all too sadly predictable.
Well, onwards and upwards to 2016 and the glorious restoration of House Clinton.
sharl
@sharl: Yep, Brown just conceded the Governor’s race, here in (usually) deep blue MD, to Republican Larry Hogan.
ETA: After Brown’s short concession speech, the crowd “is completely stunned”, according to the on-scene reporter. Both houses of the state legislature are still Democratic, so ’twill be interesting.
Gravie
On a happy note, I have a dear friend in Panama City, Florida — one of the reddest parts of Florida — who really put her heart and soul into working to defeat Steve Southerland by supporting Gwen Graham. Graham won, so hooray for whatever victories there were to be had.
Juju
@sharl: Will hogan be another Michael Steele?
Wutang
If we were going to lose this badly, we should’ve done it in a way that didn’t totally push the overton window further right. We should’ve at least fought for things we believed in – If for no other reason than to have us in a better position for the next fight.
Morzer
@Wutang:
But… Democrats… but bipartisanship… but both sides do it….
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I THINK I MIGHT vote for her. I am not seeing a difference between her and any Republican she runs against.
What she has done recently to back stab Obama, makes me wonder … I really cannot stand her but its hard to tell if I can override my disgust enough.
These are fearful times — this is analagous to the NAZIs — this is the white people of this country “re-litigating” the Civil War. The Union did not win — we are continuing to fight it and they want to make this into a third world slave plantation. Everything about the white people that have been elected makes me know that we have a long long hard road if we are to save this democratic “experiment”. And let me go back to screaming at the Democrats — I HATE THEM. I sent them tons of money and they ran shit campaigns that disavowed any principles. They can kiss my ass.
Morzer
@Ruckus:
If bad news occurs in a country and Fox News either denies it or blames it on the Democrats…..is it bad news?
Mike E
@Juju: After Sanford and Helms, these seats aren’t legacy anymore… tho a couple of years of Tillis could make Burr look august enough, heh.
Paula
If I’m being honest, re the Senate:
nothing is getting done either way. I’m not sure I need to wail about this the way you all seem to be. And if crazy shit gets passed, so what? The crazy shit will fail and make the Republicans vulnerable in the next election.
Wisconsin managed to elect a fucker twice that a whole lot of them protested not too long ago. If they don’t give a fuck , I don’t see why I should.
Florida is Florida.
At least a lot more people have health care, now. Not enough people, but more.
I am a Californian, so I guess I can afford to be sanguine about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus:
It is bad news. Horrible, even. The question becomes how does one respond to the news. Me, I continue to have hope for the future, but even if I lose that hope, my only option is to keep fighting. Other people’s mileage may vary.
seefleur
@Elizabelle: Things don’t go better with K-O-C-H…
sharl
@Juju: Too early to tell what will happen. According to the chatter I am listening to right now, one area of battle will be over transportation issues, where Hogan opposes some initiatives that the state Dem machine has been pushing.
Michael Steele was Lt. Governor under Bob Ehrlich (2003-2007), so comparison’s are difficult. I suspect Larry Hogan (who has already been inaugurated by Wikipedia) will be the darling of the national GOP – at least initially – while (IMO) Steele was only reluctantly selected to chair the party (2009-2011) after they got womped on by the Dems nationally. And Steele was dealt with rather contemptuously by many other GOP leaders and right-wing pundits during that time. Somehow I don’t think Hogan will receive that contempt, even after the post-election euphoria has worn off.
ETA: Someone fixed the Wikipedia entry to read “Governor-elect”; I logged into my account there for nuthin’…
seefleur
@Elizabelle: HInt: Things DON’T go better with K-O-C-H…
Juju
@Mike E: Burr will be Helms and we will have that seat that changes every six years, or some sort of nightmare like that.
max
@Elie: And let me go back to screaming at the Democrats — I HATE THEM. I sent them tons of money and they ran shit campaigns that disavowed any principles. They can kiss my ass.
Lots of people were unhappy with Bill Clinton in 1999 and 2000. They wuz so unhappy they decided to vote for Ralph Nader in the next election and Al Gore decided to run away from Bill Clinton.
You can see how well that worked out.
max
[‘So no, unless you want nothing for ever, you should not do what you’re thinking of doing.’]
Juju
@sharl: I had it in my mind that Steele was governor. Are enough Dems around to keep Hogan in Check?
Wutang
@max:
Or, unless democrats want nothing forever, maybe they can try BEING ACTUAL LIBERALS AGAIN!!!
Elizabelle
@Gravie:
I’m happy about that. Thank you.
Elie
@Paula:
You have the sense of comfort and “so what”that many middle class white people do. Nothing seems to really affect you and so the long view is usually pretty ok..
Us black folks are a little different. We have to watch things and prepare (though unfortunately not enough of us seem to get that voting is about self preservation — but that is another story)
I knew once we had ISIS wearing black and beheading white people, and EBOLA from AFRICA, that things were gonna be bad. I am grateful and proud that through all that the President did the right thing: did not committ ground troops beyond the minimal despite being kneecapped by everyone including his own Secy of Defense and the last Secy of Defense) and 2) Stood by science and morality to support appropriate public health policy and sent troops and care givers to Africa to help — stood against quarantine.
But that was going to be a bridge to far for white middle class white people — especially white women and there you have it. Sure, local factors played a role but the Democrats,instead of standing for something, all ran for the exits. The highest profile being Cuomo. OBTW, Quinn, the Illinois Governor who grovelled with Cuomo STILL lost — so again, cowardice never pays.
My lesson remains that I hate Democrats. If I didn’t have to live with the consequences of their incompetence, I would celebrate.
sharl
@Juju: I think so, if what went on during the Ehrlich administration is any guide. But that’s a good question. I am going to pay more attention now to what happened in the State legislature contests; outside of my own representatives, I hadn’t even looked at those.
Statewide politics here is very much a Democratic Party machine operation, and as long as that Machine keeps other Dems in line, they’ll stop most of the things they don’t like.
Hell, I don’t even remember the rules for MD legislative overrides of Governor vetoes, so that’s also the sort of thing I’ll be reading up on in the coming days.
Elizabelle
@Elie:
Exactly. I feel like we are in the Weimar states of America, and fascism is on the upswing and its supporters smell blood in the water.
And too many people don’t pay attention to important things — they follow sports and will absolutely vote for talent show programs.
And they don’t know history.
The one silver lining: overreach. The GOP always does.
However, in the new CItizens United world, can they get away with it? To be seen.
Irony Abounds
You want proof America is a racist nation? Mia Love is a black Republican in Utah. She is losing by 7% in a district Romney won by 37%. Oh yeah, Bill O’Reilly, white privilege doesn’t exist. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what a F’d up country we live in.
Linnaeus
@Elizabelle:
I think it’s more of a neofeudal, Gilded Age 2.0 that’s on the upswing.
Elie
@max:
So its MY fault?
What is wrong with them? Do I have to do a back bend to justify why I morally need to support their bullshit?
Indeed I feel like I am still getting a republican no matter what! Isnt that why we ended up with an insurance solution rather than single payer? Senator Nelson and some other dick who ultimately got unelected anyway, killed that possibility!
Yeah, I get it but this is just not going to work for me. I and the majority of working people in this country need a party to represent us that stands for something. If we can’t reshape what we have, lets trash it and start from scratch. This aint working.
hilts
@MomSense:
Joni Ernst is one sick fuck and Iowa is a seriously fucked up state for electing this turd.
Chris
@PaulW:
Word up on Medicaid expansion. I’ve been hoping that even if th e Senate flipped, at least FL would be okay, maybe even enough that I’d be able to count on Medicaid if I couldn’t find a job immediately after leaving college next year.
As it is, nope. Time to start examining the possibility of moving to a state that did aaccept it.
Elie
@Elie:
Let me add that I didnt JUST send money. I am a precinct captain. I doorbelled, and phone banked for over two months. Just phone banked two days ago.
I will work, but I need something to work FOR. Everyone leading the Democrats needs to resign.
What happened to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? This disaster is on her head.
Wutang
We have lost Massachusetts, I repeat, we have lost Massachusetts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: If you stay home, or leave the ballot space blank, or vote for the Republican, you know what will happen. We don’t always have the luxury of voting for a candidate we really want. Sometimes, we have to vote against a candidate we know can’t be allowed near the levers of power.
Wutang
And hell, with Cuomo, we may as well call a spade a spade, we’ve lost New York too. Outside of the city, New York is basically red.
Linnaeus
@Wutang:
It’s not like Massachusetts hasn’t elected Republican governors before. Hell, they elected Romney.
ETA: Maryland, though? That’s a surprise.
Morzer
@Wutang:
Given that MA has elected GOP governors more often than not recently, this strikes me as more of a return to the norm than not. Anyway, Fish Story Baker is going to learn that the Dems run the state and he’d better get used to thanking them kindly for being allowed to sign whatever they tell him to sign.
Chris
@Irony Abounds:
Fuck the American people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll be back to a more analytical and nuanced mood in a few weeks or even days, but for now, fuck the American people. Is it too many Democrats staying home, too many Republicans voting or too many milquetoast moderates switching? Who cares? All of it adds up to “way too many stupid fucks inflicting pain on their fellow citizens” and six years after Bush, I’m just fucking exhausted with it.
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I will Never Stay Home. As God is my witness, I will crawl my bloody ass to vote.
I will NEVER vote Republican unless the earth’s magnetic fields reverse and the earth no longer turns on its axis.
I have no idea what to do. The Democrats need a house cleaning.
sharl
Chris
@skerry:
“The American people want to vote Republican and get Democratic governance.”
– me, three or four years ago.
PhilbertDesanex
@Violet: If Those People take the Prez and keep the Congress in 2016, which may well happen, we demand they repeal Obamacare, every last bit of it. No keeping the free parts, repealing the paying for it, and blaming the deficit on us CommieCrats. Which is exactly the GOP playbook: bet on them doing exactly this, plus military Keynsianism.
I tell this to my closet GOP friends who have 40 year old kids still living at home. I am sooo good at getting people to change the subject.
Wutang
Major systemic failure of all the power systems we had built up:
1) Our media organ failed us. It both failed to inform us of what was coming (seriously, their spin before this slaughter fefeas almost fox news like), and it failed to have an effect on the campaign, both in terms of winning, and in terms of making it more liberal.
2) Our logistical operaton failed us. We couldn’t get out the vote, and we got out-fundraised.
3) Our social base, our voters, women, minorities, etc. is demoralized and did not vote.
4) Our canidates STUNK. Where is our talent? these guys and gals were bad and I don’t see anyone in the farm system ready to step up for 2016.
As a result, our grip on the levers of state was just severely weakened. Systemic failure.
Paula
@Elie:
I’m not white but I’ll play along …
As a student with loans and with the politicking going on with rates, my assumption is that I will be pretty well affected by any short-term policies.
As someone who will likely be looking for a job and therefore not on employer health insurance, the fact that Obamacare could be endangered is also very real.
As someone who wants to work in public education after graduate school … you get my drift.
As for being a Black person affected by Obama’s policies, you’ll find as many people arguing that he’s done nothing as much as he’s done some things to help improve conditions specifically for Black Americans. I can’t comment on that debate, but it’s there.
It’s there specifically because Obama and/or the Dems can’t or won’t go after more progressive policy. They can’t/won’t go after progressive policy because the electorate loves to vote lose its shit over crap like ISIS and Ebola. Also, they’re racist and so crapping over BOTH Black people via Obama-bashing and Brown people via immigration hysteria simultaneously gave them a real happy. Also, when they’re scared, they like dropping bombs and invading countries. They don’t just love drones, man, they love BOMBING and INVADING.
Also, they apparently like the increased minimum wage but CANNOT TELL which party actually wants to give it to them.
So, yeah, crappy Dem candidates lost. A lot of those states were purple, not straight up blue, meaning they were vulnerable, which mean the people representing them were like to be Blue Dog skittish types. Who were never going to do anything about the above even if they kept/won those seats.
PhilbertDesanex
@Linnaeus: All of them , Katie.
Irony Abounds
@Chris: It’s the country’s collective amnesia about how badly the Republicans F*d the country in the 2000s that is just mindblowing. Virtually all the problems plaguing the country today, the mess in the Middle East, the less than stellar economy, the enormous debt, can all be laid at the feet of Republicans, but hey there’s a black guy in the White House, so vote out the Dems.
Elie
@Paula:
You have schooled me and re-taught me a lesson about assumptions from too little information.
My apologies for any disrespect to your real reality
And applause for the sincerity and truth of your comment.My personal favorite:
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: That is all I am saying. If you don’t like Hillary or any other candidate, work like hell to defeat them in the primary. After that, the shittiest Democrat is better than the best Republican.
I think we also need to understand that Obama is/was a once in a lifetime guy. the next dem might not be as inspirational. I know that for AA voters, he is something I cannot conceive. The thing is, I identified with him because he is a guy of about my age – the first one and perhaps only one of my life – who was president. I have college friends who work for him. I get, at a lesser level, the attachment to him. He won’t be on the ballot ever again…. What do we do now?
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, if the trend lines hold good, Martha Coakley is moving up the failed candidacy ladder from Senator to Governor to Presidential candidate….
Irony Abounds
What planet does Chris Matthews live on? He keeps insisting that the Republicans will be reasonable and that Ted Cruz can’t possibly be the nominee in 2016. If I hear one more time how Reagan and Tip O’Neil worked together I think I’ll break my TV.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: Dog help us all.
Elie
@Wutang:
Man, I have NO idea what you mean about “our Media organ”. I don’t think that we have one or have had one. We won previously despite it.
I have to say that Obama has done a lousy job (as Clinton did also), in leaving the party in good shape. Its obvious Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was not effective and no one else was watching the chicken coop. Where’s Howard?
ruemara
@Wutang: Democrats aren’t liberals. Some liberals are democrats. Democrats are not Republicans and that’s about all that’s clear.
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Right. Got it. He is/was gifted, but not perfect. I don’t think he is “once in a lifetime except for the significance of his being the first black President. That is only once.
We had better get someone even better in the next ten years or this country is superfucked. I believe that is possible but we may need a revolution first — not a superficial one like electing a black man — but a REAL one — that does some real deep work on the political foundations here.
I think that is going to be pretty tough. The guardians of “how things are”here in the US has always been the middle and working class white person (up until they really ARE the minority of the voting public). We could have “nice things”like good social policy and benefits for everyone if they supported it. But they want to be superior to everyone else because of their skin color and are willing to eat shit forever and be poor and sick to wear that white skin flag. If their tribe can’t get past that, they will have to be smothered under the weight of demographics. That will be hard, long and very very ugly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: Since we aren’t a parliamentary system, this happens quite often.
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah but we had ( or whoever takes over after Obama) better clean house and fix it. Preferably before that.
Elie
And to add misery to my already miserable night, our local races all sucked. Every single one, damn it.
Goblue72
@Elie: Screaming at his TV.
Elie
@Goblue72:
Yeah – LOL!
I can relate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: A president cannot clean house. Jebus, don’t you think that Obama would have if he could have?
RaflW
MN state House flips GOP. Fuck.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
The nation is definitely ripe for a Manchin/Coakley ticket. I dread to think what it might do to Cole though.
Morzer
@RaflW:
It seems that we are facing a GOP fecal wave across the land. Clearly Dog is displeased – but the punishment feels somewhat excessive.
Goblue72
@Elie: I fear it may come to that. I’m hoping my marriage to a woman of color protects me from the coming well-deserved comeuppance of white people. Although at this rate, I might be 100 before that happens. If anything is for certain, it’s white people’s ability to control the reins of power in spite of bring outnumbered.
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re right.
But even if he could have, how in the hell would he have found the time between pouring buckets of water on his flaming head?
All the people who criticize what he has been able to accomplish just don’t seem to understand. From the day he stepped into that Presidency, he has been balls to the wall. Some have fretted that he hasn’t seemed to “enjoy” the Presidency. Seriously. How the fuck could or would he? I tell you, I have major anxiety just watching what is happening. I cannot imagine what it must be to BE him and hope he can keep it together over the next year and a half.
Shit — just shit. I think when the Ebola thing hit, I just knew ….There was no way to get “in front of it”without being the fearmonger that the politically savvy would know you had to do. He just couldn’t bring himself to do that. White folks wanted him to put up the barricades. He wouldn’t.
Mnemosyne
@Steppan:
What’s the voter ID law like in Colorado, or the other states where turnout among women was notably low? Given the problems that a lot of married women have had proving that their married name is now their legal name, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was one of the most effective bits of voter suppression the Republicans managed to create.
RaflW
Before tonight I was not on the Elizabeth Warren bandwagon. Didn’t even entertain the idea. I was not looking forward to Clinton mk.II but was willing to go along.
But to hell with the triangulating, neocon Democrat flukebucket and her grinning prop-husband.
If we take anything from this election, besides that it was always gonna be heavily tilted GOP on the fundamentals, it’s that soft-pedaling progressive ideals, being ultra-careful and trying to appease is a shit strategy.
(And to the question asked above: I’ll do what I’ve done most cycles. I’ll support a Dem presidential primary candidate that reflects my policy preferences and outlook on civic culture, and when s/he loses, I’ll agree to vote for Hillary. But my political donations will go to local, state and strategic federal races and not to Clinton. She can raise billions from her 1% and 1%-adjacent friends.)
Elie
@Goblue72:
I don’t think of comeuppance. I think of deliverance for all of us who want a WE the people — not WE the White People. My fear is that the WE the White People have way more energy — at least right now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: It was a bad night. We have had bad nights before. We will have good nights in the future. I cried around this time in 2008 and 2012, and I generally cry only at sappy movies. Tonight just pissed me off.
Goblue72
Here’s the truth, Ruth. The great Democratic coalition that held onto Congress for 50 plus years that was built by FDR was composed of immigrants (mostly white), liberals, urban minorities, unions and racist Dixiecrats. It was a crazy patchwork of contradictions but it delivered solid electoral victories AND economically progressive legislation. And it held together as long as black people were kept in the back of the bus.
Then LBJ, aka FDR 2: The Final Chapter, in his own microcosm of contradictions, let black people ride the other seats in the bus – and even sometimes, maybe, sorta, drive it.
Goodbye Dixiecrats. And eventually when Nixon/Reagan got done, goodbye those formerly immigrant whites (aka white ethnics), who also often overlapped with union members.
That left us with liberals, urban minorities and unions. A solid core, but not enough even with the addition of brown & yellow immigrants. So we keep coming up short trying to pick up enough of those white ethnics we lost as those selfsame white ethnics are also kinda sorta racist deep down in their bellies. (Dixiecrats being lost permanently)
We are kinda stuck. We frankly need a white populist who can speak to working & middle class people – like Liz Warren. I’m afraid Hillz doesn’t know how to do without saying something awkwardly racist sounding.
Elie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I hear you.
Time for bed, friends.
Tomorrow is another day–
Gotta stay away from teh tee vee though….
Thanks for letting me rant
mdblanche
@Chris: What a plurality want is to get Democratic governance for they and theirs and Republican governance for the other. They basically want George Wallace. I know people don’t want to hear this, but they will not regard Elizabeth Warren as an acceptable substitute.
Mike E
@Elie: A president cannot do what you call for; he doesn’t ‘run’ the country, and I’m not talking about Congress either…multinational corps do. Only they would let ‘a’ president do anything, if it was something that fits their goals as profit making entities. It seems clear they have this whole election thing cornered, and ordinary citizens have ceded this by agreeing to stay the fuck out of it. Sadly.
One of my gotv calls was to a woman wondering why so few early voting sites were open this time and for only half the duration. It was a rhetorical question; she was 77, black, had had enough of this shit, wanted someone to let loose on, wasn’t voting, and declared the game was over for her. “It’s racist and anti-worker” she said, and alluded to having fought against segregation and for civil rights. Her voice still rings in my head, along with her phrase, “I’m going to god.” What do you say to someone who fought the good fight only to be ignored by her party when she expected to have gotten beyond that, finally, by now?
It ain’t disillusionment more than basic, utter disappointment. We ought to be better than that and it feels kind of like square one. A nice kick in the teeth. And somebody is riding it to the bank. Evil. Revolutions start because of this. How soon?
Elie
@Goblue72:
Gotta go to bed but I am just hoping there is time for the good “white populist”
My fear is that events will press us — or rather the white reactionaries to ever more extreme solutions and candidates.
We’ll see what is next. If Hillary is gonna do this, she better be strapping on tools no one has ever seen her use. I don’t think she has it in her, but we will see.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie: Sleep well; I am far too wired and angry to sleep right now. We’ll get up tomorrow and start to work on kicking the assholes asses – okay?
Elie
@Mike E:
Amen
RaflW
@mdblanche: Most voters want Democratic policies and Republican tax rates, and the see no reason why they can’t have both.
Elizabelle
@Elie: Best to you, Elie. Comment a lot in the coming days.
I am taking a break from TV and news, though.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: I just made myself a cocktail.
This evening is so beyond anything I was expecting.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I only wish drinking could make me sleep. I may have to call in sane to work tomorrow.
What kind of cocktail? Double brandy and ginger ale is my thing tonight (It is in the James Bond canon – He drinks it in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”)
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Having a tiny manhattan made with rye whiskey. Might have another.
Too disturbed to sleep and not in the mood to read.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I don’t think I could work tomorrow. I am gahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Chris
@Goblue72:
The appeal of the demographic changes is that a large enough faction of nonwhite people in America means you no longer have to appeal to those demographics of whites riddled with racial anxieties. Carter had to do it, Clinton had to do it (no accident that the only two Democrats to get elected after civil rights were white men with Southern drawls – and, for that matter, so was the guy who got it passed in the first place). And that was kind of the whole point of the Hillary Clinton campaign, even if it wasn’t said in so many words. Vote for Hillary! She can bring the bubba vote! She can bring in enough Nixon/Reagan Democrats who would be turned off by Obama
because he’s black.Then Obama won the primary. And the Democrats won the election anyway. And won it again four years later. Proving that we were now in a place where you could alienate the White People With Racial Anxieties vote and win, at any rate, a national campaign all the same. And that, frankly, is wonderful. The only question is what’ll win out between demographic changes and voter suppression laws. Republicans are aware of the phenomenon – it’s why they’re putting so much effort into the latter.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: @Elizabelle: I rarely drink and won’t sleep if I do. But i’m wired and angry about the election results.
It’s been another trying day with my parents, followed by an urgent plumbing disaster–the plumber finished at 6:45, just in time for me to leave for an evening meeting, which I had to leave early to get home to make sure my sick family member was fed dinner. I’m wired and tired. Ugh.
Chris
@Elie:
I don’t think it mattered a whole lot (Carter is up there with Herbert Hoover was “President Failure” in the public consciousness anyway). But I was still pissed that, given the results of his own foreign policy, he of all people would bitch about Obama on that of all things. (Yes, I know he mostly had a pileup of bad luck and paid the bills for 25 years of his predecessors’ fuckups, but that doesn’t change the fact that he hardly distinguished himself).
Chris
@Irony Abounds:
Yeah, although that’s something I mostly noticed and came to terms with in 2008-10 – the era that probably finalized my status as a professional cynic (as if growing up in the Bush years hadn’t done enough of that). I couldn’t believe the speed with which the “Obama’s failed presidency” meme took off or the speed with which the public hopped on board with it, after they’d given the previous brain-dead cretin at least five years of second chances and rally-around-the-flag.
It’s why I agreed wholeheartedly a few days ago when someone here mentioned that the last few years and the rise of the teabaggers had done more to kill their faith in the country than the Bush years.
@ruemara:
Agreed.
It’s become conventional wisdom to say that we haven’t been this polarized since before the Civil War, but what sometimes gets left out is that it’s not an equal polarization between liberals and conservatives – then or now. Pre-1860, it wasn’t Party Of Slavery (Democrats) versus Party Of Abolition (Republicans) – it was Party Of Slavery (Democrats) versus Party Of Everybody Who Doesn’t Think Southern Plantation Owners Should Unilaterally Rule The Country (Republicans), of which abolitionists were only a part, just like liberals are only a part of today’s Democratic Party. The crazy took over one party and basically forced every other brand of politics into the other party. So, keeping the other party together = herding cats.
Neil
@OldDave: Amen to that, especially with such a relatively narrow margin of victory for Voldemort. If you think we all suck, John, imagine how we feel! The worst part is the local news had Crist ahead around 7:30ish. A cruel trick, getting my hopes up like that.
Still, as with most people I know, it’s not like we were thrilled with the possibility of another term with Crist in office. This truly was a case of the lesser of two evils. Sadly, the greatest evil won.
Applejinx
The question becomes, given that we live in a banana republic with X resources and Y structural political awfulness, what do we do to survive and what do we do to overthrow? If you actually pay attention to governance and issues it’s clear the system is failed. We are trying to prop it up, but it’s no longer salvageable.
This is because the laws of statistics and abstraction, combined with the ability to control media on various levels, means that freemarket capitalistic predatory behaviors become impossible to counter. Essentially, past a certain point power consolidates until there is only one winner and it is the one who is prepared to trash things the worst. Over-reach and exploiting ‘libertarian’ weakness (claiming people are perfectly informed rational actors and then working to mislead and bullshit them) proves an impossible to beat strategy.
As the scale increases, and as information technology consolidates and gains effectiveness, it becomes possible to stretch this farther than it ever was before. You can keep people in a bubble of ‘this makes sense and will work’ for longer.
The country is still packed full of untermenschen, poisoned with hydraulic fracking fluid, and sold off to Swiss bank accounts, all the same. We’re damn likely to end up like the Weimar Republic (“Between 1930 and 1933 the Great Depression, even worsened by Brüning’s policy of deflation, led to a surge in unemployment. It led to the ascent of the nascent Nazi Party in 1933.”) except stripped of everything. I’m not sure what the world currency is going to be when the global economy collapses, but it won’t be dollars.
It’s all very well for poverty-level people to talk revolution but we’re going to need some intelligent rich people breaking ranks on the deathmarch, perhaps exploiting their resources and position and media-savviness. I saw a thing about an antienvironmentalist ratfucker guy saying win ugly or lose pretty and the key thing there is that a rich oil guy found his message so ghastly that he leaked it, essentially became a mole for our side. You can’t get 100% loyalty to a message like that. Simple self-preservation kicks in at some point.
Death Panel Truck
@askew:
Thank you. Hillary Clinton will be a disaster in 2016. Wake up, people…
Applejinx
@Chris: I, a 46-year-old white guy, would like an opportunity to never vote for another white guy again. I’d really like to publically side with blacks and women and black women and every conceivable ‘unelectable’ demographic, though I am less and less persuaded that voting itself remains functional in our society.
I think the increasing fluidity and directedness of public attention in the cellphone/Facebook age is too prone to exploitation, and I’m unsure what’s next. It’s like you don’t have to hack voting machines if you can hack people’s brains, and we’re continually seeing the results. I’m not sure how far people can be harmed and poisoned before the brainwashing cracks, but the human mind is an alarmingly malleable thing.
My autistic mind tends to balk at things regular minds swallow, which sometimes means I can’t get away from looking at stuff. Maybe that’s okay, somebody’s gotta figure out where all this is going. The Weimar Republic didn’t have cellphone video.
I’m betting the next phase is making the cellphone video lie. Information itself becomes treacherous: the clever evil guys work out ways to make ‘information’ like footage of CGI Obama conspiring to infect Republican strongholds with Ebola, and it goes viral over and over.
If the tenuous hold to information itself breaks down, the only remaining thing is personal experience. If your water in your house literally stinks, makes you sick, and catches fire, you may have no way of communicating that information but it overrides whatever ‘internet information’ you think you believe.
That’s a pretty long way to go to get to ‘truth’, though.
PaulW
What is more horrifying than the GOP taking control of the US Senate is that the GOP looks to be taking control of so many state legislatures. If they get to 38 states under their control… that ALEC SuperPAC will be able to force a constitutional convention and then OH GOD WE ARE SO FUCKED.
PaulW
Where have you gone, Howard Dean? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
SFAW
@The Dangerman:
No, it’s not.
If the electorate had looked around and said “Well, shit! The Rethugs have been hamstringing the darkie for four years. That ain’t right,” Obama would have won NC, and his margin would have been better than 51-47. And his coattails would have been longer. He would never have picked up the Deep South, of course.
So, as I said, the Rethugs have yet to pay any real political price for trying to destroy the country.
Richard briggs
Was hoping that the Lizard King would just shed his skin and slither off the stage, but no joy.
grascarp
One of the talking heads on NPR suggested today that Gov. Rick Scott contributed $15 Millions of his own cash to boost ad buys in Florida during the last week and one-half of the campaign . Given the Florida chief executive’s salary is $132,273 then Gov. Scott spent 113-times his salary in the last couple of weeks to save his job. This Citizens United is killing US .