Once again, having not been one of the Army of the Potomac's minor pundits who was invited to the endless "expert" postmortems before the national TV cameras, I am left to man up to my confusion over the results in this blog while the stars shine in their own well-fed universe in Washington. (A friend tells me that the media is now reduced to a handful of third-tier invitees now that they exhausted hundreds of experts within 24 hours of the election.).
So I will say that the campaigns were the ugliest that anyone could have imagined for a nation that claims a superior grasp of political stability and can-do efficiency. .That could only occur with stable minds and there is plenty of evidence that the pols and the voters had decided it was better to wander off into the Twilight zone.
Exit polls reported that people who knew very little about Obamacare or Wall Street reforms, expressed dissatisfaction with both. They then voted Republican anyway while at the same time listing Wall Street as the No. 1 problem. (In Ohio, whose politics have become an echo of the Deep South, then voted in a governor who spent years as a Wall Streeter.) I would call this cognitive dissonance, except how many of right wingers - pols and their entourages - would understand the term?
The buzzwords arrived daily with clear signs of homophobia, racism and ethnic and religious bias. The angrier ones invoked the Constitution - a sturdy but imperfect document that allowed the founders to condone slavery - some simply regurgitating what somebody else had told them. .
More disconnects: Voters disapproved more "generic" Republicans (only slightly) than Democrats but voted for the GOP candidates. A dingbat, Rep. Tim Jones, represented by birther queen Orly Taitz in a lawsuit against the president, was unanimously endorsed by his Republican caucus in the Missouri House of Representatives to be that party's legislative leader. Textbooks were rewritten. Corporate America funneled millions upon millions of dollars into the campaigns with anonymity granted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Thanks to cable TV and the abetting "mainstream" networks, voters acted more on misinformation than facts - a helluva lot more - which is a measure of a society's decline.
Finally, the Tea Party...well, no need to go into that. You've heard more than enough about it already! Besides, it' s an awful way to start out a new week.
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12 comments:
Dear Grumpy Abe,
You beat me and my family members to the punch and probably stated things better than we would have. Cognitive dissonance.... what a great term and you nailed it. The future does indeed look grim.
Thanks for your post. Keep up the good words...
Well who does know about Obamacare? The bill was huge, and even the legislators that voted for it said they didn't read it!! I think that's reason enough to vote for legislators who refuse to vote for stuff that they never get a chance to read and analyze.
The Tea Party has become the conservative ideology's most successful marketing strategy in American politics displacing the Southern Strategy embraced by conservatives in the Republican Party. It is a marketing scheme that has effectively gotten people to work against their own interests.
Elena, ask your baby. She should be able to explain to you how not being able to get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions can make life very difficult.
Or maybe how paying $1,200 a month for COBRA isn't feasible for a lot of couples.
For too many people Elena, a treatable diagnosis is a slow death sentence. Even a kid knows that......
Goodness, Elena. Do you really want me to believe that the Party of No voted against Obama care because nobody knew what was in the bill? The major points were repeatedly published in newspapers, the Internet, on the cable and probably on the back of one of your utility bills. Why do you want to libel yourself with such silly notions?
I was merely making a comment based on your comment:
"Exit polls reported that people who knew very little about Obamacare or Wall Street reforms, expressed dissatisfaction with both. "
Of course people knew little about them - the "transparency" promised was not forthcoming and there was no time to read the monster document before it was voted into law! Just the process of it (as well as the price tag) was enough for many voters to "express dissatisfaction with both."
Most conservatives don't understand, or have even read the considerably shorter and completely transparent Constitution of the United States. But they
"know" what it means.
And know means no.
Elena is 100% right. If you actually believe that the politicians that voted for Obamacare fully understand the bill then you are delusional. Many pols have admitted to never reading the bill, and those that have can't possibly know how 2,000 pages of new mandates, laws, and regulations will affect 1/6 of our economy. Don't forget Nancy Pelosi's infamous quote regarding Obamacare: "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it".
And Democrats wonder why they got crushed in the Midterms?
In regards to the midterm elections, why do Democrats have to be such sore losers? The fact that they have to attack and insult the electorate every time they lose an election is pathetic. I guess calling voters racist, sexist, homophobic, dumb etc is alot easier than accepting the unpopularity of your policies.
Why do liberals have such a strong disdain for the American people?
If you listen to the rhetoric and read the signs at TeaBagger rallies, it's pretty clear that racism, sexism, and homophobia are a tangible part of the party platform. Voting against your own self interests is well..... dumb.
Even if you personally disapprove of those things, the overwhelming majority of Republicans while looking the other way, use the Teabaggers as an expendable piece of the overall RNC board strategy. Once the Baggers figure out that they're being played, things will get a lot more complicated for the Repubs.
Oh please Mencken, I'd feel a lot safer taking my kids to a tea party rally than any of the liberal rallys. At least they're G rated!
Do you even have a coherent argument to the point I made or is it all lame name calling to you?
Of course you'd feel safer at a Tea Party rally... you'd be safe amongst your own kind.
But I'd be curious as to what threats a mama grizzly and her cubs might encounter at a "liberal" rally.
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