Once again I was awake too early.
We’d bailed on election-night coverage as it slouched inexorably toward its denouement because someone around here has to get up at stupid-thirty to make us some money. Not me.
If I had dreams, I don’t remember them. But I do remember something Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post said during the PBS coverage last night.
It was a particularly fatheaded pronouncement, even for an associate editor of The Washington Post. And I didn’t make a note of it because I’d said something similar the first time TFG flipped his wig into the ring. That the 2016 election would show us who we were as a country.
Plenty of us already knew what we were then. Not enough, though. But surely anyone who has been paying attention since has caught up. Right?
Well, there’s the phone, on the nightstand. It’s not my practice to take the pulse of the planet before coffee, but I could hear Herself prepping in the bathroom and thought that if I got cracking I could make her a bite of breakfast before she left. If she had any appetite.
And so I picked up the phone.
Well, the rest you know. Another massive breakdown of politics, press, and populace. We’re just waiting on the details, is all.
Hunter S. Thompson has already filed his report, of course. He had the scoop after my first election, in 1972, when he wrote:
This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
[George] McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?
We still don’t know the answer to that one, Hunter old sot. The barrel appears to have no bottom.
Mad Blog Media 
My condolences to those whom lost their vote. From the outside looking in, it’s going to be a rough four years. RIP Ukraine and Palestine, and maybe even Taiwan.
Thanks, Ira. It was always gonna be a long pull, uphill, into the wind.
I’ve been out of step with the national parade for a good long while now. I can toddle on a while longer yet.
Well, don’t ask me, because I am just a sucker and loser who went to Vietnam in 1970.
You shoulda bought yourself a case of the bone spurs, Paddy me boyo. It would’ve helped to have been born a wealthy trouser stain.
Shoulda gone to Canadia is what. But, I’m glad I didn’t get captured, because then he wouldn’t like me.
Charlie Pierce does an extended riff on Pogo’s “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Thanks for weighing in Patrick. “Four more beers” – HST. Democracy dies.
Thanks to you for being here, Libby. Thing is, “democracy” seems to have had the desired result for some folks. Or so they think, anyway. …
A persuasive assessment.
We have become a nation of “now”. Things are too expensive “now”. It doesn’t matter that under Trump’s regressive 20% tariff on all imports, things will cost significantly more next year, they are too expensive “now”. Read what Trump supporters have said as to why they voted for the guy – inflation, economy, immigration – it’s all about the here and now, not what his policies would mean for them next year or the year after.
The whole “vision thing,” hey? Lacking both foresight and hindsight, with the attention span of an ADHD fruit fly on crystal meth.
And when it all goes pear-shaped for them, they will blame … guess who?
I am 75 and done with this shit. Not another word, not another thought, not another empty gesture. And, these days, veteran’s day is a joke.
Pat, as one veteran to another, I acknowledge your pain, I frankly don’t understand how this travesty could occur even though I worked for a US company for a few years.
History will not judge this kindly, neither will the earth.
Just take care mate & the same to all here at the Dog Haus.
Thanks, buddy!
As Tom Waits said “Christ you don’t the meaning of the word heartbreak buddy“. Ah I hear tell the fekking arm chair quarterback media is blaming her campaign staff etc. Hell she shoulda won even if she never left her house to campaign against a convicted felon, serial rapist, con man, tax dodger, congenital liar, aw hell….I’m running out of steam. Just pick one….
Well said
Talked to my old man today. He hit 90 trips around the sun in September and is deciding whether to risk heart surgery or just let nature take its course. His response to the election was surprise, but he said “I don’t know why people voted for Trump, but they must have their reasons.” He is a life NRA member who thinks Trump should be in jail.
Since none of us are professional prognosticators, what the fuck.
I’ve had a bad feeling about this election for some time, but still, I was in shock by 3 a.m. when it was a done deal. Laid awake till 5:30 wondering about the whole mess. Shit, I went to bed at 11, woke up at 1, and turned the computer back on. My wife always said I deserved this.
Since I’m not a professional political analyst, feel free to tell me to fuck off. That said….
First, Veeps are not exactly high profile figures to begin with. What the Dems needed to do was hold Joe to his word to be a one term president and thus have started a real horse race a year or more in advance, so the best Dems could get face time. A few weeks were not enough, esp. for an incumbent with a low approval rating. Plus, waiting so long forced a done deal. If the party had not chosen Harris, it would have created a last minute mess and charges of racism. If the campaign started a year ago, she would be first among equals and had to win the primaries. But waiting closed that down. Not to mention all that money in the Biden campaign would be gone. That whole process was a dumpster fire.
Second, not hand anyone the nomination on a silver platter. I suspect a lot of Dem voters were asking “who asked me?”
Third, give the candidates more time to flesh out their platforms. Who was Kamala? The person who was running to the Left in 2020 on wokeish issues or the repackaged middle of the road Kamala of 2024. I read her web site. Some interesting ideas there that I thought were good, but not going to get off first base with divided government. Plus, some of her ideas, such as all that housing she would (personally) build, flies in the face of NIMBY low density zoning such as we see here in the People’s Republic of Santa Fe. Housing policy is largely a local issue. You can’t throw money at housing if you can’t build it (see the Santa Fe CC district plan–mostly low density sprawl). Did folks even read her stuff?
Fourth, and I’m just spitballing as a Western New York transplant (we Buffalonians more identify with the Midwest than the East Coast), I would have thought the nomination of two midwesterners from swing states (Whitmer, Shapiro, Klobuschar, etc and spare me the idea that Grandpa Walz was a compelling running mate) would have been a more formidable pair–we lost those swing states. I worried about the Coastal Elite Effect. For some, the thought of California Democrats reminds one of Gavin Newsom’s elaborate parties during Covid.
Five, one has to recognize that Trump not only had that cult of personality going, but with the Dems having to live down the charge of having become “the Party of the Faculty Lounge” (thank you, Paul Begala), the Dems had a lot of repair work to do in Flyover Country and with traditional labor. It’s not about being woke. It’s about the working class having been hollowed out.
Six, the Statue Effect. When misguided mobs are tearing down statues of people like U.S. Grant and Hans Christian Heg in blue cities because they don’t know the difference between a Union and a Confederate hero, I wonder what people not connected to the Woke Revolution are thinking.
I thought and hoped Mr. T would take a drubbing and that would force the GOP to center itself. Looks like it’s the D’s who need to be centered.
Oh, well, as they say in baseball, “wait ’till next year!” If there is a next year.
And apparently, Harris underperformed compared to Biden (2020) in just about every county in the U.S. Seems to have been 2016 all over again.
Someone in the Dem leadership really screwed the pooch on this one.
Quick housekeeping note: Power’s out here, laptop battery’s dying, and winter is getting real. More as I learn it.
Quick comment regarding this thread: I believe Harris lost because she’s a woman. I think that America still thinks in the past and is not mentally capable of understanding that a woman can lead. I believe there are indications that among female voters she received a lower percentage when compared to Biden; she received a lower percentage among single male voters, and she received less of a turn out from the Hispanic voting community, one which I believe may be considered more patriarchal.
It’s unfortunate that the results are as they have settled. But the bomb blast is as it is and now we get to dwell in the fallout. I suppose now I’ll need to shed my nice honest guy carapace and get ready to live in the make america great again fuck the next person capitalist world.
Herself and I were talking about that. And yeah, being a non-man is part of it. Also, Black, Asian, Democrat, law enforcement, veep, smart, who the hell is she when she’s at home, etc.
I’d like to call it a freak occurrence but there have been too many of those since I got interested in politics.
There will be many books. Many, many of them. I don’t plan to read any of ’em.
Matthew Yglesias on this, a few months back.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-vp-is-clearly-the-stronger-candidate