Now we know exactly why Republicans tried so hard to keep people from voting.
The easiest thing to do this morning, after Tuesday’s great Democratic victory, would be to rehearse all the pre-election hooey that oozed from Foxed-up folks, whether it be local bloggers or well-known extremists on TV and radio, who were cock-sure that Americans wouldn’t put the black Kenyan socialist back in the White’s House.
Yes, that would be so easy. But because I am such a gracious winner, I’m just not gonna play back all that stuff, all that vitriol-based commentary, all those foolish predictions by the Obama-haters. Nope, I’m not gonna do it.
Couldn’t help it.
But I’ll spare you the rest of the rubbish that came from others, who I am sure had a hard time popping out of bed this morning, at least those who could actually get to sleep after it became clear that they are going to have to live with Barack Obama for another four years.
And they will have to live with more Democrats in the Democrat-controlled Senate and a few more in the House. And, ahhhh, they will have to live with ObamaCare.
Not that some of those folks didn’t put up a fight last night.
I watched with utter delight what happened on Fox after it called the election for the President. Turd Blossom, uh, Karl Rove, was in rare form. He openly challenged Fox’s “decision desk“—nerdish guys and gals who crunch the numbers using decidedly non-ideological arithmetic—and pleaded with the anchors to do something about it. To stop it. To repeal the laws of mathematics.
Here’s how Time’s TV critic, James Poniewozik described it:
What is unusual–really, one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen on cable news–is for one arm of a network to basically turn against itself on-air. “Here’s what we’re going to do!” said anchor Bret Baier. “We’re going to get someone from the decision desk and we’re going to bring them in here and we’re going to have them on air and we’re going to interview them about this decision.”
That’s right: One of you nerds had better get in here and explain yourselves to Karl Rove! You have made an important Republican very upset!
If you didn’t see what happened on Fox, I suggest you read Poniewozik’s entire account of it, including his summation of Karl Rove’s attempt to commandeer a network in service to his political party:
It was a fitting moment for an election that often seemed to be a campaign over the idea of mathematical knowability itself. But it was also a glaring, and embarrassing, example of the extent to which Fox News has become an arm of the Republican Party and is expected by GOP operatives to behave as one. Rove may be a party big shot, but he’s just a guy giving analysis on Fox’s air. He does not run the network, even if his friends do.
And yet apparently no one in Fox’s studio felt empowered to tell him that, just because he’d raised a squillion dollars for Republicans SuperPACs this election, he is not entitled to have the decision desk hauled out to answer to him like a chef who sent out an undercooked steak. It’s the sort of thing that might cause you to examine your mission as a journalistic network. I’m not waiting up for that to happen, though.
No, Fox “News” will not examine its journalistic mission. It won’t ask itself why so many of us put quotation marks around its “News.” It will continue to falsely call itself fair and balanced and wage war on arithmetic and the Democratic Party.
But Democrats can celebrate one simple fact today. Despite all of what the Fox “News” Channel did to sabotage their chances of winning, despite all that Karl Rove and his moneyed minions did to try to buy the election, despite all the attempts to suppress the vote of minorities and young people, a majority of Americans still placed their hope for a better future in the hands of the Democratic Party.
And at least for one day, that is worth celebrating.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Jim Wheeler
/ November 7, 2012No doubt the re-election of a Democratic president is a hard pill for the Republican party to swallow. The problems are no less massive than yesterday and will still require cooperation by a divided government. The question then is whether ideology will trump practicality. I would be more sanguine if it were not for the religious infection – it may be resistant to the pill.
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middlechildwoman
/ November 7, 2012I have been biting my tongue (stylus actually) on Facebook since our victory last night. Oh, such willful ignorance in the name of religion. Faux News is responsible for much of this although individuals always have the power of the remote control. As a retired secondary teacher, I rejoice in the freedom I now feel to express my political bent. Sadly, Jay Nixon did not receive the ballot support from our part of the state which he richly deserved. I shouldn’t be surprised but almost always am in the power of all the ” Godly people ” here in southwest Missouri. Hopefully, much of our angst will disappear as we take this victory and march forward.
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R. Duane Graham
/ November 9, 2012You are so right about Jay Nixon not getting the support he deserved around here. He has practically lived in Joplin since the tornado. I’d like to say I’m surprised that ungrateful voters rejected him. But I’m not. We both know how it is in these parts.
But, hey, we won anyway!
Duane
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thgeneralist
/ November 7, 2012This is a time to thank some of the people who made this victory possible — for saving America from itself. Thank you, Tea Party imbeciles, for great candidates: Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Joe Walsh, Allen West. Thank you, Donald Trump, for reminding us every time you open your mouth that you are a fool and a liar and a complete asshole. Only Franklin Graham likes you. Thank you, Franklin, for mismanaging your dad’s ministry and exposing huckster preaching for the complete hucksterism it is. Thanks, Mike Huckabee, for your supporting role in Franklin’s endeavor. Thanks Karl Rove, for throwing away a lot of rich assholes’ money in a losing cause. May you (and Dick Morris) never work another day in the “election stealing” business. Thanks to the state executive teams (especially the Governors) in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia for arrogantly bungling voter suppression and ensuring for yourselves only one term in office. Thank you, Sheldon Adelson, for losing 6-out-of-6 and throwing way millions of dollars of your tainted money — and for giving Donald Trump a run for his money as America’s nastiest whore. Oh, there are so many more, but there just isn’t time. Again, from the bottom of my heart, thanks. I love you guys.
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Yellow Dog
/ November 7, 2012I could not have said it better…..I think I love you.
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thgeneralist
/ November 8, 2012Yellow Dog —
If, in real life, you just happen to be Christy Turlington, we should talk. Offline.
The G
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R. Duane Graham
/ November 9, 2012You’ve perhaps been up too long! You’re hallucinating!
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R. Duane Graham
/ November 9, 2012Couldn’t have done it without them! You are so right.
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thgeneralist
/ November 7, 2012I had to post this from Margaret and Helen’s blog. Always insightful. Often funny.
“HELEN:
Margaret, it appears that rape remains unpopular among likely voters, gays are people too, and Rocky Mountain High isn’t just a song. It isn’t final yet, but at the time that I am writing this, Michele Bachmann, bless her heart, might not be too popular with voters either. And while he wasn’t actually running for anything, Donald Trump proved to be unpopular with just about everyone.
Once the real news called the race for Obama, I tuned into Fox News to see if Carl Rove was giving refunds. I had to laugh at the meltdown that was happening. Carl wanted a recount in Ohio and some blonde woman with too much make-up lamented about the inconvenient truth of Hurricane Sandy. Evidently Sandy and fraudulent voters had given the election unfairly to Obama. Honey, Hurricane Sandy reminded us that we had a good man in the White House much the same way Hurricane Katrina reminded us that we had an idiot in the White House. And fraudulent voters are about as common as unbiased reporting on Fox News. I had to turn the channel back to the more civil CNN coverage with that lovely Anderson Cooper. Too much Fox makes me itch.
After running for President for nine hundred years, Mitt Romney accepted defeat and gave a surprisingly short and genuinely gracious concession speech. I was touched, truly touched, when he called for unity and wished the President success. President Obama too gave a lovely speech. He always gives lovely speeches. It was tad bit long and I must admit I drifted off a couple of times. I am old and it was getting late.
But back to Mitt… you had me there, sir. You had me ready to put aside my partisan ways in hopes that our elected officials could come together and find common ground. I was all ready to write my letter to the President asking him to govern to the middle and bring us together. I would get a good night’s sleep and then write the letter in the morning and send it off to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But just before I headed to bed, this flashed across my television screen:
“The American people did two things: they gave President Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved Republican control of the House of Representatives. The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president’s first term, they have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control. Now it’s time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely-divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office.”
– Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader
Well Margaret, so much for me giving up my partisan ways. Mitch McConnell is a jackass and the Republican Party can kiss my ass. I mean it. Really.
MARGARET:
Well, here we go again. Honey, why don’t you just move to Kentucky and run against McConnell? I would vote for you. I mean it. Really.”
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R. Duane Graham
/ November 9, 2012McConnell is at it again. He thinks his party actually won the election.
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King Beauregard
/ November 7, 2012I’ll let these adorable children express what’s on my mind:
I don’t feel too bad laughing at Republicans, because whether or not they know it, they won too. They’re just too wrapped up in tribal feelings (and in some cases, racism) to appreciate the fact that the far better man won the Oval Office, the far better party controls the Senate, and Joe the Plumber went down in my district with a humiliating 23.5% of the vote.
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R. Duane Graham
/ November 9, 2012Oh, my God! I forgot all about Joe the Plumber! Man, less than 24% of the vote? There’s hope for America yet. I wonder what made him think he could get Kucinich’s old seat? Oh, wait. I know the answer to that. Thinking wasn’t part of the process.
Congrats on your “new” representative.
Duane
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King Beauregard
/ November 9, 2012Well, here’s the downside: Kucinich’s district no longer exists. Republicans gerrymandered the hell out of Ohio, so my district looks like what you’d get if you took a plane (the woodworking kind) across the top edge of Ohio — I’m in that shaving.
Take a look here just to see how insane the gerrymandering got:
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2012/results/ohio#house-races
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ansonburlingame
/ November 7, 2012To all,
Your side won, big and “fairly”, as far as politics is fair. I of course will echo the long held sentiments on this blog that changing American demographics, unpredicted by the GOP, as well as turnout, carried the day for progressives. Economic laws however do not follow such demographics.
Yes some GOP “nuts” lost big time and they should have. Akin and Murdoch come to mind.
I also acknowledge that the scales in American electoral balance has now changed. Most thought it “might” have changed in 2008 but 2010 set that view back on its heels for sure. But after the 2010 policy rebellion against Obama happened the GOP made the huge mistake of attempting to foment its own “religious” rebellion. That is religion became a dominant theme in the American electoral process. Just how many blogs did you see herein over disdain for religious “nuts” as just an example.
IF the GOP is dumb enough to let that religious element continue to persist in its politics then the GOP will go the way of, what was it, “Wigs” or somethingm maybe “Bull Moose”.
But the policy issue remains very much in all of our faces, the economic and yes, military issues before the country today.
By and large you, the progressive community “got it”. Now you must “pay for it” as well. Good luck.
Anson
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writer89
/ November 7, 2012I just posted something on my blog that is my gift to Republican conservatives, if they’ll take it. The won’t.
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King Beauregard
/ November 7, 2012That’s pretty wicked awesome!
I have a thought on this part:
“If they truly want to reduce the number of abortions, they need to support ways of reducing unwanted pregnancies, and that means pushing harder for sex education and birth control. Why is it that the same people who are anti-abortion are also against the best methods for preventing abortions? It is because they want women to remain barefoot and pregnant based on their religious beliefs.”
It’s not that they want women to remain barefoot and pregnant, it’s that they want harlots to be punished. If you (you = an unmarried woman) consent to sex, it serves you right to get pregnant, and what more fitting punishment could there be than 18 years of hardship?
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Jim Wheeler
/ November 8, 2012Gee, King, I’m still confused. What if it’s a “legitimate rape”? 🙄
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King Beauregard
/ November 8, 2012“Legitimate rapes” are few and far between. Most of them are just harlots too.
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R. Duane Graham
/ November 9, 2012Remember how crazy they got after Obama said if his daughters “make a mistake,” he didn’t “want them punished with a baby”? All he was saying was that “it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.” But to the fanatics, he viewed “precious life” as a “punishment.” You simply can’t reason with people like that.
Duane
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R. Duane Graham
/ November 9, 2012Writer89,
That is a fantastic and comprehensive piece. Kudos for writing it and for putting such thought into it. If only they would listen. Some will, but the activists in the party, those who provide all the energy, will not. Oh, they will make some necessary tactical concessions (like Hannity’s recent turnaround on the immigration issue), but by and large they will insist that the party is not conservative enough.
Duane
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