1. I wrote this in September: “Considering how easily they squashed a grassroots insurgent Presidential campaign fronted by an elderly Jewish socialist from the smallest state in New England, I was so stoked to watch the DNC kick the ever-lovin’ shit out of the Republican machine this November, but then Trump had to go and ruin all my fun.”
As a staunch believer in hedging my bets, as well as someone also happens to be a smug asshole who can’t make his humor dry enough, I worded the above so that it can be read either as a pithy comment on how Trump’s campaign was doomed because it was run with the order and élan of a Farelly brothers movie or as a dig at the Democrats for picking a battered three-legged stool of a Presidential candidate largely out of procedural indifference and Beltway orthodoxy. I personally leaned toward the former reading until I noticed a lot of people started sincerely referring to themselves as “deplorables” in real life, and then I knew shit was already going south.
2. Did the Russians hack the DNC and send bogus inter-office emails from the party leadership saying they didn’t need a coherent 50-state Congressional/Gubernatorial strategy nor any need to canvas the unholy living fuck out of the rust belt?
3. As Mark Twain or any ponzi-scheme impresario can tell you, it’s far easier to con the average American than it is to convince the average American that s/he’s been conned. Throw into the mix the shitty combination of personal newsfeed curation and mounting paranoia about falling for fake-news items and you have an electorate that’s too smart to fall for nothing unless it reinforces their existing opinions. Whee.
4. This isn’t rocket science: Truman and Bush41 aside, the perceived outsider beats the perceived establishment candidate every time: that fresh-faced Obama kid beat old man McCain, W did well enough to easily steal it from Gore, Reagan offered America a new day even after the neo-populist Carter thumped Ford, etc.
5. It’s no surprise that a party devoted to justifying the gutting of the American government does so well running celebrity political neophytes like Eisenhower, Reagan, Schwarzenegger and now Trump. As a friend of mine insists that people would vote the shit out of an Oprah candidacy; I insist that the Democratic party would never ever nominate her.
6. I haven’t shrugged off this many furious implications that I, a cis-hetero working-class middle-aged white man who doesn’t possess a college degree, must be responsible for the failure of white-feminist corporate ambition since the Ghostbusters reboot’s box office went straight down the toilet its second week in theaters.
7. It’s ridiculously early, but it’s telling that Dems seem excited by the prospect of a former Vice President challenging a Republican Presidential incumbent in his reelection campaign. The ghost of Hubert Humphrey and whatever is left of Walter Mondale probably high-fived at least twice while watching that Joe Biden appearance on Colbert’s Late Show.
8. How many of those 25% of pre-election-polled Republicans who said that the election was going to be rigged are now in favor of the recounts? Or is that not how the collapse of all trust in our centuries-old democratic institutions works if your horse wins?
9. I have five cash money dollars right here that says the party leadership will pick Thomas Perez for DNC chair over Keith Ellison.
10. Talk about going through the political looking glass: Macy’s seems much more the blue-state shopping destination than Target, but with Macy’s pulling their support of Planned Parenthood and Target not backing down from their support of transgender rights, I have no idea where to buy socks anymore.
11. So, how many businessmen do we have to elect President before even the densest know-nothing grasps that government is not a business? Clearly the slow-motion clusterfuck of the George “The MBA President” Bush years was not enough to wish this notion into the cornfield.
12. In the richly depressing miasma of reasons for the Democrat thumping, one I wish I saw more often was the price hike in ACA health insurance rates a few weeks before Election Day. I’m not smart enough to write that essay, but I’d like to think I would be smart enough to read it.
13. In much the same way so many of our companies slash their service while still raising their rates — United Airlines is planning to start charging passengers for use of the overhead luggage compartment on planes, for example — we have political machines that don’t actually do much for their members. I don’t want to bring back Boss Tweed, just would like to see organized parties do more in communities than GOTV at the last minute.
14. I don’t mean this to sound angry, but when they round up the non-supporters of Uberführer Trump, I hope to live long enough to see Nate Silver stood against a wall and shot solely so I can see which direction his corpse falls. I predict he lists slightly to the left, but crumples to the right.
15. So …. they didn’t steal any emails from Hillary’s private server?
16. I’m not going to wear a safety pin to signify, but I am obsessively assessing pretty much anyone who looks like me as a possible threat to anyone who doesn’t look like me on the street, in the stores, on the bus, etc. I don’t know how long it will be before I don’t scan the back bumper of every pickup truck I see for Trump/racist asshole insignia.