Sure I kid about this infernal election, but of course there's a lot at stake

MAYBE A NICER TYPEFACE WOULD MAKE THIS
SEEM MORE LIKE A WINNING PROPOSITION?


The Democratic alternative: And yet people say the Dems don't stand for anything. Can you imagine?

by Ken

I feel bad, and I felt bad at the time, seemingly writing off the 2014 election last week ("Throwing in the towel on the 2014 campaign, and while we're at it the 2016 campaign as well"), as if I was saying it doesn't matter. Of course it matters, and by even suggesting that it doesn't I have fallen into a trap beloved of right-wing manipulators: We throw up our hands in despair and they send their coalition of crooks and crackpots to the polls, and they get to rub our noses in their doody.

If you're reading DWT, you know only too well how easy it is to be deeply uninspired by the Democratic alternatives, who by and large seem to feel no need to differentiate themselves from the Republican wackos and scumbags except to suggest that they're a tad less wacky and scumbaggy. So it's hard not to wonder whether this election might look different if Democrats in any quantity listened to, say, the counsel of George Lakoff and actually tried to pretend they stand for something -- and I mean something different from what the Republicans do.

But I'm not so sure it would make that much of a difference. The Right has been manipulating the U.S. electorate into moronitude for so long now, and has become so adept at pressing the buttons that will bypass rational response and convert a goodly chunk of the electorate into frothing, torch-bearing mutant jihadists, capitalizing on the insanely bogus image of Barack Obama they've created out of their diseased imaginations, that we were bound in any case to see the fruit of the six-year right-wing Crusade Against America.

Despite which, I still don't understand how anyone who isn't either (a) directly wired into the plutocratic elite or (b) committed to (metaphorically at least) sucking the cocks of the (a) group or (c) in the grip of far-right-wing ideological perversion could even consider voting for a Republican, any Republican. We're still in the situation that goes back at least to the 2008 election, marking the end of the end of the eight years of unmitigated terror and lawlessness that was the Bush regime, where nationwide the clear operating principle of Republicans campaigning at every level all the way up to the top, with the toxic-sludgified Young Johnny McCranky trying to slither his way into the White House, that every word spoken in public by every Republican is a lie.

The principle has been rigidly adhered to in another presidential election and now two midterms, and instead of the country rising up screaming bloody murder, those people are prepared to reward the very sons of bitches who have been shitting all over them. Well, the morons deserve what they've gotten and, worse, are going to get, but what about the rest of us?

JUST TO TOUCH BASE BRIEFLY WITH REALITY: 
WHAT TO EXPECT WITH GOP SENATE CONTROL

ThinkProgress is talking up a list, put together by the Center for American Progress's Tony Carrk, of "10 Things to Expect Next Year If Republicans Win the Senate." These are all pretty straightforward and unsurprising, so while you should probably still take a look at Tony's discussions of these points onsite, I think everyone will get the idea(s):

1. Additional attempts to use the budget process to advance a conservative ideological agenda
2. More tax cuts for the wealthy and further spending cuts for middle- and working-class families
3. Obstruction of well-qualified judicial nominees, leaving vacancies on federal courts
4. A vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act
5. Attempts to roll back women’s health gains
6. Use of the Congressional Review Act to weaken environmental rules, jeopardizing public health
7. Action to dramatically expand people’s ability to carry concealed, loaded guns
8. Legislation that adversely affects the LGBT community
9. Legislation to deport DREAMers
10. New cuts to programs and rules that increase college access, affordability, and readiness

The thing we have to remember, which naturally the Republicans have managed to forget in their endless propagandizing, is that they have spent every hour, every minute, every second of the Obama presidency doing everything in their power to prevent this president from accomplishing anything. Often, if not always, this has meant taking an explicit attitude of "Fuck America -- we want ours, and we're going to get it over Obama's broken body."

You hear it stated as an article of fact that Obama would actually be happy to have the Republicans take control of the Senate, I guess because that would mean he can't be blamed for nothing getting done, and you have to wonder if the people who say these things have been out in the sun too long. (Many of these same people also speculate about how happy -- or is it how sad? -- Hillary Clinton will be. Spare me.)

I suppose you have to give the Rs credit for pulling off an electoral con of this magnitude.

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