Good work America!
An electorate angry about Washington gridlock, lack of focus on issues that matter to them and angry at both parties, decided to stay home, allowing a high turnout of radical conservative old and white voters to send the most radical Congress in history to Washington.
That’s not just hyperbole (see below), oh and it’s not just Washington. The states are making hard shifts to the right tonight, re-electing governors that hate the minimum wage, give tax-cuts to billionaires, raise your taxes and literally pass laws that make it harder to vote. In Kansas, it looks like Gov. Brownback who literally lost $1 Billion of his states money to an ill-conceived tax handout package that actually cost jobs is leading!
The Dying Democracy
Democratic party aside, if you believe in democracy, this is a horrible night for our nation. The most expensive midterm election in history, possible of any election in anyone’s history, convinced angry Americans to become disillusioned with voting, which so far, hasn’t seemed to benefit any group of people ever, but there you have it. Latinos, African-Americans, the young and women, by what is looking at this point to be majority margins, decided they had better things to do than vote. Angry, old white men, on the other hand, did not think so, and they picked the Congress, the governors, the state houses, the judges and decided on all of those idiotic proposition initiatives. Most people are not represented in this new government and their agenda is coincidentally identical to what billionaires want. What are the odds?
This is a huge victory for the special interests, who overwhelmingly oppose raising the minimum wage or anyone’s wage, want tax-cuts for themselves, tax-increases for everyone else to pay for the tax-payer funded corporate welfare they love so much (like us paying them to take our oil for free). They want weaker environmental laws, weaker gun control and oppose everything the American people seem to overwhelmingly approve of by wide margins in every major poll. People hate the Republicans more than anyone else by wide margins and nearly half the country strongly disapproves of them. That is why they spent $4 billion to convince you to stay home. While I know you reading this were smarter than that, it looks like the $4 billion was money well spent for the corporate interests and a down payment on the death nil of democracy.
The wholesale purchase of a radical and extremely conservative Tea Party set of politicians from the party that is responsible for the gridlock, wants to outlaw abortion, outlaw birth-control, cut taxes for billionaires, expand gun rights to include open-carry in bars and child ownership, oppose the 8 hour work day, universal healthcare, want to privatize (and ruin) Social Security, eliminate Medicare and start perpetual wars that finance the pockets of the Military Industrial Complex and the Espionage Complex (aka, the NSA), eliminate unemployment insurance, welfare, food stamps, home heating gas credits, and strongly oppose investment in our nation’s infrastructure, including the construction of new bridges or highways, even opposing fixing the crumbling bridges we have, all while seeking to DOUBLE the Defense budget. No joke. almost every single one of the Republicans that is winning or won election tonight is in line with the corporate interests and opposed to you and EVERYTHING you stand for.
The Complicit Corporate Media
I am going to take this momentous occasion to declare that the Liberal Media is dead, long live the Corporate Media, brought to you by radical conservative billionaires who now own most of what’s left of it.
The “unpopular Obama” was like a mantra repeated over and over again, while favorable coverage of the President is nowhere to be found, even at MSNBC! The idea that there is a news media that represents the people or cares about the issues that matter to them is laughable. They do the bidding of their corporate masters, most of the commentators are millionaires and could benefit from the tax-cuts the Republicans want to give them and likely haven’t spoken to a poor person in decades, potentially, ever.
Instead they echoed idiotic horse race BS, mentioned over and over again about how Obama was unpopular (despite being nearly 10 points more popular than Bush was in 2006) and did the bidding of the Republican party by making the election about Obama, spreading fear-mongered rumors about Ebola and never bothered to ask any hard questions at any point in any of the elections. The new Colorado Senator co-authored a bill that declares a fetus a person and outlaws birth-control, yet he denied it even existed and was never seriously called out for openly lying to the voters.
I can’t help but feel that, despite the fact that some of the most important issues of our time are being held up by record Republican gridlock, the media was more worried about the fake issue of Ebola and painting a negative picture of an America in decline, despite the Stock market at an all time high. How much you want to bet they paint the Senate takeover as a good thing?
I will never forget Fox News switching their color scheme the first day Bush took office with bright colors and the smiley faces of von Rundsfeld, Cheney and others that have to stay in America to avoid War Crimes in the Hague, and a side bar that declared “Meet the New Administration”.
That was 14 years ago, and not only is Faux News more of a joke than ever with ratings that routinely make up less than 1% of the population on a good night, they learned to make money on current events by selling news to a population on behalf of a corporate culture that has always felt people don’t understand why they people such low wages or pollute the cities chief water supply. They are just trying to bring you cheap chicken at a reasonable price! If they wash the chicken feces into your water supply you should be grateful!
They own the media, so we need to give them credit for utterly failing democracy as well. They constantly talk about Obama when he was never on the ballot. They made a huge deal out of Ebola, even though the amount of people who have died from it in the US is, as Bill Maher points out, smaller than the amount of people OJ Simpson was accused of killing. The media also failed to talk about the issues, which is kind of their job, as politicians would always prefer to scare you about something that doesn’t affect you rather than propose a plan on jobs.
Blue Dogs Failed Again
Oh and lastly, we have to thank the Democrats. who decided it was better to run away from President Obama and talk about how bad the economy is rather than note that unemployment is now in the 5% range (when Obama took office it was over 10%) , not losing 750,000 jobs a month but adding 200,000 a month and that the ACA also known as Obamacare, has been a proven success, even in the Red States. They decided to treat Obama like a poison and you know what? All of those people lost.
Just like the infamous “Blue Dog Coalition” that went down to historic defeat in 2010, paving the way for the losses today. People like gay American Idol Clay Aiken who did not want the President to come down and rally with him. Well now he gets to home a twice loser in a major poll.
Dissing the President means you side with the Republicans! I mean, basic knowledge on that one. How can anyone respect someone who doesn’t stand for anything? For everyone that sided against Obama. I give you the big middle finger and a kiss good bye and good ridden
Republicans Couldn’t be Interesting Even if they Wanted to Cut Your Wage in Half, Oh They Do!!!
I see why people don’t like the Democrats, I mean I don’t. They are a pro-corporate party that is out of step with the people. However, I f**king hate Republicans, who are owned lock, stock and barrel by the corporations and use downward division to cling to power (meaning, you may be getting poorer, blame the blacks or the immigrants or anyone but the people who control this country). They offered not one solution to create jobs, not one alternative to Obamacare, not one way to pay for the debt they suddenly cared about when Obama took office. Not only did Republicans run away from the issues and just make the election about Obama, who was not on the ballot, the few ideas they do have (mentioned above) are proven failures and leading to the decline of the United States. They not only favor multi-national corporations over the American people that work for them, they seem to hate the American people.
The Democrats are a means to an end, to hold back the radical right from taking over and overturning 100 years of Progressive laws that made America strong, especially after World War II, the Republicnas favorite era to glamorize, was driven by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the progressive New Deal. Once Reagan, Clinton and the Bushs began to roll it back, America began to decline. The progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt feared that if the workers are disenfranchised and left out of government, there would be an actual revolution in this country. Progressivism is what keeps the American voter at the table, promotes democracy and a larger middle-class without resorting to the radical ideas from the left, like communism, or from the right, like fascism.
Yet the Republicans are pretty scary these days. Where once they believed in tolerance, of building roads and bridges, of an environment that was pro-business but not crazy, the new lot are extremists who oppose all of that. They bought the Supreme Court years ago which secured the overturning of a 100 year old law that prevented them from spending limitless money in elections. Many like me were deeply worried, unlike the Supreme Court, that this would lead to corruption. So far the cost of elections at the state level are as expensive as Presidential elections were 14 years ago! Why would they pay that much?
What Can be Done with $4 Billion
Did you know that $4 billion is expensive enough to write a $33 check to everyone that voted in the 2012 election? Seems like it would be cheaper to just give your employees a raise because most companies are in the tens of thousands of employees. The Koch Brothers, owners of Koch Industries spent $300,000,000 of their own money and only have 70,000 employees. That’s enough to give every worker a $4,285 yearly bonus!
This isn’t about money, it’s about the greatest drug of them all: power. These guys will do anything to keep in power. Tell you what to do is a form of power. How would a group of guys born into a massive fertilizer fortune know anything about you?
They don’t! Though they think they know enough to convince you to stay home and I hate to say it folks, America was dumb enough to fall for it.
Ever since 2010, when Americans sent the previously most-radical Congress in history to Washington and they took over the state houses, they redrew and gerrymandered Congressional districts to make them so rigged in favor of White Republicans that a majority of Americans voted in 2012 for Democrats and the Republicans still held on to the House by more than 30 seats!
You Deserve it America!
You deserve the coming gridlock that will achieve nothing, or the cuts to food stamps you may even be on. You deserve a Supreme Court that seems to know as much about women as they do about poor people, nothing. You deserve a Washington that works to make your cars less safe, your water less drinkable and no nothing to stop the upcoming onslaught of Climate Change.
Democracy isn’t about giving you what you want, like good candidates you are going to love, anymore than buying a bag of cookies at the supermarket is about giving you something that is healthy. You make the choices of what is presented to you. Staying home is a vote, a vote to end democracy.
Jesus! At least show up and write-in Mickey Mouse or something! That is about 100 times more respectable than the buffoons who stayed home in this election!
You get the government you show up for. If, at the end of the day, people are too lazy to participate in government because they think it doesn’t matter, than maybe it’s time we end what little remains of our democracy and just embrace the plutocracy we are rapidly becoming, for I hate to see the Constitution die such a slow and agonizing death at the hands of people who simply think they are better than the process.
Polls
In my previous post, I predicted the polls would be wrong, said that turnout would be key and declared the $4 Billion spent by the corporate interest to be an expensive effort to keep you home. I was right! The polls were dramatically wrong, but in the other direction. The low-turnout was so low, that it throw the polls off dramatically and elections that were easy Democratic wins like Virginia may go to a recount while close races like Colorado were no contest. The voter turnout was monumentally low. Latinos were mad at Obama. Women were mad at Obama, The 18-30 crowd was mad at Obama. Congratulations on your new government! By staying home you elected people who hate you and see you as such a problem they will pass even more bills this make it even harder for you to vote.
Sadly, not a vote for anger at the system, just an overwhelming endorsement of the past 4 years of Republican gridlock and a lurch even further to the right against immigration reform, against new jobs plans, against Obamacare, against raising the minimum wage, against birth-control. All of the things the people who stayed home to protest, as it always does, will fall on deaf ears and be lost in the history. It is an utter waste.
