One more thing…
Okay, I can’t stand it — one more politics post, then it’s chicken blogging for a month. I swears.
This is the first election in my life that has made absolutely no sense to me.
It’s not the losing. I’m used to losing. I lived in Rhode Island for thirty years — an experience that so warped my concept of democracy that voting, to me, is screwing up enthusiasm every two years to pull a lever for things that will inevitably be shot down 25/75. Losing I take in stride. Badge of honor. No big.
What’s throwing me about this election is that my judgment was so far out. I got all the signs and portents wrong.
We owned the enthusiasm gap. We had, for the first time going into a presidential election, more registered R than registered D. We were easily walking the bumpersticker and yard sign wars. Our guy was happy, their guy was cranky. Our crowds were growing, theirs were shrinking. The issues were all breaking our way (epically lousy economy…erupting Middle East). We had an attractive candidate with, for once, the perfect skill set for the problems at hand.
And you’re telling me every single one of the Republican issues went down in flames? Alan West? Mia Love? Gay marriage? Legalized marijuana? Everything?
The historical 2010 midterm Spanking of the Dems made perfect and absolute sense. And then the electorate swung hugely to the Democrat side in the two years since? Why?
So. One of two things happened.
Either vote fraud is so deep and wide that it’s bigger than any other election factor (sour grapes + tinfoil hat = I don’t like going there, but it’s a possibility, I guess). OR my own sense of my fellow Americans is now so fucked as to be utterly worthless.
I’m not sure which of those possibilities scares me more.
November 8, 2012 — 12:03 pm
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