Guess I got what I deserve
Kept you waiting there, too long my love
All that time, without a word
Didn't know you'd think, that I'd forget, or I'd regret
The special love I have for you
My baby Blue
-Badfinger "Baby Blue"
It was a very cold morning indeed on Wednesday November 5, 2014. It was a day of reckoning for a Democratic party that had just suffered an electoral bloodbath as savage as a Rob Zombie slasher flick. The thorough drubbing of the blue jackass party was not unexpected given mounting ominous signs as well as the increasingly unpopular President Barack Obama who is at best a complete fraud. While triumphant Republicans are touting the stomping as a repudiation of the hated Obama what goes unsaid is that the results are a rejection of a Democratic party strategy based on running only slightly to the left of their more overtly fascist counterparts. Democrats have come to stand for absolutely nothing outside of what it takes to save their own miserable skins and are a shell of what the party once was when it championed a vibrant middle class that was the envy of the civilized world. The chickens finally came home to roost on Tuesday but they may as well have been vultures descending to pick the remaining flesh from the rotting corpse of a major political party.
Not only did the GOP gain control of the Senate but picked up House seats and won a number of what were to be close Governor's races. Florida's reptilian Rick Scott beat back a challenge by former Republican Charlie Crist and union busting thug Scott Walker -- who survived a recall attempt -- won reelection in Wisconsin. This was a year in which a woman who is a proud hog-castrator actually won a Senate seat in Iowa which speaks volumes about the political system in America today. Professional obstructionist Mitch McConnell easily prevailed in Kentucky and now will become Senate Majority Leader replacing the insipid Harry Reid which is probably the best thing that can be said about the elections. Reid's fingerprints are all over the disaster as are those of fellow Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi who really planted the seeds for the debacle back in 2006 with those five little words that "impeachment is off the table". By establishing that the Democrats had zero interest in extracting the necessary accountability from the historically criminal Bush-Cheney regime and it's despicable gaggle of war criminals, 9/11 profiteers, torturers, thieves and murderers, the chain of events leading to Tuesday's bludgeoning was set into motion.
The Democrats are now at a crossroads in that they are becoming the political equivalent of the Ebola virus and are turning off more voters by the day, especially independents and progressives. Sure there was the usual voter suppression, laws designed to prevent non-white people from voting and of course the billions of dollars spent by pigs like the Koch brothers and their ilk to rig the game. Such things tend to happen in our star-spangled banana republic where greed, cheating and hypocrisy are the coin of the realm. While outrageous and decidedly undemocratic they however tend to serve as a crutch in the ongoing failure to address the real problem in that despite much lip-service the Democrats buried the dagger in the backs of the working class years ago. By failing to even attempt to appeal to certain segments of the population ("Reagan Democrats") that were easily plucked by Republican demagogues like the low-hanging fruit they are the party betrayed core principles of economic fairness and helped to put the American dream on life support. The late, great Joe Bageant wrote much on this and his work should be required reading for any who seek to understand how we came to be in this dismal state.
Were the Democrats to actually become serious advocates of the poor and downtrodden and denounce the destructive forces of late stage predatory capitalism and imperialism, people would turn out to vote in such numbers that no amount of dirty money or voter suppression could overcome it. But then again if my aunt had a pair of balls she'd be my uncle. The Democrats - under the current leadership - will never eschew corporate money nor take a moral stand on anything outside of their phony identity group politics. It is always easy to preach the message of equal rights for all and then proceed to sh*t on every last one of those who were gullible enough to believe it after the votes have been counted. It sure as hell didn't work out on Tuesday and it won't work in 2016 either. Enough people are now able to see through it as the dishonest horseshit that it always was. Just ask Hispanics who were counting on serious immigration reform from Obama and his party.
There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth on the so-called left but little to no real acknowledgement of exactly why voters have come to dislike and distrust the Democrats. I have a number of liberal and progressive friends who either stayed home out of disgust with the Dems to punish Obama or went to the polls and voted for libertarians, Greens and no party affiliate candidates. I really don't expect Democratic party bosses to get it before next election in which the coronation of Queen Hillary the Inevitable has been preordained since 2008 and they will only insist on pushing a failed product that has fewer buyers now than ever.
Now the Democrats are turning on each other like starved weasels trapped inside a raw sewage pipe after getting walloped and trying to shed their own culpability. According to the Washington Post, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's staff is caterwauling about a lack of support from Obama while David Axelrod went on MSNBC and called for a house cleaning. The circular firing squad is already forming but there is no honest discussion over what it is about what is truly wrong with the Democratic party. It is a deep state of denial bordering on fugue and there is no easy fixing of this hot mess in time for the next round in 2016 which the talking heads are already masturbating over. Democrats may have gone to bed crying softly into their pillows in the wee hours of early Wednesday morning but awoke determined to double down on exactly what it was that got their clocks cleaned in the first place.
In what should be an ominous sign for Democrats, not even Bill Clinton could salvage their hopes when he was trotted out a few weeks ago to stump for candidates like the doomed Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky. Despite mass denial among party loyalists it may not be a good idea to bet the farm on Hillary being able to deliver as expected in two years. The Clintons used to be fresh back in 1992 when they were the sign of a new generation assuming it's position atop the nation's political establishment and were adored by millions then. That however was one hell of a long time ago. Today Bill and Hillary Clinton are symbols of a terminally corrupt, atrophied, insider packed political class who have zero chance at connecting with the younger generation. Obama pulled it off six years ago but like everything else that the prince of petulance has touched it all turned to sh*t leaving those millions of potentially long term energized voters up for grabs. So much for Advertising Age's 2008 Marketer of the Year.
The Republicans as always are prone to overreach and could very well self-destruct in a state of raw hubris. This is especially so with the new Senate providing even more power to insane warmongers like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two fanatics who seem to be sexually aroused over any possibility of freshly spilled blood. There will be no end to war with the Republican majority and come early next year it is inevitable that Bibi "the chickenshit" Netanyahu will be greeted by thunderous applause like a conquering hero in front of a joint session of Congress. There will be a scuttling of any talks with Iran, a renewed push for a catastrophic confrontation with nuclear armed Russia over neocon operations in Ukraine and those oh so precious "boots on the ground" will be marching in Iraq in vastly increasing numbers. But a GOP blowup isn't likely in that the Democratic establishment is just as enamored with war, the destruction of civil liberties and corporate looting as their more ostentatious counterparts. Hell, the first thing that Obama did outside of kissing the asses of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner after the apocalypse was to announce that more troops were being sent to fight the bad ass bogeyman ISIS.
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