"Honey; I thought you said that god damn dog went to the pound" - post election barking

As we shift from the election season to the Christmas season, your favorite Labrador is ready to go back to work after a long stretch of self-congratulation after Obama was able to fend off the forces of evil, tedious right wing lies, distortion, obfuscation and various attempts to change the subject and Mitt and Ann Romney’s patrician cluelessness.  Of course, we have a few thoughts about the stormy and nerve-racking thirty day period from mid-October to mid-November before we move on to other pressing business.

After Obama’s somnambulant stagger through the first debate there were nervous moments amongst the progressive portion of the electorate as a punch-drunk Romney seemed to have landed some wild and flailing blows, enough to stagger Obama, as if he came to the stark realization that – yeah, remarkably, I can still fuck this up if I’m not careful.  Right wing knuckleheads in the media went into full frothing overdrive, gleefully rubbing their hands together over the prospect of 10 million illegal immigrants spontaneously self deporting like the German army leaving Russia in 1944 – the tattered remnants of a massive attempted takeover leaving in a trail of downcast and disoriented farm workers, bus boys, gardeners and nannies trudging south to the morose strumming of a mariachi band.  The Obama ground game had to go nuclear.

Thanks to Romney’s penchant for self-destructive jabbering and Paul Ryan’s douche-baggieness, Obama was able to right himself with no small amount of help from Super-storm Sandy’s long, lingering onslaught up the east coast.  In retrospect, Romney was the weakest republican candidate since…well, since the last one.  John McCain and Sarah Palin were arguably the worst ticket for national office, ever, but it’s widely understood now that the republicans didn’t want to win in 2008 so they let an addled McCain pick whoever he wanted while Dick Morris and Karl Rove laughed their asses off over 20 year-old scotch.   They all knew that the economy was a complete disaster so they made the political calculation that they should retreat to fight another day, surrendering 2008 and pointing to this election, thinking that  their subsequent strategy of opposing Obama at every turn insured that he wouldn’t get any traction and by 2012 would be presiding over an economy coughing and wheezing like a tubercular, alcoholic Ratso Rizzo.

In the end nothing worked like these geniuses planned; their treasonous colleagues in congress humped Obama’s leg and pissed on his shoes for the better part of two years and while there was plenty of anti-Barack sentiment among some segments of the electorate – particularly the closeted KKK voters yearning for the lost America that never really existed – all this dishonorable little strategy succeeded in doing was to make everyone to the left of Mitch McConnell really, really angry.  How’s that taste, Karl?  Personally I am still hoping that somehow the Justice Department can pin something on you and the treacherous gang of criminals who pay you and make you somebody’s prison bitch like you so richly deserve.   “Squeal like a pig, boy…”  Ahem…uh, sorry.

So anyway, there was plenty of fun to be had in the aftermath of the election as sputtering right-wing media whores from coast to coast took turns having apoplexy on camera as they tried to explain away an almost 100 electoral vote spanking.  Their pathetic attempts to “broaden the base” and be more inclusive were almost as insulting to the targeted demographics as Mitt’s own royalist condescension.  Their stumbling attempts to try to talk about attracting Hispanics to the republican party were so unnatural and awkward they might as well have said, “We need to get more negroes to vote for us – let’s buy some barbeque.”  The fact that Hispanics would, given half a chance, probably be sympathetic to the republican platform in terms of social issues makes their inability to transcend their own racism and say something coherent to them all the more laughable. 

The post-mortem regarding women, young people, gays – Mitt’s 47% - was just as sadly hilarious.  To attract more women they want to simply recruit more women business types to appeal to pocketbook issues.   And while that might be a good idea, you might want to cull your ranks of the kind of misogynistic morons whose ideas about biology have all the sophistication of a witch-doctor.   As Tina Fey so brilliantly put it, “If I have to listen to one more grey-faced man with a $2 haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m going to lose my mind!”  Maybe having Ann Romney yammering on about how hard her and Mitt’s life has been wasn’t the best way to attract women votes either.   She is definitely not the “I’m every woman” that poor Whitney Houston was singing about.

Finally, and perhaps most damning of all, was the avalanche of lies that surrounded the entire republican campaign.  Sure, Obama and the democrats put a favorable spin on things, to their advantage – that’s understood.  But the republican’s whole campaign was built on a foundation of lies, fever dreams, and hallucinations to such an extent that even the stalwart republican mouthpieces in the media were clearly embarrassed to try to defend the shit that was routinely coming out in Romney/Ryan TV ads and stump speeches.  

Now as Obama settles in for a second term and the whole happy gang of them wrestle with the ominous sounding “fiscal cliff”, all we’re left with is the specter of George Will’s smirking, sarcastic, contemptuous ramblings, denying climate change and generally harassing Obama and the democrats from behind the cherry trees lining the Potomac.   It’s sad and pathetic, really.  There is serious work to do in this country – everyone knows that and acknowledges it.  If the republicans want to save themselves as a viable political entity they need to tell Grover Norquist to go fuck himself, roll up their sleeves and make some deals.  Obama wants a legacy as much as any normal human – just like John Boner.  But at this point all Boner has for a legacy is two and a half years of stubborn obstruction and mealy-mouth finger pointing and he needs to understand that all that’s going to get him is a place in infamy as the most corrupt, inept and useless speaker in the history of congress.  How about it, John?  Do you think you can find some adults down there among the old, fat-cat, white men on your side of the aisle in time for us to get this thing moving again?  We all sure as hell hope so.