Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

This really is a full service blog.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The words do not have to be perfect.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    beltane

    This is exciting stuff, complete with polling place confrontations and everything.

  4. 4.

    Lev

    I don’t really get the Kaplan thing. Is there really a need to demean the WaPo after the past few years they’ve had? Their name itself is pretty much crap already. I get that they’re just a corporate asset of Kaplan, but I don’t have any particular resentment at the test prep people. So it doesn’t do much for me.

    I don’t mean to be a hater. I’m just saying I don’t get it.

  5. 5.

    DougJ

    @Lev:

    Is there really a need to demean the WaPo after the past few years they’ve had?

    Yes.

  8. 8.

    Warren Terra

    I’m just hoping that the Tories and the DUP don’t add up to a majority. Because I’m not a fan of the Tories, and I can’t abide the DUP – and if the Tories need the Lib Dems to stay in office, electoral reform might actually happen.

    P.S. Is anyone else as sick of the “hung/hanged” jokes as I am?

  10. 10.

    cat48

    Accidently read Penn so skipped Broder today. “Hung parliaments” are excellent!

  12. 12.

    Calouste

    @Warren Terra:

    According to a guy I know from another internet forum who is well versed in NI politics, the DUP is not going to do much more than vote with the Tories on an issue-by-issue basis. The UUP will go with the Tories, but they are only going to get one seat most likely.

  14. 14.

    taylormattd

    Oh, the wankery won’t only be in the Post editorial pages.

    Just you wait.

    I’m quite sure the firebagosphere will start screaming “Scott Brown! Scott Brown! The Labor Party lost because they didn’t pass a public option! Democrats are doomed unless they use reconciliation to immediately elect Halder in the Arkansas primary!”

  18. 18.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    Its inevitable that Labour won’t be able to stay in power forever-I mean, 13 years (and for the conservatives, the previous 18 years) is a pretty damn long time for one party to be in power.

    IDK, maybe I’ve drunk too much Cameron kool aid, but I don’t see this as being as catastrophic as it would be if a Republican won the presidency in 2012.

  22. 22.

    The Main Gauche of Mild Reason

    @Amanda in the South Bay:

    Cameron kool aid

    I don’t know. Based on their nasty-party pedigree, I’m not inclined to believe Cameron represents the consensus of opinion among Conservatives so much as a cool new marketing effort. It’s too similar to the Bush “compassionate conservative” marketing effort for me.

  23. 23.

    Mumphrey

    I saw both the Penn thing and the Broder thing. I really don’t understand it; Penn is (or was) a big-time poller, so you’d think he would know something about how American politics work; Broder is the wisest and most seriousest guy ever, so you’d think he’d know a bit about how American politics work, too. And yet…

    Jeez, I’m just a guy who studied American history in college, so I don’t have the best credentials next to those 2 bigshots, but it would seem that I know how our country’s politics work better than those 2 clowns, which is sad, as they can get pieces run in the Post and I can’t…

    Anyway, there’s no chance their wet dream is going to come true and a third party will rise and we’ll have a 3 party system. By now, I would say there is some likelihood that a third party might rise, but it will do so only over the dead body of one of the 2 major parties in the U.S. today, which, as far as I can see it, is far likelier to be the Republicans than the Democrats. The U.S. political system is not set up to have more than 2 stable parties at a time–though I would hedge a bit and leave room for the Republicans to hang on as a purely regional party with no real clout.

    I’ve brought this up before, but in 1912, William Howard Taft, a Republican, was the sitting president, and wound up coming in third in both the popular vote and the electoral vote. He won Vermont and Utah, and picked up 8 electoral votes. His third-place showing still stands as the worst electoral vote showing by a major party candidate since the Civil War, and is the worst loss by a sitting president ever.

    So why do I keep harping on this? Well, it’s that even though Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as a Progressive that year, came in second, and even though a fair number of Progressives won governors’ seats and Senate and House seats that year, the Progressives were gone as a force in American politics by 1916. Almost all of the Progressives switched either to the Democrats or (more often) to the Republicans within a few years. There just wasn’t room enough in our system for 3 parties, and the Progressives withered and died.

    The only third party that ever amounted to anything in our history was the Republican Party, that sprang up in the middle 1850’s, and which even by 1856 or 1858 had taken the place of the Whigs, who died and left an opening. Unless the Republicans die off, there won’t be any lasting third party here, and if they do die off, the third party still won’t last as a third party: it’ll become one of the big 2 parties.

    As I said, I’m no genius; I’m just a former American history major; and George W. Bush was a history major, too, so that should tell you that having a degree is no guarantee that the holder has learned or understood much. And yet, I know this stuff. How can Penn and Broder not know it? And how is it they get paid to spout this shit? I could spout shit, and it would be better and make more sense than their worthless blather. How do I get a nice, easy job like that?

  24. 24.

    Batocchio

    Today was a twofer at Kaplan, with Broder and Mark Penn wanking eloquent about the elections before they even took place.

    Since they consistently ignore reality after events actually occur, why bother waiting?

  25. 25.

    Warren Terra

    @MikeJ:

    P.S. Is anyone else as sick of the “hung/hanged” jokes as I am?

    What, like every day on the Vote Now Show?

    Yes, exactly.

  26. 26.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    @The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
    I guess I just assume that most European conservative parties are somewhat sane, with some exceptions (Thatcherism, crazy ass East/Central European fascist antisemites). IOW, we as leftists may not like it when they win, but the results won’t be as catastrophic as a Prez Palin and VP Huckabee.

    But still, 13 years is just too long.

  27. 27.

    And Another Thing...

    It’s an interesting ritual that Brit candidates all stand together in their constituency and listen to the results without knowing beforehand. Kinda cool. Also liked listening to the Welsh election judge speak in Welsh. The anchors/interviewers are quite feisty.

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